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skzdarlings · 2 days

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bodyguard: the first guard | part three | chan/reader

masterlist.

(part one of the previous story.)

part one | part two | part three | tba

( read on AO3 )

A sequel to the Bodyguard. Miroh’s daughter is assigned a bodyguard of her own. The past is confronted when old friendships and new enemies are pushed to the brink.

pairing: bang chan/reader content info: sequel to the bodyguard (felix/reader). this is a new reader perspective. the previously established story dyanmics: explicit violence, mentions of torture. mentions of past sexual abuse, detailed descriptions of needles. chapter word count: 12,525 words.

B E F O R E

“Happy fourteenth birthday.”

Felix looks up from his work. He underperformed in training today and landed himself a punishment. His good record spared him anything too painful, but he has been assigned cleaning duty. Taking apart, cleaning, and reassembling weapons is not difficult work – he could do it in his sleep – but it is tedious.

Tedium is its own kind of torture, especially these days with his mind in a state of tumult. He has grown closer to Chris with each passing day. Felix knows they are not meant to think of each other as friends, just fellow soldiers, but that is the word Felix uses.

My friend.

That is who stands over Felix now. Chris is smiling and holding something wrapped in what looks like a kitchen napkin. Felix blinks at it, then furrows his brow.

“Huh?” Felix says. “It’s not my birthday.”

“Could be!” Chris says.

Felix supposes Chris has a point. Felix does not actually know his own birthday because he bounced around foster care before he found himself in Miroh’s program. If his birthday was recorded anywhere, no one told him what it was. So it could be his birthday. The odds are not great but not impossible.

“Um,” Felix says, because no one has ever wished him a happy – or happy possible – birthday. He guesses the best reply is, “Thanks?”

“It’s not a trick, man,” Chris says, smiling. He laughs at Felix, though it doesn’t feel cruel, and ruffles his hair before shoving the little wrapped item at him. “Here,” Chris says. “Got it especially for you.”

Felix unfolds the napkin and finds a cookie. It’s not the kind of food that is served at the regiment because their diet is so strict. Food is a sustenance and not a pleasure.

“Wow,” Felix says. It is a genuine surprise. Chris had to go out of his way to get this.

Felix feels embarrassed. He still struggles to cope with feeling in general. He almost yearns for a simpler, more naïve time, when he didn’t have to think or feel, just trust and follow. Now he is a flustered knot of embarrassment because Chris is giving him presents just because Felix mentioned he had never received one. It was an off-handed remark a few days ago, that he didn’t know his birthday and had never received a present but that it didn’t matter because he didn’t deserve it.

And he didn’t, he doesn’t, deserve any of it. Not a birthday wish or a thoughtful gift or Chris’s friendship. Felix has so much blood on his hands and he doesn’t how much of it is innocent. He never counted his kills like some other agents, stupid kids bragging to seem bigger and more powerful than their circumstances. Felix never did it for glory. He knew his place. Now he doesn’t count them because it doesn’t matter. It all comes back to him when he closes his eyes. He remembers what they were wearing, what they said before they died, the things they begged to a naïve, indifferent child.

He doesn’t count them because he doesn’t need a number to know it’s too much and he will never be able to take it back. He doesn’t deserve birthdays and friendships and Chris. He never will.

He doesn’t say this out loud. He knows Chris will argue with him, belligerent in his kindness and reassurance. Felix won’t listen in turn. The conversation would be useless. Rather than bother, Felix asks, “Where did you get it?”

“Hey, I know I’m trouble,” Chris says, still smiling, “but I got connections too, you know?”

Felix guesses he means Miroh’s daughter as she is the only agent with outside connections. They seem to have a tenuous understanding because she and Chris get in the most trouble. Chris, because he still bristles at commands and steps out of line. Her, because she’s Miroh’s daughter and held to a higher standard than the rest of them.

Chris can befriend almost anyone, garnering admiration in his peers if nothing else. His rebellious streak means no one wants visible association with him, but in the quietest of corners there is a whispered respect for the First Guard. He is as notorious as he is skilled and he has a natural leadership.

Felix supposes it is not outside the realm of possibility that even Miroh’s daughter would consider Chris a friend – but only somewhere even quieter than most.

Felix does not consider Miroh’s daughter a friend and he doubts he ever will. Her proximity to Miroh makes her an even bigger liability than Chris. Felix would never get close to someone like that, born into their position and too close to power for his liking.

“Miroh’s daughter, you mean,” Felix says.

Felix might keep his musings close to his heart, but that doesn’t mean Chris can’t read them anyway. Chris is a soldier by instinct if not choice. He is always one step ahead. It’s like he is inside Felix’s head. He seems to know what Felix will do before Felix does.

“Yeah,” Chris says. He rubs the back of his neck, breathing deeply. He looks almost sheepish, as if admitting he knows better. “She’s not that bad when you get to know her. Really.”

Felix is certain he looks unconvinced. It makes Chris laugh.

“You look worried,” Chris says.

“I do worry about you,” Felix says. He looks down at the cookie in his hand. It is hard to say out loud, but he manages a weak, “You’re my friend.”

Chris is suspiciously quiet. When Felix looks up, Chris has a determination to his countenance.

“Find me when you’re done here,” Chris says. “I wanna show you something.”

Felix, as usual, does as he is told. When his punishment ends, he tracks Chris to the barracks where the older boy is patiently waiting. He claps Felix on the shoulder but otherwise doesn’t stop to greet him. He is a little skittish as he leads Felix to their mysterious destination.

It is not so extraordinary in the end. Nothing around here is. Everything is cold chrome and sleek silver, one room much like the next, branded by Miroh as surely as its occupants.

Chris knocks out a ventilation panel then leads Felix to what looks like an unused crawl space, forgotten and collecting dust.

“Welcome to my office,” Chris jokes, still with that nervous laughter. It is putting Felix on edge.

“Is everything all right?” Felix asks.

“Well, no, Felix,” Chris says. “It isn’t. You know that now, don’t you?”

A couple years of shared assignments between the best and second best, the rebellious and the reluctant. A couple years of watching Miroh bludgeon his way through the world. A couple years of regret.

A couple years of friendship to change everything.

“Yeah,” Felix says. It is all he needs to say.

“Sit,” Chris says. There is a corner of the room that has been cleared of dust, this part of the hideaway evidently well-used. “Let’s talk.”

Whatever conversation Felix expects to have, it is not the one he gets. He sits and watches Chris, watches him breathe and measure his words. Chris is usually confident in what he has to say, even when staring down a barrel of a gun. This is more than disconcerting.

“I’ve been talking to some others in the program,” Chris says. “We’re all growing up. I’ll be eighteen soon. If we’re already strong, we’re just gonna get stronger. Miroh has complete control over us. I’m scared that if we don’t do something about it soon, then everything is going to get worse. A lot, lot worse.”

“Do something,” Felix says, his mind going a mile a minute. “What do you mean? Who else have you told about this?”

“People I consider friends,” Chris says. He puts a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “People like you, Felix.”

He thinks of the cookie in his pocket. His heart punches up with alarm.

“Miroh’s daughter?” Felix asks and this time he knows for certain his thoughts are very clear. He says her name – not even her name, her position, the daughter and heir of the very thing Chris wants to fight – and he says it with the obvious inflection of what-the-fuck-are-you-thinking?

“She’s a friend,” Chris says in a voice he usually reserves for an enemy. It startles Felix into silence. Seeing that, Chris smiles, trying to lighten the mood. “You don’t have to trust her,” Chris says. “Just trust me. Felix, I want to get us out, all of us. I don’t want that man or any other man like him to hurt anyone else. Not kids, not adults, not anyone. I won’t put you in more danger, I swear. That’s the opposite of what I want. I’m gonna protect you, okay? I’m gonna protect all of you. When the time comes to take a stand, I just want you to be ready. If something happens, if it all goes wrong…”

Felix looks at him, alarm and worry plain on his young face. Chris squeezes his shoulder again.

“If…” Chris swallows then continues, “If it is all goes wrong, I’ll pay the price alone. But I’d rather die trying to save all of you than live another day hurting innocent people for Miroh.”

“Chris—” Felix starts, an argument on his tongue.

“Don’t,” Chris says firmly. “If there was anything worth dying for, Felix, then it’s this. I’m gonna get you out. I’m gonna get you all out. I swear. Just be ready for when I say. Just trust me. Just be my friend.”

Felix spends a week after that in a state of restless turmoil. He sleeps poorly and fights worse and even spends a night in the Cell for his mistakes.

He doesn’t know what to think about Chris and his intentions. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. But if it worked…

It wouldn’t take the blood off Felix’s hands, but it would be a start to something better. Felix has little thought for his own fate, undeserving as he is, but he thinks about Chris. Chris, the First Guard, who has been here the longest, who has watched the most people die, who has been punished the worst.

Chris deserves better.

Felix believes in Chris. He believes if Chris made an effort, then he would have what it takes to make a difference. Felix knows Chris is capable. He could do what he sets out to do.

It is not Chris that Felix worries about.

Felix observes Miroh’s daughter, studying her more closely than ever before. Felix trusts Chris’s general discretion but he worries Chris has a blind spot concerning her. They are the only two in their age category and they share a small barrack, the forced proximity undoubtedly creating a semblance of intimacy. Chris might trust her but Felix is not so biased. All he sees is Miroh.

Felix watches her. She doesn’t spend much time with Chris in public, her only close relationship with Seo Changbin. They are a bit notorious together. Felix would not call them the best fighters but they are tricky. He is pretty sure they throw their fights with each other and embellish more than necessary. Both like a good skull crash, more brutal than efficient. The trickery and brutality makes Felix more wary of her.

At the same time, her obvious friendship with Changbin shows she can care about someone else. The pair throw a mean punch but always patch each other up after.

Chris catches Felix watching them. They are having a go in the ring, punching and flipping, grinning when they think no one is watching. They have smiles just for each other.

“You look really deep in thought, mate,” Chris says, laughing. He hands Felix a water bottle while toweling down his own sweaty neck.

“Huh?” Felix finally breaks his concentration. He takes the water and smiles one of his instinctive but fake smiles – the kind he uses on a mission, when he is trying to convince an adversary that he is an innocent, unassuming kid.

Chris sees through it, of course. He lifts an eyebrow at Felix then follows his line of sight to the ring.

“What?” Chris says, laughing again. His own ears turn a little red as he teases, “You got a crush on her or something?”

“Ew, shut up,” Felix says, throwing his own towel at him. He feels flushed despite the fact it is vehemently untrue. He is not used to being provoked with that line of teasing. “No,” he says certainly. “I have no feelings for anyone. But I think they might.”

“Huh?” Chris looks between Felix and the ring. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, look at them,” Felix says. “They’re a little too close, don’t you think?”

Presently, Miroh’s daughter has Changbin pinned to the mat. She is on top of him and whispering something that makes them both snicker.

Chris stares at them. After a beat of contemplative silence, he laughs. Felix recognizes the fake sound, the same disarming humour Felix uses when conning someone.

“Yeah,” Chris says. “Hey, I’ll be right back, yeah?”

Felix watches Chris amble over. He says something to the duo and Changbin retaliates with some non-descript shouting and flailing. Miroh’s daughter rolls her eyes. She grabs Chris by the collar and yanks him into a fight.

The rest of the day progresses without much fuss or bother. Miroh has no jobs for them today so the schedule is just training and recuperation.

Felix manages to avoid punishment today. He tries expelling his anxiety in a fight but it does not fully work. Felix has come to realize he is not very good at letting go. Belief, emotion, the good, the bad: all of gets clutched in his fists and held to his heart.

Fighting tires him but it is not a satisfying tired, of exerted muscles and a pumping heart. He feels weary and everything everywhere is so loud, the chrome and steel of the Miroh facilities like an echoing dome. It cycles all that noise in an agonizing reverberation. It feels inescapable. He goes to the barracks which are smaller but it makes the claustrophobia worse.

Laying in his bunk, rubbing his temples, Felix dreams of a quiet room of his own.

It is then he remembers Chris’s hideaway. Chris miraculously dodged punishment today so he retreated to the barracks a while ago. Felix doesn’t want to disturb him but he figures Chris won’t mind him using the hideaway on his own if he’s careful.

They are permitted access to the training room for the few hours between work and mandatory repose. The hideaway is en route so it is easy for Felix to stealthily retrace his steps without raising suspicion. He disappears in the security blind spot the way Chris showed him.

Felix is in the tunnel when he hears a noise. He worries he was followed despite being so careful, but then he realizes the noise is ahead of him, not behind him.

He freezes in the crawl tunnel, trying to discern the sound. It doesn’t sound like talking, more like… breathing? Heavy breathing.

Then he hears a laugh that he recognizes as Chris. And he is not alone. The other noise is a sigh, a lighter, more feminine sound.

Oh.

Apparently, Chris’s hideaway is not just for talking to friends. The sound of kissing and sighing is more friendly than his conversation with Felix, that’s for sure.

Felix is frozen for a minute, too stunned and embarrassed to think of moving. He has to shuffle backwards to escape because he can’t turn in that part of the crawl space. If this was a mission, he could do it, but this is personal. He doesn’t want to get caught but it’s not because it will compromise any job; it’s because it will be awkward.

He scuffs his shoe in his backwards shuffle. It clangs, a subtle sound, but one that makes him wince.

It goes quiet around the corner. Felix knows he was heard and there is no time to escape. Seconds later, a frantic looking Chris is in the tunnel, red-faced with a line of sweat on his brow. His uniform is clearly dishevelled and Felix gets even more embarrassed.

Those feelings need somewhere to go. It comes out of him in a burst of frustration.

“What are you doing?” Felix demands, his voice breaking.

“Nothing!” Chris says, clearly a knee-jerk reaction. Then he takes a breath and says, “Look, I can explain—”

“It’s not Miroh’s daughter,” Felix says. He can’t even pose it as a question because he refuses to believe Chris could genuinely be that reckless and stupid. Befriending her is one thing – a stupid thing – but fooling around with the daughter of the powerful man who owns them is begging for tragedy.

“I’m not stupid,” Chris says.

“It doesn’t matter,” Felix says. “Whoever it is, you need to stop.”

“Look—”

“Seriously, Chris!”

“Felix—”

“It’s not worth it!”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Chris snaps. “You’re not normal and you don’t understand what it means to care about someone like that.”

It is obviously thoughtless, blurted in the head of the moment. It hurts anyway. Felix wonders if Chris can see the pain on his face because Chris looks immediately remorseful.

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that—” Chris starts.

“It’s fine,” Felix says. “You’re right.”

“Felix—”

Felix pushes backwards and leaves without waiting for any protest. He does not stop, marching all the way back to this bunk. Anger and embarrassment have finally dissipated by the time he returns. It has been replaced with determination.

Chris is the best, but he has been compromised whether he wants to acknowledge it or not. He feels too much, for everyone and everything, and it will get him in even more trouble than he is already in. if he retaliates with thoughtless provocation when it’s just Felix confronting him, then what will he do when it’s Miroh and the stakes are even higher?

Chris said he would protect them all. He swore to succeed at any cost, including his own life. There is no one swearing the same for him. No one has ever protected him.

Felix is the second best. He has never left a job unfinished and for that he is not deserving of the protection Chris is offering.

It won’t clean the blood on his hands, but if Felix can save a life worth more than his own, then maybe it will start to justify all of this, all of him.

Chris was right. Felix is not normal. But he was wrong say that Felix doesn’t know what it means to care about someone. Because of Chris, Felix knows how to care. He knows what he has to do.

Chris can try and save them all.

Felix is going to save Chris.

P R E S E N T D A Y

Miroh’s main facility has fallen.

It sounds so dramatic for something so anticlimactic, like you are describing the collapse of a kingdom and not the shutdown of his main office operation.

It feels like an apocalyptic demise.

You and Chan fight your way out of the building, taking on the people who fight in your name. Your father’s name. Miroh.

Miroh is dead. Irrefutably broken, little more than a heap of meat on the tarmac. With him gone and the only named heir on the run – you – this facility will shut down to maintain security.

Miroh ran a meticulously compartmentalized business. There is protocol for everything so even if one part of his operation fell, the rest could continue unimpeded. Miroh tried to establish a legacy that could rival old money like his enemy, going so far as to predict his own demise. Miroh has long braced for the eventuality of his end, so he made sure his business could fracture and run without him.

He did everything in his power to make you just like him, a little broken fracture of himself to ensure that legacy. But then he could not actually face what he created. He could not actually let go. He was the only one with the perspective and power and he had to keep it that way.

Miroh would not have accounted for your rebellion, not for the sake of someone else. For a friend.

Flashes of the last twenty four hours play in your mind. You can hardly pinpoint the change in yourself. It feels like this was somehow inevitable, despite how much you would have balked at the idea before. But now it is all that matters. It’s all that makes sense in this chaos.

You have to find your friend. This facility will be empty in a matter of hours, but there are others. Changbin is in one of them. You have no idea where to start.

One thing at a time, you tell yourself. Before you can ruminate on anything behind or in front of you, you need to fight. You do not have time for introspection or planning. You need to get away. Away from this place, away from your dead father.

Away from his soldier, the First Guard, Bang Chan, who for some reason is helping you escape.

You don’t know why. You seriously doubt your barely coherent pleading broke the conditioning and literal torture that made him into this thing.

You don’t have time to find out. At the first opportunity, you break away, leaving him with a handful of operatives to fight. It should keep them all occupied while you escape.

You do not want to risk trapping yourself in an enclosed space, so you do not venture to the parking garage where the company vehicles are stored. Some of them will be programmed and bugged. You feel bad targeting a civilian, but stealing one of their cars is the safest bet. There are some administrative employees who complete menial tasks for the company, those with next to no clearance level. They park their personal cars around the facility. You pick one that is easy to reconfigure without a key to boot.

Minutes later, you are driving for an exit. Your whole body is aching but you push through it. There will be time to recuperate when you are in the clear.

Sirens wail and alarms blare, every security measure in action. Your escape is certainly not a clean one but it doesn’t matter. You just need to get away.

If you can get off the facility grounds, you can lose any adversaries in the back country roads. The route to the facility was intentionally designed to be a convoluted labyrinth, making it difficult for enemies to approach without giving the facility ample preparation time. You know the paths better than anyone. You can get away.

A soldier marches right into the middle of your escape path.

It is too brazen for a regular agent. They would not be so stupid to try that, knowing you would just barrel into them.

You speed closer and recognize the First Guard. Chan is unflinching as ever, standing in the middle of the road as if he intends to stop your car with his body. He is strong but not that strong. You know that. But he looks like an inhuman phantom, looming there in his combat gear and mask, unphased and unharmed despite the hour of nonstop violence.

But that’s not the reason you stop. You think about him in that van. You could only see his eyes but they were expressive, the tilt of his head inquisitive.

You slam on the brakes. The car stops inches from his body but he doesn’t even blink.

Your heart is racing, breath bursting in gasps. He strolls around the car as if he was just waiting for his ride.

Soldiering instinct propels your hands. You draw a gun as he opens the passenger-side door. He bends down and looks at you, his brow quirked with a silent question. Your hand shakes and he is too good not to notice. You know that, but a regular person would never guess because he does not take his eyes off yours.

He disarms you, faster than a blink. He drops into the passenger seat, then slams the door and shoves the gun in its storage compartment.

You stare at him. Your gaze follows the line of his stark profile. His hairline is a little sweaty but he doesn’t look out of breath.

You don’t know what to think.

This is the longest you have been in his company since you were kids in training. Your memory of him is insubstantial, having spent little to no time with him personally. But it hardly matters what he was. Now he’s a soldier above all soldiers, a shadow filling this small civilian car. He’s not the biggest man in the world but he’s overwhelming all the same, partially because of his uniform and partially because of his posture. He feels too big for this little human space. His knee hits the gear shift, his thighs bulky in the small seat, his shoulders broad where he leans back.

He looks across the car and meets your eyes. You think about how many people have met this gaze, maybe in a moment just like this, sitting across from Miroh’s asset in a little civilian vehicle before he put a bullet between their eyes or snapped their neck. You have seen the results of his missions even if you were not involved in them. The statistics and numbers speak for themselves. Those eyes have seen more death than life and right now they are resolutely focussed on you.

You jump when he lifts his hand. He says nothing but turns the rearview mirror in your direction. You reluctantly peel your gaze away from him. You see what he sees: a vehicle in rapid pursuit of your own.

“Shit,” you say. You shove the mirror back into place. Your hands collide for a split second.

You can’t linger on the weirdness of this moment, that the First Guard is your ally, sitting in the passenger seat and helping you escape.

You drive. The other vehicle chases you down. You get past the easy security measures, blowing past gates and guards. When you approach the last gate, Chan rolls down the window and twists his body. He pulls the stashed gun and aims somewhere. Your eyes are on the road so you don’t see exactly what he does, but the gate slams shut between you and the pursuing vehicle, trapping them on the other side.

Then it is just you, him, and the road.

He puts the gun away. He sits back. He rolls up the window. He makes it seem like a routine, still unphased while your heart pounds with adrenaline.

You do not look at him. You do not speak. You focus on escape, taking a convoluted path through the countryside just in case. When the facility is far, far behind you, you take a back road and pull into a shadowed space between some trees.

You slam to a stop, shift the gear to park, but keep the engine running. You clutch the steering so hard, you imagine it cracking beneath the force of your grip.

Chan still does not speak. The last time he spoke was on that rooftop. What now?

A damn good question.

You look at him. He is not sitting the way you would expect a machine of a man to be sitting. You would have thought the First Guard would sit straight-backed and braced for confrontation, but his slouch is almost insouciant. He sits with his knees apart, his body slanted where his elbow rests on the door. One gloved hand strums the door and the other is draped over his thigh. He looks at you without any expression you can interpret.

You are tired. Your body hurts. Your father is dead and the operation is changing and your only friend is suffering and you can’t do anything about any of it. This morning you held a modicum of control over your life – or you thought you did – and now everything has spiralled.

You know logically that Chan is a victim of Miroh, but right now it does not matter. He is an infuriating figure of composure, not to mention your father’s greatest weapon, and that combination snaps the elastic thread of your patience, already stretched to its limits.

“Take off the fucking mask,” you say.

He stares at you, his expression still unreadable. You are tempted to reach across and rip the mask off his face. You would definitely not succeed, no match for his reflexes on a good day, but logic is inconsequential in the face of your emotions.

He doesn’t test you. He stares for another moment then raises one gloved hand. He unhooks the mask and peels it off. He runs the other hand over his face and through his hair.

You are not sure what you were expecting. The same brown eyes stare back at you, lined with a smudged shadow to look as dark and intimidating as possible. His brows are thick and dark, his hair as black, sweat loosening the slick style so a single curly tuft falls over his forehead.

You follow the slope of his nose down to his mouth. His mouth is closed and he is not smiling. He has full lips, almost too pretty for what he is. Glancing at that mouth on that too-pretty face, you picture a dimple smiled. The memory is almost a blur, a smear of an image over his face. You blink and it’s gone, his stoic face staring back at you.

“What is it?” he says. His voice is like the rest of him, too big in this small space. You swear it shakes the car and the earth under it, though that is ridiculous. It’s just a voice. He’s just a man.

Except he’s not. He’s something else, something that should not have done what he did. You have a million questions. You need those answers before you can continue but it all jumbles together in your head. It’s all too much, the flashes of today, of the past, of an uncertain future full of even more violence.

You finally turn off the engine and get out of the car. You have no intention of going anywhere, but you need space.

You pace in a long line, breathing in and out, using every trick in the book to ease your racing heart. After a minute, you hear the passenger door open. You look over your shoulder at Chan.

You can’t help the instinctive reaction to measure him like an adversary. It doesn’t help he has pummelled you twice in the last few months, not to mention his horrid reputation in an already horrid place. It would be stupid not to brace yourself.

He approaches you cautiously. He has the gall to raise a hand like you are the wild thing and he is the tamer.

“Easy,” he says. His voice is not so booming out here. Other than the dark combat uniform, he almost looks normal, his whole face open to you, eyes narrowed with intense focus.

It makes you breathe harder, the exhale shaky. He notices because he tries to placate you.

He smiles.

It is forced and unpracticed, but there are those dimples, just like you thought. You would have been less startled if he bared his teeth like an animal. The smile unnerves you, undoing all the calming work of your exercises.

“It’s all right,” he says in a frighteningly gentle voice. He tilts his head as he looks at you. “It’s just me, yeah?”

Just him. Like that should comfort you. You suppose you can marginally see things from his perspective, that maybe he has proved himself. After all, he helped you escape. It is obvious he is not doing this for your father or he would not have let you kill him. This is not part of a grand plan. There is no strategy. It’s all over.

It’s just you and him.

It does not comfort you the way he evidently thinks it should. Now is the time to ask those million questions, but you are beyond words. You are a live wire and that pitiful attempt at a truce ignites a flare of angry sparks.

You were built to fight. It punches out of you. Literally.

Chan is faster than you. He dodges your swing with ease, fast as an electric current himself.

“Hey now,” he says, holding out both hands. “Don’t—”

You know you can’t win this fight. You know it’s stupid to try. But each swing flies out of you, instinctive as breathing. He catches every blow, bats your hands out of the way, but he doesn’t swing back. His refusal to fight infuriates you. It makes you feel as helpless as you are.

An aggravated cry spills out of you, a strain behind your eyes as you take another swing.

“Stop it,” he snaps, his smile gone.

He finally goes on the offense, catching your hands and pinning them down. There is a moment of struggle before you feel the driver door at your backside, his body caging you in. You rear up against him but he holds you down, hip to hip, hand to hand.

“I said stop it,” he says. “What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” you ask, voice breaking. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Your chest is pressed against his, moving with your breath while he stands like an ungiving wall. You glare at him and he stares back. His brow furrows in seeming confusion. He closes both eyes and breathes out, a steadying breath.

You thought seeing him lose composure would make you feel better, but you feel worse, more unnerved than before.

He looks at you, a muscle in his jaw feathering when he clenches it. You stare at it as he releases you.

“You must know I can’t trust you,” you say.

You make the mistake of lifting your hands to shove him away. You do not intend to punch him again, the worst of that aggression gone, but he doesn’t know that. You suppose you can’t blame him for his instincts after your demonstration.

When you lift your hands, he grabs your wrists. Swiftly and effortlessly, he pins your hands by your head.

“Oh,” he says. His eyebrows lift and his face is far more expressive than you expected. “I’m the one who can’t be trusted, right?”

“Excuse me?” you snap.

“I’m doing my job, yeah,” he says. “Yesterday you were running jobs for Daddy and today you shot him dead. Wanna talk about erratic behaviour? Wanna talk about who’s unpredictable? About who can trust who here?”

Your mouth parts with a useless, breathless rebuttal, stammering and empty. You didn’t expect that many words from him, not when he has been a silent shadow for so long. Never mind the easy, casual speech, every colloquialism and the taunting hurl of daddy. It makes you think of that scathing, troublesome boy he once was, as sharp with his tongue as everything else. But he is not that boy. You know for a fact he was broken. He has done all those jobs for Miroh without causing any strife in the operation. He is a weapon and nothing more. He exists to follow orders.

Until today. Until you.

“So?” you finally say, because what else can you say?

“So?” he repeats.

“So.” You have those million questions, but there is only one that really matters. “What are we? Soldiers without a general? Because right now it seems like we’re two people who have no reason to trust each other and no reason to work together.”

Your gazes are locked and you measure each other. Not that you are much of a threat to him. He has you pinned with very little effort. If you were at your fighting best, you like to think it would be a little challenge, but right now you stand no chance against him.

But he doesn’t want to hurt you or he would have done it already.

He drops your hands. He doesn’t step away, still regarding you with that scrutinous eye, but it is a menial demonstration of trust.

You drop your arms. You stare back at him, refusing to show the depth of your weakness. You think his body might be keeping yours upright, your legs so weak. You do everything in your power to keep your wild emotions in check, to keep the tears in the back of your eyes. You breathe deeply.

“I’ll help you find your friend,” Chan says, the last thing you expect him to say. You can only watch as he sighs and speaks. “You were my last mission,” he says. “Miroh told me to bring you in. I did. He wanted me to watch you. I am. He wanted me to be your—” He laughs but it is not a happy sound, dry and devoid of pleasure. “Your bodyguard, I guess.” He shakes his head. “Consider this me following orders,” he says. “That’s what I do, yeah? I follow orders. And I don’t leave a job unfinished. Ever.”

“And Miroh?” you say tentatively. “The fact I killed him?”

He shrugs dramatically, hands open in surrender.

“Miroh didn’t make me his bodyguard,” Chan says. “He made me yours.”

It is such preposterously simple logic that you laugh, a disbelieving bark of a sound. You look around at nothing, like the answer to your ridiculous circumstance is in the trees or the road.

When you look at Chan, he is still looking at you, his brow quirked inquisitively.

“Well?” he says. “Is that enough? Can we work together to finish this last job?”

“Your job,” you say slowly. You meet his eyes. “So that’s what I am to you?”

It’s meant to be an easy question with a reassuring answer. He is a soldier. You are his job. He will do what you ask. It’s as simple as that.

He tilts his head as he looks at you. His contemplation is too heavy. It was a simple question for a simple soldier who should speak no language outside of missions and reports.

His gaze is searing and it makes your heart skip a startled beat.

“Yes,” he says. He speaks the word like it’s exhausting to say out loud. It lands with a thud on an exhale. “My job.”

His forearm is planted by your head. His other hand grips your bicep. He is keeping you in place with his hips and thighs. You can feel the tension in his body.

You have no idea why you do what you do. It comes from the same place as those desperate punches. You know it’s useless, you know nothing will come of it, but you ride the propulsion of adrenaline. Your body, on the brink of desperation, has been pushed to its utmost capabilities in the last couple hours. What does it want? What do you want?

What did you ever really want?

You kiss him.

It shocks you both. Unlike the punch, he does not know how to retaliate. He stands there, breathing into your mouth. He is neither encouraging nor withdrawing.

You stop quickly and wipe your mouth. Mortification sets in.

None of this is like you. You blame stress. Your body is confused and hurt. You need recuperation. Whether you like it or not, you need comfort too. It is a deep internal call, only human. But you won’t be getting that from the solid, inhuman wall around you.

You push at that wall and it finally gives. Chan steps back. You doubt a punch would have moved him so easily as that kiss.

“Ignore that,” you say. “Adrenaline. I’m still – not right.”

He just stares, once more a silent shadow. You breathe out in a huff.

“Okay,” you say. “And we’re back to the staring. At least I know you’re still working.”

You turn to open the car door, effectively ending the tense exchange. Chan walks away. He silently circles the car to reach the passenger door. You look at his face, once more stoic and expressionless. He doesn’t look at you, dropping into the vehicle without another glance or sound.

You close your eyes. You take another deep breath of fresh air.

Maybe this is good. Maybe Chan is the ally you need right now. Someone level, someone only concerned with mission parameters. Someone who will not become compromised because of emotion.

Because you are very compromised.

You are not thinking clearly. You need a plan and some water and rest.

You get in the car. You start the engine. You don’t speak another word.

You drive for hours, wanting distance between you and the destruction.

The silence in the car is piercing, your head aching after the first hour. The little space acts like an echo chamber for your tumultuous thoughts. You keep replaying the day, every death and cry. You think about your security team strewn across those stairs, just another casualty in Miroh’s game. You think about your father, the unplanned murder but the utter lack of regret in your heart.

You think about Changbin. Your reckless side wants to look for him right now. You cannot stand to waste another second. Based on your father’s words, he could be anywhere, subject to any number of horrors. But despite the whirlwind tempest of your mind, there is a soldier inside you and she is more pragmatic. You are in no condition to fight. Even if you knew Changbin’s exact location, you would be no use to him. You need to rest, formulate a legitimate plan, then attack.

You can’t afford to make any mistakes. Better than anyone, you know the forces you are up against.

You pull into a highway fill-up station at dusk. The car needs fuel and so do you. There is a little shop near the fuel pumps, the place deserted other than the bored cashier behind the counter.

There was some cash in the glove box, enough for necessities. You will inevitably need to steal or manipulate, but you prefer to lay low tonight. You were careful to avoid traffic cameras and security tv as you exited the previous city. By the time the car is reported and Miroh’s operation works out your connection, you will be off the grid.

You turn off the engine and reach for the wallet. Chan snatches it first.

“What are you doing?” is spoken in unison.

“I’m going to buy us some fucking water and food,” you say.

“Are you? Really?” He gives you a pointed up-and-down look. “You gonna do that looking like you just played cannonball with a cement wall?”

You have not gotten a good look at yourself, just a flash in the rearview mirror, but he is probably right. You feel like utter shit so you must look it too.

“Well, you can’t go in there either,” you say. Even without the mask, he is clearly in an unusual uniform. A bored clerk will remember a terrifying soldier in combat clothes marching through his shop.

Chan flashes you a dimpled smile, frighteningly charming.

“Sure I can,” he says. “Just have to blend in.”

Your eyes widen as he discards both gloves then opens the neck of his shirt. You stare as he efficiently strips off his top layers.

If he looked powerful in the uniform, he looks as just as intimidating without it. He doesn’t boast gargantuan proportions but he doesn’t need it. There is lethal strength to the rolling musculature of his sturdy body.

You shouldn’t care. Soldiers strip all the time, long assignments and shared compartments making it an inevitability. But Chan is not just another soldier. In your head, he is that living shadow, covered all the way up to his eyes in the Miroh black and blue. Seeing all that skin is a startling reminder of the man under the mask.

You find Chan watching you, amused. That stupid eyebrow is quirked again.

“What?” you snap.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Be right back. Don’t miss me too bad.”

You roll your eyes, slumping in your seat as he gets out of the car. You have half a mind to drive away but you are pretty sure he would find a way to manifest at your destination anyway.

You watch as he enters the shop in a nonchalant stroll, wearing just his pants and boots. He waves at the cashier and says something that makes him laugh.

To his credit, Chan looks like a regular guy on a hot day, casually perusing a gas station shop. He makes small talk with the cashier and they laugh some more.

You knew Chan was a good soldier but you didn’t expect him to be such a good agent too. He is probably better at the civilian act than you. You are standoffish and opt for a quiet demeanour, blending in through invisibility rather than a persona.

Chan walks in and out, the cashier unaware of the nature of his customer. You return to the road with a full of tank of gas and some sustenance.

“Are you going to put your shirt back on?” you ask.

He gives you a side-eye as he shrugs the outermost layer back on. He doesn’t do it up. You refuse to act like a glimpse of his bare chest means anything to you.

Except it does. When he sits there with his knee against the console and his skin showing and a tuft of hair over his forehead, he looks like a person. He is a person, one who has been subject to some of the worst horrors of Miroh’s operation.

There is no denying Chan is a complicated figure, unwillingly complicit in atrocities. He acts like a normal person with a fully cognizant mind, but you just witnessed for yourself how easily he can fake that. You do not know how much of the real Bang Chan is actually inside him.

“Chan,” you say after a long time. The sun has almost fully set, the sky in its navy gloaming.

“Yeah?” he says.

There are no words that suffice. You could give an entire speech and it would be virtually meaningless.

“I’m sorry,” you say, leaving the breadth of the apology up to his interpretation. You keep your eyes on the endless miles of highway that stretch ahead. There is a long journey in front of you. There is a longer road behind you.

The car is illuminated with golden light from passing cars and overhead lamps. It flashes over his face in the deepening darkness.

“Don’t be,” Chan says. He crosses his arms in a protective position, looking out his window though there is nothing to see but the highway and passing cars. “None of this was your fault,” he says.

You laugh, a similar humourless sound to his earlier laughter.

“That’s not entirely true,” you say, thinking of all the missions you deliberately ran for Miroh. You thought you could make it mean something. You were just like your father, believing the ends would justify the means. You never tortured Chan yourself, but you were part of the operation that kept him in chains. There was nothing you could do to save him, but you certainly never tried.

He looks at you. You hear him move, the crinkle of his clothes, the water bottle he twists in his grip.

“I don’t blame you, you know,” he says. “Seriously. Today was crazy. Everything’s crazy. You’re not responsible for it.”

“I’m not not responsible,” you say. “My team is dead. My friend is gone. My dad – well, you can’t say I didn’t do that.”

“He had that one coming,” Chan says, his laugh a little more real. “No offense, but your dad kinda sucked.”

You find yourself laughing more genuinely too.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think we can agree on that.”

You fall into silence but it is more comfortable than before. There has been an undeniable tension since the moment he climbed in this car, looking at you with questioning confusion as you pointed a gun at him. You were panicking but he must have been equally bewildered. To him, you were a mission. He lives by his orders.

“I should apologize to you,” he says.

You look at him with obvious surprise. He meets your gaze, his expression sincere if not a little chagrined. His dimples show with a faint smile but it is not very happy.

“I’ve been an ass,” he says. “Today was – well.” He runs a hand through his hair.

“Trust me,” you say. You try to lighten the mood with your tone. “I’m a Miroh. You will never have to apologize to me for as long as you live.”

He doesn’t laugh or even force that pretend sound. He stares ahead, his gaze sorrowful and faraway.

“Sorry, that was—” you begin.

He forces a smile and shakes his head.

“Nah,” he says. “Truce?”

Smiling feels awkward and your injuries probably make you a terrifying sight. But he accepts it, nodding at you. The car does not feel like such a claustrophobic space after that. The air is clear as it can be, considering who you are.

Neither of you has an identity right now. You were tethered to the same monstrosity and now it is gone. Everything is different.

You are too tired for another late-night heart-to-heart. It is time for rest.

There is enough cash for a cheap motel room. You find a quiet inn off the highway, sequestered beyond trees and countryside fields. You finally look at yourself properly in the bathroom mirror. You decide Chan’s earlier remarks were a severe understatement. You look like a battleground more than a soldier.

You injures will repair themselves with time, but it is a grisly sight. You shower for now. The soap and water helps.

You don the same shirt and underwear. New clothes will be a necessity. You mentally plan tomorrow, everything you will need to accrue before you formulate an attack. You have already mentally plotted the closest facilities, but you will need to verify their function and security protocol before striking.

You are mentally strategize as you exit the bathroom. You are distracted, thinking nothing of the fact you are wearing underwear and a shirt.

Chan already showered because you insisted, knowing you would take longer with your injuries. He is sitting on one of the single beds, sorting through his weapons. There is the gun you stole from Miroh plus his own array of armaments, things so well hidden you did not realize he even had them. They are laid out on the bed. He sits at the foot in his combat pants and nothing else, his dark hair damp and face bare.

You stroll past him, feeling his eyes as they lift from a gun to your bare legs. Now that you have scrubbed the worst of the brutality from your body, you feel like something of a person again. His flicker of attention ignites an undeniable spark in your belly. At first, it startles you, because the First Guard is the absolute last person you should ever think of like that.

But then you look at him. He has turned his eyes back to his work, saying nothing as he reloads the gun with second-nature efficiency. He is holding a weapon but, despite his conditioning, he is just a man.

You are a grounded person. You keep your head down and go about your tasks with confident certainty. He is here, you are here, it has been a long day, and it is not unusual for soldiers to seek comfort before the dawn of a new fight. Comfort is as important in healing and recuperation as anything else.

You sit on your own bed and look at him. He is effortlessly attractive with his dark hair and dark eyes, the sloping muscle of his firm body. You trace his chest and abdomen with your eyes. He does not lift his gaze, his attention on the gun.

“Do you want to fuck?” you ask.

Bang Chan is the best soldier in the force. You are pretty sure he has never fumbled a weapon quite so spectacularly. It clatters to the floor and he kicks it under your bed.

“What!” he says. He doesn’t look at you as he retrieves the gun, laughing a comically nervous giggle. “Um… what?” he asks again. Before you can answer, he shakes his head. “That’s uh, wait. Um. No. Bad idea, right? I mean—”

“It’s just a suggestion,” you say, not really offended. “It’s been a long day. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re both adults here.”

As you say it, you consider his circumstances. Chan has spent his entire life in the house of Miroh. He is not innocent but he might be inexperienced. This man has killed dozens of people and worked dozens of dangerous operations. His body is built for violence, not pleasure, and certainly not his own.

You find yourself blurting, “Have you ever…?”

“Yes,” he says firmly, brow furrowing with annoyance.

“All right, all right, just asking,” you say. You decide not to push the topic because it clearly makes him uncomfortable. You just cleared the air and you don’t want to muddy it again.

You change the topic swiftly. You make some empty remark about the weather as you turn on the small television. It’s an old contraption, buzzing with static as it flickers to life.

Chan resumes his work. He puts his head down to concentrate.

Your gaze inevitably strays to him.

His hair dries curly. It feels like an unusual thing to know about the First Guard. He looks so much younger with a clean face.

You jump when that face lifts. He looks at you.

“It wasn’t… you know…” There is a hunch to his shoulders, his eyes dropping to his work. “I just did it on missions, ya know?”

“Did it,” you say. “On missions.” It doesn’t register right away, partly because you are tired and partly because you did not expect him to continue this conversation. “You mean sex?” you ask. “You had sex on missions?”

“I had sex for missions,” he corrects, eyes on the weapon he is disassembling. He is acting like the conversation is meaningless, his attention divided, but you know his task does not require that degree of concentration. He could take that thing apart in perfect darkness.

“For missions,” you repeat. “What, like a honeypot type scheme? You?”

It seems ridiculous at first. You picture the First Guard smashing through windows and tackling you in stairwells. There is nothing seductive about that raw violence. But then you look at the man in front of you, young and handsome, the one who so easily charmed that cashier while pretending he was someone else. You picture him in a suit and tie, maybe a t-shirt and jeans. He would be devastating with the right preparation.

Chan is the best. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise you he would excel regardless of the scheme.

“Something like that,” he says. He finally loads the magazine. “It wasn’t so bad, though. Seriously.” He twirls the gun with an effortless flourish. The grip finds his palm like the pistol is a part of him. “Trust me. My body was used for worse things. You get that too, yeah?”

You suppose you relate well enough. You were raised in the same program, put through the same grueling regimen. You have done things and you are not proud of them all. Your circumstances are not the same, though. You are each uniquely situated in your positions, even if you started in the same place.

We’re all that’s left.

Changbin’s voice in your head causes your mind to drift.

“What about you?” Chan asks, drawing you back to the conversation.

“Me?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “You.”

The First Guard is asking you about your sex life. You woke this morning in a safe house and put on combat gear, ready for another mundane day of field work. Somewhere in the middle of that was a cascade of violence. Now Bang Chan is asking about your sexual proclivities. If you weren’t so exhausted, you would laugh.

“I mean, nothing special,” you say, sufficing for the boring truth. “Mostly just this. Sex doesn’t really mean anything to me. It’s like exercise. Long nights on a job. You know. Fellow soldiers on a mission. Sometimes a civilian hook-up.”

You can’t parse the expression on his face. His gaze is somewhat judgemental, or maybe it is just scrutinizing, intensely focussed. It bristles your nerves. Your tone is more derisive when you say, “I’m not a romantic.” You hold his intense stare in your own. “Sex is just a bodily function to me. Sometimes the body needs the release or the pleasure or whatever, so I satisfy it and move on. That’s who I am. I work. I get the job done. That’s what I have always done.”

What you always did. You are not sure how to describe yourself anymore. You nonetheless punctuate that definitive statement. You assume that is the end of the conversation.

Then Chan asks, “So there’s… no one… for you?”

If he was any other soldier, you would think he was angling for flirtation, but he just turned down your very blatant offer. You do not know why he has any motivation to ask such personal and irrelevant questions.

It is not worth the argument. You conclude with a simple, “No.”

He nods, rocking his whole body with the force of his too-casual gesture. The tips of his ears are red, though your gaze does not stay there. You are quickly distracted by his bicep. He lifts an arm to rub the back of his neck, muscles softly rippling. His brazen questioning coupled with his awkward shyness is incongruous.

You think it is unlikely you will ever understand this man. He has been taken apart and put back together too many times. Fragments of him seem to fire all at once and in great contradiction.

“What about Changbin?” he asks. “He must be pretty special to you. Ya know, for you to have done all this for him.”

You are simultaneously struck by repulsion and sentiment. Changbin is very special and you regret not realizing it sooner. He has always been at your side, taking hits to protect you well before he became your bodyguard. He is the person who kept you smiling. You understood each other on a different level. His friendship was a rare gift and you took it for granted. Now you would do anything to have it back.

But also…

It’s Changbin. Ew. You are an only child but you feel a brotherly affection for him. Picturing him in any other context is nauseating. It just feels wrong.

You have such a visceral reaction of disgust that Chan laughs. He puts up his hands as if in surrender.

“Sorry, sorry, my bad,” he says. “Just friends, then?”

“Yes,” you say. “Though there’s nothing just about it.”

You have replayed that rooftop exchange a hundred times, torturing yourself with every possible outcome. If only you did this, if only he did that. You rearrange every second, trying to find a version with a different ending.

You wonder how he will react when he finds out what you did. Aha, murder princess living up to her name! he might say. The old man should have seen it coming. I knew you could it, but of course I did. I’m so much smarter and better looking than everyone else here.

You smile at the idea but it fades quickly.

Changbin was with you last night. He was sitting within arm’s reach, his scar under your fingertips. Now he could be anywhere and it’s all your fault. Not just because of the rooftop mistakes, but because of every mistake you made before that.

You exhale. Your shoulders shake. Chan watches you close a fist around a pillow.

“You all right?” he asks.

“I’m ending it,” you say.

“Sorry, what?”

“I always thought Miroh was an inevitability.” You are speaking out loud but mostly to yourself. Your gaze is fixed on some distant point, your mind and heart miles away. “But he wasn’t,” you say. “No more soldiers. No more experiments. No more bribes and theft and terror. My father is dead and I am going to do what I should have done a long time ago. I am going to make sure his work dies with him.”

You look at Chan. A day ago, you both existed for Miroh. Now you are two people planning to dismantle an empire from a motel room and a stolen car.

“Do you have a problem with that?” you ask.

A part of you is braced for the worst, that he will reject it, that he will revert to some kind of conditioned programming and drag you back to a facility for condemnation.

Even while you think it, you know it won’t happen. The eyes staring back at you are as clear as your own.

“I’m just the bodyguard,” Chan says. “I go wherever you go. Always.”

You feel invigorated to start now, but you are tired beneath the burst of adrenaline. You need to let your body heal.

The room is dark and you doze in the light of the television. After a couple hours, you roll over and find Chan is still awake. He is laying on his bed, arms crossed and eyes open. He is watching the shopping channel, ad after ad after ad, with far more intensity than it merits. His mind must be somewhere else. You can only imagine what he is thinking about.

You wonder how much he knows about himself. He responded to your half-coherent treasonous pleading. Does he remember hating Miroh? Or is he truly only helping you because of mission parameters?

It is easy to forget when he is a bare-faced, curly-haired young man slouching in a motel bed, but Bang Chan is lethally competent. He knew all of Miroh’s innermost schemes. It will come in handy now, but it makes him an irrevocably dark character, whether it was willing or not.

You wonder how much Changbin would trust him.

Wait.

You were so distracted with your plans, you did not question a moment in your conversation.

Chan mentioned Changbin.

You never told Chan the identity of your friend. When you were pleading with him, you just called him a friend.

Maybe Chan heard you talking to your father. Maybe he knows about your relationships because that was his job. Maybe he just guessed because Changbin volunteered himself in the ring.

Maybe Bang Chan remembers more than he is letting on.

You fall asleep to the soft drone of the television. Your mind is walking in circles and you dream of similar rings. Nightmares of chrome cages and steel traps, a suffocating helplessness squeezing your ribcage.

In your dreams, the room fills with smoke, a charcoal smog that chokes you as quickly as the compression on your chest. You look down but you can’t see your body, only feel it. Your invisible body struggles against invisible bindings. You gasp for breath.

Your father appears. It is him holding you down, a heavy hand in the middle of your chest. You cry out. You want to move but your body is trapped.

You close your eyes. When you open them, Changbin is there. He is still a teenager. His head is bleeding – why is his head bleeding? – but he wipes the blood as if it’s nothing more than sweat, all his focus on you.

Of course it is. He’s your friend. He’s here to save you. How did you not see it before? It’s like you have been moving through the world in a fog, the same grey smoke that envelopes you now. His face is the only clear image, gawky with youth but alive and real.

The weight is lifted off your chest. Black spots swarm your vision as you suck in a lungful of air.

When you look again, Changbin is grown. He looks like he did a day ago, dark bangs in his eyes, stocky build ready for a fight.

“I’m not leaving here without you.”

Not leaving here.

His voices dances around you. You are trapped in your body, a screaming, shrieking force, watching through dead eyes as the world spins. People pass but they don’t hear you. You try to reach for someone but your body doesn’t respond to your thoughts.

A labyrinthine stretch of road unfurls then disappears. You are standing in the infirmary at the main facility. You stare at yourself, the younger version of you. You are already dead behind the eyes, resigned to your situation. There are masked doctors around you. A tray full of needles. You watch as the long point penetrates your skin. You’re just a child, arm so small in comparison.

Your child face contorts with pain, an expression your adult face cannot mimic because you cannot control your face.

You remember the pain, even if you cannot cry. It was like nothing you had ever felt. The pain meant it was working. The medicant was only administered to you when it had been thoroughly tested. The first injection killed every subject except one. The second program was a success.

The children were writhing in pain for weeks, screaming and crying, begging for parents that never came. Yours did, looming over your bedside, touching your feverish forehead and speaking through the fog of pain.

An investment, Miroh called it. You’ll thank me one day.

Changbin is there. He is a child too. They put a needle in his skinny arm. He winces but he doesn’t cry. He isn’t scared of the needles or the pain, but he isn’t eager either. He is just there, his head down.

You blink and he is grown. The needle is still in his arm, only it is not an injection but an extraction. You watch the fullness of his face wither. They are taking too much. He becomes a child again, screaming in pain.

The same pain moves inside you.

No, worse.

Worse.

You never could have imagined a worse pain. It courses through your whole body, peeling apart your insides while you lay there, helpless, watching.

Your father stands over you. You’ll thank me one day.

He disappears. For a flickering moment, you see Bang Chan. Curly-haired, dimpled cheeks. He stutters and shakes like a bad film projection. His face contorts, changes. Wide dark eyes stare at you, his face covered in rain – water – tears? Pouring down his cheeks, mouth open and a mute cry in the grey.

You want to touch him but you cannot move. His face flickers again. You feel a tiny, infinitesimal twitch in your pinky.

Then he disappears altogether. Your father is there. He grabs you by the shoulders and slams you down, straight through the earth, holding you there in the darkness where no one can find you and you cannot move.

“Hey—” comes a voice, somehow reaching you in the depths of that pit. “Hey, hey, hey, wake up.”

In your dream, your father shoves you.

In reality, you are thrashing in a motel bed.

It takes a minute to realize you are awake, that everything was just a terrible dream. Your adrenaline is a white hot heat in your chest, your voice a strangled shriek as you clamour around the twisting sheets.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Chan says. “You’re just dreaming, whoa, easy, c’mon… It’s all good. Easy now. Breathe for me, okay?”

It feels like your first breath in years. It goes down shaky, your vision blurry. You realize Chan is holding your wrist, lightly but carefully. You blink up at him. He turned on the bedside light at some point. Half his face is lit in gold as he looks at you with concern. It is such a strange expression to see on him. These were the same eyes glaring at you over that uniform mask. Now that brow is pinched with worry, his own breath a staggered thing.

“You all right?” he asks.

You are sitting upright. You look at your wrist in his hand.

“Did I try to punch you again?” you ask.

“You missed,” he says, smiling. Then he shakes his head and says more seriously, “It was my fault. You were yelling in your sleep so I woke you up. I guess it was too fast or something. Just, you know, I don’t think the walls are very thick here.”

“Right,” you say. Your heart is still stampeding. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he says. “You… you good…?”

“Yeah,” you say. You are too weary for patience, so sarcasm spills out of you. “Peachy.”

He opens his mouth but you don’t wait to hear it. You slide out of bed and land on shaky legs. Your whole body is covered in a sheen of sweat. You want to shower, wash away the nightmare and the terror.

You are a light sleeper. You never dream like that. It is a testament to your exhaustion that you fell into such a deep sleep.

You tell yourself it was a dream, but your reassurances don’t work. Because it wasn’t really a dream, was it? It was flashes of real moments, real faces, real pain.

You stand under steady stream of hot water. You watch as the heat and the torrent opens a few scrapes, the water at your feet turning red. You think of Changbin with a needle in his arm, all that red pouring out of him. Standing there, helpless to do anything, like you are right now.

You have no idea where he is. You look at the scar on your palm and think of him in the moonlight, him in the ring, him at your side. A smile, a joke, a reassurance. A hand in yours, a promise.

He knew you better than you know yourself. He predicted this exact crisis of identity.

When it’s just you and you’re trying to decide who you want to be, not who your father wants you to be… When you’re trying to remember everything and you can’t decide what was real and what was just training and what was Miroh…

He drew that line across his palm. You picture a chasm of a wound, gaping and red, rushing red at your feet.

Just remember me, he said. I didn’t bleed because I believe in Miroh. I’m your soldier, not his.

True to his word, a man of principle to the end, he is bleeding for you right now.

In all your years of training, fighting, and soldiership, of missions and schemes, tricks and plots, you have always kept composure. Now it all weighs on you at once, every single second of your life, and it’s too much.

When was the last time you cried? You can’t even remember. It pours out of you now, big ugly gasping sobs that spill into the shower. You sit down where the water is pooling in pink. You wrap your arms around your legs and draw them up to your chest like a child.

You do not know how long you sit there, crying until it feels like there is no more water left in your body. It must be a long time because the water runs from hot to lukewarm. It feels strange to heave dry sobs with the shower still pouring down on you.

The water abruptly stops. You lift your head.

Chan stands there. He doesn’t look at you directly, his expression solemn, but he turns off the water and gets you a towel.

It feels surreal. Bang Chan is moving around a small motel bathroom, helping you like he has helped you all day. You stare at him with scrunched, sore eyes, your throat too strained to speak. You drop your legs and let him wrap the towel around you. Your heart kicks with momentary fright when he scoops you up, an effortless sweep.

No one has ever done something like this for you. You wouldn’t have let them, even if they tried.

You need it. You never realized how much you needed it. You are certain you will feel embarrassed in the morning, but right now you put your arms around his neck and cling for dear life.

He says nothing. He hooks an arm around your back and the other under your legs. He carries you back into the room and lays you in your bed, adjusting the towel for your modesty before pulling the blankets over you.

You continue to sputter and hiccup, looking at him as he moves. You wonder if he looks like this on a mission, determined and swift.

No. The First Guard wouldn’t fix the pillows under your head. He wouldn’t tuck the blankets around you.

Bang Chan stands over you, wearing nothing but his combat pants, no weapons or masks or piercing stares. He has curly dark hair and a soft face. When you touch his bare shoulder, he looks at you with a heart-shattering amount of tenderness. You didn’t know anyone could look at somebody that way, never mind him, never mind at you.

There’s a person inside him. There’s a person inside you. You don’t know who either of those people are, but you want to know. You need to know.

You curl your hand into a fist and feel the scar on your palm. A day ago, none of this would have mattered, but you know why it matters now.

“We have to find him,” you say. Your rasping voice is barely above a whisper.

Chan slowly cups his hand over yours, his palm to your knuckles, holding your touch against his shoulder. He squeezes your fingers. He nods.

“We will,” he says.

“You’ll help me?” you say.

“Yeah.” His own voice is a rasp, skirting the edge of emotion too. He swallows it down and smiles at you. “Like I said. I go wherever you go. Always.”

He sits with you in the soft golden light of that small bedside lamp. You do not think you can sleep again, but then exhaustion settles over you.

You are on the cusp of sleep when he touches your forehead. Your eyes meet briefly. It wakes you with a heart flutter, similar to a dream that drops you into reality. It is the heart-racing thump of a sudden fall. The kind that feels so real, more like a memory than a dream.

#bang chan x reader #chan x reader #bang chan x you #chan x you #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #skz x you #stray kids x you #bang chan fanfiction #stray kids fanfiction #skz fanfiction

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143-iloveu · 3 days

Text

Credit for all photos goes to the original owners. I do not own these images.

MDNI - Not all of my works are NSFW, but I do not want minors interacting with my blog just to be safe. All NSFW content will carry a Mature Community Label. Ageless and empty blogs will promptly be blocked.

Constellations

Idol!Felix X GN!Reader

Tooth-rotting Fluff

Content Warnings - None

Word Count - 548

When your exhausted boyfriend comes home from dance practice and falls asleep in record time... you can't help but admire him.

©️ Please don't repost or translate my works on other platforms.

Fifty-five seconds.

That’s all the time it took for Felix to fall asleep once his head hit the pillow - a new record. You decided to count purely out of curiosity. He’s been heading to dance practice before dawn for the last four days, and Lord knows the boys don’t wrap things up until they are beyond exhausted. He hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep this whole week.

As he drifts farther into dreamland, his tense muscles are finally given a chance to relax. His lips are forming a sleepy little pout, and a trail of drool is forming at the corner of his mouth - his signature face whenever he’s burnt out. He looks so peaceful lost in his dream. Your heart flutters at the sight. You could swear that you found your heaven within Felix. What selfless deed had you performed in your past life to be given the chance to be with such a sweetheart?

You’re quick to take advantage of the opportunity to admire the beautiful man who’s lying before you. His blonde locks are fanned across his forehead, some falling in his eyes. His breathing is slow, chest rising and falling in time. But the thing that always pulls at your heartstrings is seeing the freckles on Felix’s angelic face. It’s as if God painted constellations across his cheeks just for you to cherish.

You lay in bed next to him, attempting to count how many individual freckles you can see.

‘One hundred forty-three,’ you think to yourself.

That’s the farthest you’ve ever gotten.

Suddenly, Felix rolls further into you, burying his face in your chest and wrapping a strong arm around your waist. He holds you tight against him, and you can feel a small smile spreading across his lips. He must have felt you staring and rolled over to hide his face. He’s always such a shy baby whenever he catches you staring at him with hearts in your eyes.

He’s trapped you within his grasp, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. You have only a single complaint; you weren’t finished counting. You sigh, accepting that your mission has failed. There’s always tomorrow. Although, you’re certain his freckles are infinite, just like the number of reasons to love him.

“Sweet dreams, my freckled prince,” you whisper.

He hums in response.

“I love you, Yongbokie,” you say gently against his temple before pressing a kiss to it.

“I love you too, Y/N,” he mumbles against your chest.

It feels as if you see God every time he says your name, intoxicated by the sound of it falling from his pouty lips. If his love were a religion, you’d be a devout worshipper. You’ve got him, and he’s got you; until the end of time.

He gives your waist a small squeeze before looking up at you with the cutest sleepy eyes. His lips are puckered, silently asking for another goodnight kiss. You happily oblige. A smile crawls onto his face, and he shifts to get comfortable again. He quickly falls back asleep, a light snore escaping his lips. You lay there truly appreciating the fact that you can call this man yours. Without him, you’d be completely lost. Soon, your exhaustion drags you off to join Felix in dreamland.

A/N: I am so freaking soft for Lixie. I wrote this one-shot in a couple of hours but went back over it hundreds of times since writing it. It has sat in my finished works folder for over a year, and I'm finally ready to let it see the light of day. I hope you love this as much as I do!

-Ashe 🦊🐺

©️ Please don't repost or translate my works on other platforms.

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hyunsvngs · 6 months

Text

𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚! - stepdad!bang chan x fem!reader

wc: 10.2k

cw: chan is your mother's boyfriend and you want to fuck him, chan is 30 and reader is described to be younger & in college, lix is a menace, changbin is a moral compass, you do not care about morals, SMUT MDNI.

synopsis: you're home for the holidays, and your mother - who you can't stand - has a new, young, hot boyfriend. it's such a good idea trying to seduce him.. right?

a/n: it's so here <3 my first commission! i hope u all love it <3 smut warnings under the cut ofc. i also tried a new format with this fic so pls let me know what u think?!?

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

sw: dirty talk, breeding kink, mutual masturbation, daddy kink, unprotected sex, creampies, degradation, cumplay if u squint?, humiliation if u squint?, anal fingering (f rec), oral (f rec), edging maybe briefly, sex with feelings

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

You hated going home for the holidays.

You were a rich kid, to put it simply. Your mother loved to leech off the men that she was with, marrying them quickly and trying to suck as much money as she could out of them in gifts and straight up cash before they eventually clued on and left her. It had been why your father had left when you were a mere infant, but you’d always lived in luxury due to the incessant payments that he was forced to give. You’d never met him, but there was a plus side - he was paying your college tuition, where you met your best friends.

Perhaps if you thought about it a bit more you’d realise that the only reason you went to college was to get away from your mother. She pissed you off, sauntering around the house in silk kimonos with a maid trailing behind her, pausing to look in mirrors so that she could choose where her next round of botox would hit. She frustrated you beyond belief, but you still had to go home for Christmas. Annoyingly early, too, because she had a surprise for you.

Okay, well, it wasn’t a surprise. She’d FaceTimed you a week earlier, an irritatingly wrinkle-free face popping up on the screen as she sipped mulled wine and revelled in your absence. She had a new boyfriend, she said. You’d love him, she said. Your opinion matters most to me, she said. The last one you knew to be a lie. God, you hated her.

Still, you lugged your suitcase through the front door and huffed, booting the side with your foot to try and shake some of the snow off. No surprise, she hadn’t helped you in from your taxi. She hadn’t even come to get you from the airport a mere twenty minute drive away. You dropped the suitcase on the floor, giving it another kick just for good measure, and then you were trudging into the kitchen. You’d heard voices from there, so it had to be them.

“Oh, honey!” Your mother chirped upon seeing you. You couldn’t see the face of the man washing dishes behind her, his white shirt sleeves rolled up and back facing you. You didn’t care anyway. “You made it home safe, then.”

“Yeah. The taxi driver was super nice and let me call him mum,” You quipped. She furrowed her eyebrows, lips pursed.

“Okay, you’re being weird already,” She mumbled, and then shook her head, shrugging it off. She walked to the man by the sink, spinning him around by his slender waist to display him to you. “This is Chan!”

You felt silly, stood in the kitchen doorway in oversized clothes and covered in ivory snow. The man’s eyes found you, shocked by your mother’s harsh manoeuvring, and he blinked with surprise at your figure. You blinked with surprise, too.

Chan was hot. Incredibly so, actually, and he looked young. Younger than your mother, with a big nose you wanted to ride and plush lips parting as he raised one hand to wave at you, still wet with soapy dishwasher. You wanted to lick him clean. The white shirt he wore stretched across broad shoulders, and the sleeves were fit to burst around incredibly toned biceps. You allowed your gaze to wander down, eyes focusing on the thick thighs in the black dress trousers he wore.

There was no way this was real. “Okay,” You burst out laughing, eyes darting between Chan and your mother. “And, who is Chan? A friend? A colleague? He’s not your boyfriend.”

Chan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No, I am. I’m your mother’s boyfriend, sweetheart.”

His voice was deep - too deep, deep enough to haunt your dreams and those late night sessions you had in your bed with your trusty vibrator. This was going to be trouble. You were going to be trouble.

“You’re shitting me,” You couldn’t get the amused smile off of your face. No fucking way. Your mother hadn’t bagged that. “You’re fucking with me. You have to be. Mum, he’s closer to my age than he is to yours.”

“I’m thirty, actually,” He mumbled, looking sheepish. Your mother stared at you in shock, jaw dropped at your brazenness.

“I rest my case,” You concluded, nodding decisively. When the two of them just continued to stare, you bristled slightly, starting to hop from one foot to the other. Awkward. “You… are you actually together?”

“Yes, honey,” Your mother confirmed, still looking shocked. You scoffed.

“Okay, I really need to go, actually,” You gushed, turning around to leave the kitchen. “I’m- I’m going to my room. Really nice to meet you, Chan, really.”

Shooting upstairs, you completely ignored your suitcase still leaking snow all over the hardwood floors and darted into your bedroom. It still looked exactly how you’d left it, band posters all over the walls and teddies littering the end of your bed. You threw yourself on top of the mattress, fingers yanking your phone out of your pocket and clicking the button on the most recent group call on FaceTime. Immediately, your college best friends picked up.

“There’s already a problem?” Felix scrunched his nose up, face way too close to the camera. Changbin was on the other side, face looking confused in the little square designated to him on your phone screen.

“I just met my mother’s boyfriend.”

“Oh, right, how did that go?” Changbin questioned, tilting his head to the side. You caught sight of your face in your own little square, flushed and appalled.

“He is thirty years of age, Changbin,” You began. Felix gasped, tiny hand moving to cover his mouth. “He is thirty years of age, and he is really fucking hot.”

“Oh my god,” Felix mumbled, muffled behind his hand. “Oh my god, you have to fuck him.”

Changbin choked on air. “She has to- No, Felix, no!”

“No, I can’t do that. It would be fucked up,” You mused. Or.. “Wait, would it even be that fucked up? He is closer to my age. I hate my mother.”

Felix’s hand fell, and he giggled before speaking in his trademark goblin voice - “Fuck him.”

“Don’t!” Changbin shrieked, his phone shaking in his hand. “I really think this is a bad idea.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Felix grinned, looking smug. “I’d do it.”

“There’s not a lot you wouldn’t do,” Changbin retorted. Felix stuck his tongue out at him. You, however, were silent, musing on the situation and staring at your wall. Could you do it? Changbin noticed, sighing. “Baby, please no.”

You licked your lips, nodding. You could do it. You wanted to do it - needed it, even. Those biceps were going to plague your life forever otherwise. “Operation fuck my mother’s boyfriend is a go.”

Felix screamed in delight. Changbin ended the call.

SATURDAY

It was time. Your mother was out at brunch with some friends, and you had plans to invade Chan’s personal space because you had a feeling he’d be too polite to tell you otherwise. You knew he’d set up the spare room as his own home studio, because your mother had delighted in telling you how Chan was a super successful music producer and was often tinkering away in there these days. You were going to let yourself in, try to get to know him a bit.

The knock you landed on the door was anything but subtle. Your fist rapped on the door and you heard a little hum in response, so you swung open the door, eyes landing on Chan hunched over his desk. He looked even younger like this, beanie pulled down over dark curls and headphones positioned on his head. He continued to stare at the file on his computer, head bobbing absentmindedly, so you strode up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

He spun around on his computer chair, blinking confusedly at you. “Oh, hello.”

“Hi,” You beamed. “Sorry about last night. I was rude. I was feeling kinda weird, y’know, with the travelling.”

“No, I completely get it,” Chan put his hands up as if to diffuse the atmosphere. You nodded, still smiling. Chan stared at you when you didn’t respond instantly, and you crossed your hands behind your back, pressing against the plaid pattern of the dress you’d chosen for today. It was all part of the plan - the tight, short dress was perfect for seduction. He looked down at your chest, before clearing his throat, reverting his gaze to your eyes. “Um… did you need something, by the way?”

You gasped, as if remembering. “Oh, yeah! I did. My mother told me you were a music producer, and I was really curious. I was wondering if you’d show me some stuff…?”

It was Chan’s turn to smile, nodding excitedly. “Of course. Here, put these on.”

He linked two fingers around his headphones and handed them to you, to which you obediently put them over your ears. He was quieter now, but you could still slightly hear him mumbling as he found a spare chair for you to sit on. Your eyes scanned the files, eventually fixating on a file titled Drive. That one had to be dirty.

“Okay, so. I have this one, it’s my most recent one, and-”

“I want to listen to that one,” You cut him off, pointing at the song. When you turned to look at him, he was biting his lip nervously, pink tinting the ends of his ears and his cheeks. “What is it, Chan?”

“You- that one is a little, uh… heh. A little inappropriate.”

Unsurprisingly, you darted over his desk to grab the computer mouse and double click on the file. Chan squealed, but you ignored him, listening to the song. You were right. It was dirty, the two singers crooning about something that was a thinly-veiled innuendo about driving. It took you a second and then you clicked. One of them was Chan. This was Chan singing, on a song about sex. God, could he get any hotter?

You slid one of the ear cups off of your ear, turning to Chan with a shit eating grin. “This is you singing? You’re really good, Chan.” You weren’t lying. He was really good, and it had you wondering why he was a producer and not singing.

“Yeah, well, it was just an experimental track. Me and my mate were just messing around,” Chan mumbled shyly, hand scratching the back of his neck. You tried to avoid staring at the way his biceps tensed in his tight t-shirt at the movement. He was still blushing, but you had to kick it up a notch.

“It is kinda inappropriate, though, isn’t it?” You chirped excitedly. Chan’s lips parted, as if he was looking for something to say. His eyes stared into your own, piercing and dark and all-consuming. “I think you’re a little dirty, Channie.”

Chan’s eyebrows furrowed at your use of the nickname. “That’s- you can’t say that. That’s inappropriate.”

“What?” You feigned shock-horror. Play dumb. “I can’t call you Channie? Why not?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Chan groaned, pointing an accusing finger at you. You giggled anyway, jumping up and slipping the headphones back onto his head. You made sure to trail your fingertips down his neck after doing so. He shivered noticeably. You smiled.

“That was super good, Channie, thank you.”

You didn’t miss his groan of disbelief as you bounded out of the room. You had him, and it was easier than you’d expected it to be.

SUNDAY

Something was happening. You weren’t sure what, just yet, but something was happening. Chan was acting a little weird after what happened the day before, and you’d already caught Felix and Changbin up on the nonsense plan you had.

“I think you need to accept that this is just down to you having a fat crush on him and severe daddy issues,” Changbin mused, and you gasped. He was right though. This wasn’t completely about getting back at your mother in a sick, twisted way. You wanted him.

Phase two of your plan was underway as soon as you caught sight of him on the sofa. He was watching some cheesy Christmas movie, your mother tinkering away in the kitchen - when had she ever cooked? - so it was prime seducing time. He had one of the thick throw blankets over his lap, fingers playing with the fluffy fabric absentmindedly. You hopped into the living room in your short pyjamas, frowning at Chan when you felt the goosebumps on your legs.

“Whatcha watching?” You asked, making him jump when he realised your presence. He smiled nonetheless, motioning to the seat next to him, and you took it. You perched and ensured that you left no room between you both.

“Some cheesy film. The woman’s marrying a prince, I think.”

“Sounds awful. I can’t wait to watch it,” You smiled, and Chan chuckled, relaxing on the sofa. You managed to make it five whole minutes before you were rubbing your hands up your legs, trying to create a semblance of warmth.

Chan turned to you, frowning. “Are you cold, sweetheart?”

“Yeah,” You whined, pulling your legs up into your chest. “‘S cold in here, right?”

“C’mere,” He mumbled, reaching for the end of the blanket and throwing it over your lap. You hummed contentedly, inching a little closer under the guise of the cold weather. The blanket was warm. You were kind of jealous he’d been in such comfort this whole time while you’d been thinking of ways to get his cock inside your mouth.

“Thanks, Channie,” Chan only nodded, continuing to watch the film. You had a feeling he was pretending to be so focused on it, given you weren’t sure he even knew the plot before your arrival.

You squirmed on your seat, thrashing each way until you found yourself comfortable, hand splayed over Chan’s knee. He tensed under your touch.

“You’re touching me, sweetheart,” He warned, his voice low and deep. You shivered, turning to him.

“Am I?”

“You are. You’re touching my leg underneath the blanket, aren’t you?”

You hummed. “Is that okay, Chan?”

Chan turned to you, his eyes not even holding any sign of shock. He knew what game you were playing, you realised, and maybe he was playing along. He licked his lips, head back against the sofa, and then he shrugged dismissively.

“It doesn’t bother me.”

You left your hand there for the whole film.

MONDAY

The showers at home were something you’d missed. The ones in college didn’t quite cut it - not even now that you lived with Changbin and Felix in your own student home. All three of you were young adults, after all, and that came with you being a little too messy.

At home, you didn’t have to worry about mess. Your mother had cleaners employed with your dad’s money anyway. Admittedly, you realised you were being a little spoiled, so you’d learned to clean up after yourself. The showers were still better, though. Bigger, and the water pressure hit you just right.

Especially when you detached the shower head and pressed it to your clit. You felt pathetic. You’d only tried to seduce Chan for two fucking days, and there you were, legs shaking at the thought of him. Maybe it was the chase that got you feeling hot, or maybe it was the fact that you might actually be getting somewhere - you might actually be getting close to fucking him, muscles bulging as he ploughed into you.

It had you pressing the shower head harder, your spare hand coming up to pinch your nipple. You whined, bucking your hips into the water stream. The steam was all over the bathroom by now, staining the shower with condensation and making your skin feel pruned and flushed. Or did you feel flushed from the thoughts of Chan? Maybe he’d fuck you the way you liked. He must have experience, you assumed, being a few years older than you. You thought about how he’d make you feel, how he’d touch you, and how you’d feel in his arms. You thought about how you’d feel when you came, and what it would be like to be with him. You wanted to feel him so badly.

Was he as big down there as he was everywhere else? Sure, he’s not too tall, but he’s every part a man. That much was clear. Would he bend you in half, pushing you into a mating press and fuck you raw the way you liked, cumming inside and letting you call him daddy and-

You wailed, legs trembling with one last buckle before you were cumming. You felt wet, too wet even just from the shower, and you belatedly realised you’d have to wash again. Ugh. This plan needed to end, like… yesterday.

Coming out of the shower freshly washed, you wrapped a towel around your figure and checked the time on your phone. Your thumb slipped around the screen from the condensation in the bathroom, but the plan was going well. If you left the bathroom now, then hopefully Chan would be heading to bed, and he’d catch you in your towel. Ideally, he’d be so hot for you that he’d just have to have you, and then you could get the thoughts of him out of your head.

You burst out of the room in a flurry of steam and movement, almost tripping over your own feet when you noticed that it had actually fucking worked. Chan stood stock still at the other end of the hallway, his eyes fixated on the way the towel wrapped tightly around your chest, at risk of falling. You smiled, waving innocently, and he stalked towards you. He was seeing red. You could tell from the way he cornered you, crowding around you with the small advantage he had on your height.

“You need to stop this,” He mumbled, eyes looking at your mother’s bedroom door. He was playing a dangerous game. You were, too, and you both knew it. “I’m dating your mother. You need to stop this, sweetheart.”

“Stop what?” You tilted your head, acting confused. “I just had a shower.”

Chan scoffed, shaking his head. “I fucking heard you in there.”

Oh. You couldn’t hide your smirk that time. “Yeah, I missed that shower head. Why were you perving on me, Chan?”

Chan rubbed his temples. He wasn’t wearing a beanie today, only a hoodie and baggy joggers. You liked it. You could see his hair like this, dark and curly and frizzy on his head. He looked cute. Wait, what?

He took a deep breath. His eyes moved to fixate on you, tongue running over his teeth. “Why would I be perving on you?”

“Oh, don’t lie,” You crossed your arms over your chest. Chan’s eyes moved down to stare at where your tits bulged over the towel. “I bet you stood there for ages, cock hard in your cute joggers, listening to me moan in the shower. That’s a little fucked up, no? Thinking about your girlfriend’s daughter like that-”

You were cut off by him pushing you to the wall, lips slamming into yours. He bit into your mouth instantly, letting out a deep groan and hands moving to grab your ass through the towel. You let your lips part in a whimper, pushing your tongue into his mouth and running your hands through his hair. It was a filthy exchange of tongue and teeth, and by the end of it, you were gasping, grabbing him by the waist and trying to pull him closer. You pulled away, breathing heavily and your eyes still locked on each other. You both stood there, not speaking, as you both processed what you had just done. You both knew it was wrong, but you wanted it so bad.

Chan stepped back, breathing out a heavy sigh. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

You watched in shock as he turned around, walking into your mother’s bedroom and leaving you there. You were wet again. This was getting ridiculous now.

In your room, Felix screamed so loud you had to turn the volume down on your phone. Changbin choked on air again.

TUESDAY

You hadn’t seen Chan all day. You presumed he was in his studio, working away on another track while your mother was in work. You were bored. Felix had been spending time with his family, and Changbin was out doing rich kid things that you could sympathise with. Thrashing around on your bed, annoyed and huffing, you decided you were just going to go and annoy Chan. It was your newly favourite pastime to get under his skin.

Stalking down the stairs to his studio, you paused when you heard a voice. Not just one voice, two voices. Was your mother there? No, no way. She never goes into that room, it’s his work room. You’d been in there though. You tried to suppress a grin at that realisation.

The other voice was a man’s. Chan had a call on speakerphone, judging by the tinny effect covering the unknown male’s voice and Chan humming every so often. Who was the other man? A colleague, or just a friend?

“It’s fucking ridiculous, mate,” Chan groaned. You could barely hear him, and you held your breath, coming closer to the closed door. “I want her so bad, and it’s so wrong. I- I kissed her last night, Minho.”

There were a few yells from the other end of the phone. “You kissed her?! Chan, you fucking animal. You want her so bad, just fuck her. She’s clearly hoping that’s the outcome here.”

You grinned. You were.

“She’s- it’s outrageous. She walks around in practically nothing, and she’s got such a tight fucking body, man. She makes my dick so fucking hard, I’ve never felt anything like it before. Even when I met her, in the kitchen, she was-”

Chan cut himself off with a sigh. ‘Minho’ hummed, waiting for him to continue.

“She’s so bratty. She’s exactly the type of girl I would’ve gone for, before I met her mother.”

“Seriously?” Minho questioned, and Chan agreed. “You have to do it.”

“Minho-”

“No, Chan. I’m serious,” Minho’s voice was firm. “If she’s fucking you up this bad, you can’t have liked her mother that much, yeah? Just do it. You know it’s going to happen anyway.”

“It’s-” Chan began. You could imagine him rubbing his temples in distress behind the door. “She’s younger than me. I don’t want her to feel as though I’m taking advantage, y’know? The ball’s in her court.”

The ball has always been in your court.

“It sounds like she wants you to take advantage, to be honest,” Minho erupted in a fit of giggles, and you found yourself almost laughing along. Minho was annoyingly right. You only hoped he could get rid of that stick up Chan’s ass and get you a good dicking down.

It meant it was time for the next phase of your plan. You assumed Chan had wanted you, embarrassingly so, but you weren’t quite sure until he’d kissed you the day before. After hearing this conversation? Well, you had to do it.

You returned to your room, scribbling a quick note on a piece of paper. If Chan found this, which he would, it meant that he’d come to your room tomorrow night and you could maybe talk about what the fuck was going on. The sexual tension was too much for you, and now you knew he felt the same. Why were you beating around the bush? You had to make something out of this.

You ignored the stuttering of breath you heard when you slid the note under his door, and returned back to your room with a cocky grin.

WEDNESDAY

Chan hadn’t mentioned the note. You didn’t think he would, but you felt disappointed nonetheless. You’d woken up in the morning, eaten breakfast with him and your mother - cringing when he kissed her on the cheek when she left for work - and you’d even done the dishes yourself, letting him slip off to do some work in the studio. It was prime time for him to mention what you’d written, and he hadn’t. It was pissing you off.

Still, good things come to those who wait. You were confident. Felix had been egging you on all day over text, Changbin had been sending random upset emojis. It was perfect.

Settling on your sheets at night, you felt a little pathetic. You’d lit a few candles, left the curtains just right on the window so that the moonlight billowed in, and Chan hadn’t arrived. Maybe he hadn’t received your note. No, there was no way - you practically heard his response through the door when he saw it slid under. He got the note. Perhaps you’d made him uncomfortable, made him withdraw from you despite all the progress you’d made. Why had you put in so much effort? You didn’t like him, not like that. Or did you? You felt ridiculous, almost like a child waiting for-

A knock on the door brought you out of your self-loathing thoughts, and you jumped up, swinging the bedroom door open. Chan immediately crowded inside of your bedroom, pressing the door shut softly. You stood there in silence, taking him in. He looked cosy, in a baggy hoodie and plaid pyjama bottoms. It was hard to believe he was dating your mother, especially when he looked so vulnerable like this - dark, curly hair still slightly wet from his shower, and his eyes blown wide with an unreadable emotion while he looked at you.

Chan sighed. “You’re really playing with fire. Do you know how this could look, me coming into your room at night? Do you know how wrong this is?”

You faltered. For the first time since meeting Chan, you felt as though he was angry at you. “I- I heard you on the phone, Channie. I thought you wanted me too.”

You watched in awe as Chan crossed your bedroom, groaning and throwing himself onto the bed. He was hard, erect in his bottoms. You blinked confusedly. He was hard just from being in here?

“I do want you,” Chan said, but it was muffled, hidden behind his hands that he had placed over his face in distress. He let them fall to his sides, staring up at the ceiling. “I want you so bad that it’s pissing me off beyond belief. I know what you’ve been doing too, trying to seduce me. It’s so pathetic it makes me feel hot, y’know?”

You giggled, following his journey across the room and settling next to him on the bed. You sat cross legged, comfortable in your long pyjamas. The candlelight flickered, casting a glow over his face, and he turned to look at you. He licked his lips, and then he let out a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.

“This is ridiculous-”

“It’s ridiculous that you haven’t fucked me yet,” You responded, quick as a flash. Chan leaned up on his forearms, raising an eyebrow at you. Now was the time. You had to say it. “You know how bad I want you. I touched you up on the sofa, and you let me. You wanted me to, I think. Correct me if I’m wrong, and I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, but-”

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable, and you’re not wrong,” Chan admitted. You could see the blush on his cheeks despite the dimly lit room. He took a deep breath before continuing. “I want you, too.”

Chan shot across the bed, leaning in and kissing you deeply, his hands tangling in your hair. It made you wet beyond belief that he just felt like he knew what he was doing, hands travelling down to your waist to softly press you into the sheets. His tongue swept into your mouth, pressing against yours and you whimpered, making him groan into the kiss. When his hands went up to your hair, he intertwined his fingers in the strands and pulled, making you gasp and let out a heady, hot breath. He pulled away, lips parted when he stared at you.

“You are such a horny little thing, it’s so hot,” He mumbled, lips pressing to your neck. He bit your skin sharply, making you keen and spread your legs, allowing him to position his hips between your thighs. The movement pressed his bulge into your core, and you tried not to shift and move your hips in a rhythm of pleasure. His fingers traced over your skin, and he chuckled, a low, sexy sound that made your heart race. He pulled back, leaning back on his legs and staring at you, eyes blown wide with lust. “I want to see you touch yourself.”

You paused. “What?”

“I want to know what you like. Show me how you make yourself cum, and I’ll fuck you tomorrow night. How’s that sound?” He was propositioning you, teasing you, and you were falling for it - hook, line and sinker.

You gave him a nod. Right. Touching yourself for him - that was something you could do. This was just another Wednesday for you, you loved putting on a show, especially for a man who was rock hard and obviously desperate for you. But with Chan… why did you feel so fucking nervous all of a sudden? You'd spent your whole day waiting to fuck him, and he’d taken back the power, thrown a wrench into your plans.

You leaned back on your bed. How did you sit sexily? You were stuck in your own head.

Chan moved backwards, hand moving over his clothed erection. He’d spread his legs, thick thighs parted for you to see the promising bulge between them. "Pretend I'm not even here, sweetheart," he said, eyes blown wide with lust. You almost rolled your eyes. Easier said than done, when he was sitting there with his dark curls and his thick, kissable lips and his impossibly huge bulge. “Touch yourself like you’ve done before. Show me how you make yourself cum, and I’ll fuck you tomorrow, I promise.”

Fuck it. You'd never let an attractive man break you down yet, and that wasn't going to change. You nodded timidly, hands moving to grip your breasts through your shirt. It made you sigh, and Chan responded with a noise of his own when you impatiently rucked the fabric up to above your chest. Sucking two fingers into your mouth, you whined when you traced the wet digits around your pebbled peak teasingly.

“Ah, ‘s- I’m sensitive there, Channie,” You mumbled, and he nodded as if he was making a note for it for later. You trailed your fingertips across your nipples, pinching and twisting them almost painfully just to make your hips cant up into thin air. You were too impatient to do this how you normally would, so you scratched your fingernails down your tummy and shoved a hand in your pyjama bottoms. You were met with slick, wet folds, fingers sliding around in the mess you made.

“Show me,” Chan said, eyes trained on where your hand disappeared beneath the fabric. “Show me that pussy. You’re meant to be showing me everything, remember?”

“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” You huffed, and Chan shook his head in disbelief, grinning. You were shocked to see he actually listened, though, pushing his joggers down to his thighs and letting his erection spring out. It was impossibly hard, pearlescent drops accumulating on his cockhead and you licked your lips subconsciously. “I wanna-”

“No,” Chan cut you off, hand moving to wrap around his cock in a tight fist. He was long, thick and heavy between his thighs and you felt your pussy clench sadly around nothing. “Show me your pussy. I’m not asking again, let me take a look at it.”

You whined, pushing your pyjama bottoms down to reveal your slick core. Your clit was swollen, throbbing with need just from a few kisses and Chan’s general presence, and you could feel a rivulet of wetness sliding down between your lips. Chan groaned in approval, hand quickening on his cock just slightly.

“Spread it, show me your hole,” Chan said, and you moved your thighs further apart for him. Reaching down with two fingers, you moved them into a v-shape and spread your folds for him. Your hole quivered under the inspection, leaking more wetness and Chan’s eyes were hyper fixated on it. “Oh, baby. That looks tight. Has no one ever fucked that little pussy right, huh? Tell me.”

“N-No,” You shook your head, thighs quivering when you finally let two fingers rub over your clit. You started with a blistering pace immediately, making your toes curl into the sheets and your back arch upwards. “No, I- it’s only boys from college, I don’t-”

“Ah, I see. You need someone older, yeah? More experienced?” Chan questioned, his breath coming out heavy with every tightly fisted movement on his cock. You whined, nodding, and then you were breaching your hole with two fingers immediately. The stretch made you groan, head falling back against the pillow. “Is that why you tried to seduce me, yeah? Wanted to have my cock stretching you out just right, wanted to call me daddy while I made you cry?”

God, he’d got it. He was right on the mark. “Yes, y-yes, I- I wanted to, oh, I wanted to call you daddy, and- and feel you inside me, and oh, Channie, please-” You cut yourself off with a moan, perhaps too loud as you curled your fingertips up against your g-spot. Chan threw his head back, letting out a grunt as he pinched his cockhead almost painfully.

“Say it then, baby. What’s stopping you?” He polished the head of his cock, moaning before he took it into his tight grip again. His precum served as lubrication, his hand now making wet slick sounds on his thick length. You gasped when he moved his free hand to his balls, rubbing calloused fingertips over them and letting out his own gasp. “Beg me for my cock. I know you want it, look at you. Fuckin’ desperate, yeah? Beg daddy for his big cock.”

“Oh, daddy,” You whined, moving your free hand to rub over your clit. Everything was so wet, sliding around your pussy and you were honestly surprised you could feel anything - but it felt so fucking good, having him watch you like this, learning what you liked so he could replicate it. “Fuckin’- daddy, daddy, please, can I have it? Been good, doin’ what you asked, I- hnnng, daddy, oh my god-”

“No,” He smiled, a cocky grin while he rubbed one hand over his cock and the other over his heavy balls. “No, baby. Not tonight. Make yourself cum tonight, and daddy will help you tomorrow.”

“I- need more, need more, I-'' Chan surged over the bed, leaning over your figure to press his lips against yours. His tongue dominated your mouth again, and you could feel his closed fist hitting your stomach as he worked himself to his orgasm. The sensation had you whining against his plush lips, fingers thrusting quicker into your pussy and your other hand sliding around your clit messily. When he pulled away, lips digging into your bottom lip teasingly, his lips were quick to move to your neck to suck some dark purple marks into the skin. You felt yourself trembling, your body tense as you felt yourself getting closer to the edge. Your fingers stroked your walls faster, pussy fluttering around your digits in delight, and your mouth opened in a gasp as you felt your body tense and tremble with pleasure. “I’m g’na- g’na cum, gonna cum, please, can I? Can I, daddy? Can I cum for you, please?”

“Yeah, baby,” He huffed, eyes rolling back into his head. He was practically drooling onto your skin, lips parted against your neck as you whined and thrashed on your bedsheets. “Cum for me. Been good for daddy, haven’t you? You can cum, baby, c’mon. Show me how pretty you are when you cum.”

You fell apart around your own fingers, your orgasm crashing through you like a wave. Your thighs tensed with your orgasm, your pussy clenching down impossibly tighter around your hand and flooding down to your knuckles with your cum. You begged and pleaded, your voice a barely audible babble as your body shook with the sensation.

Finally, when you’d just felt like you were coming down, Chan pulled your wrist away from your pussy. The movement left you empty, your walls still clenching down except now it was around nothing, and you whined, bottom lip quivering in need.

“Hands off,” He sighed, hand slowing down on his cock. He was trying to last longer for something - you weren’t sure what, but you let your other hand drop from your clit obediently. “Daddy’s gonna cum on this wet little hole, baby, okay? You gonna let me cum here, mark you as mine?”

“Yes,” You moaned, nodding. You couldn’t think of anything better, actually. “‘M yours, I’m yours, daddy, gimme.”

“Dirty thing, perfect little girl,” He grunted, and then he was positioning his cockhead at your hole. With a few more movements, increasing in speed, you watched as his face screwed up in pleasure. His hips bucked, and with a final thrust, he came. You felt his cum drip down your hole as he groaned through his orgasm, thick white cum plastering your pussy. It was definitely the sexiest thing you’d experienced, but you still felt a little disappointed - why couldn’t he have just done it inside you?

“Wan’it,” You whined, pulling your legs back. Chan chuckled upon seeing the pout on your lips. “Why couldn’t you- in me, wanted it in me, daddy.”

“Greedy bitch,” He mused, and then he was delving down to your core. Your mind went blank when his tongue licked fat stripes up your folds, collecting all of his cum and your wetness in his mouth. You briefly thought you could cum from this, very quickly judging by the way he knew what he was doing, but he simply leaned over you and grabbed your jaw.

Oh. You let your lips part, tongue lolling out of your mouth obediently, and he spat the mixture of your cum into your mouth. You felt him lick into your mouth again, groaning at the taste of your pussy and his load. He smiled against your lips and pulled away, your eyes wide as you tried to process what had just happened.

Chan’s lips curved in satisfaction at your state, your chest still heaving with a blotchy rash that bore the truth of what you’d been up to. He ran his thumb over your bottom lip, and then he was standing up and leaving the room, bottoms barely pulled over his hips. You laid there, feeling an intense mix of pleasure and confusion.

What the fuck just happened?

THURSDAY

You hadn’t even processed what had happened last night. In all honesty, you’d run out of the house in the morning under the premise of a coffee date with friends you didn’t even have. You just sat in the cafe on call with Changbin and Felix and screamed way too loudly for a public area. The whole cafe knew of your predicament by the end of it.

Upon your return home, you’d beelined to your room and kicked the door shut as quietly as you could. Unfortunately, your foot slipped on the floor and you’d ended up face down with a groan.

Turning over onto your back, you huffed at the offending item that had caused your decline to the ground. A piece of paper met your eyes, neatly folded and written on with what looked like black Sharpie when you’d finally unravelled it.

Three words. Three words that changed your life and let you know that what occurred the night before had really happened. No, not ‘I love you’ - it was simple, a scrawled ‘your room, tonight’. It did happen. You touched yourself in front of Chan, and he was planning on coming back to your room to continue what you’d discussed.

You wanted to squeal and kick your feet, but beneath it all, you felt panicked. This plan had gone too far, and you’d perhaps started to think about spending time with your mother’s boyfriend - actual time, not just sexually charged meetings. It hurt a little bit, a pang in your chest when you remembered that what was happening really was just sexual. Your little arrangement being anything else just wasn’t fathomable.

Chan was interesting. He was a fucking music producer, for god’s sake. That was just straight up cool. That, and he was older than you - you did have raging daddy issues like your friends had said, after all. His friend had sounded funny on the phone, which meant he had to be funny, too.

All things serious, you didn’t really know much about him, but you wanted to know. Felix had encouraged you to find out, and you felt like you owed it to him - or yourself, you weren’t sure.

The knock on your door once the evening fell brought you out of your reverie. Chan didn’t wait for a response, swinging your bedroom door open and walking straight in as if he owned the house. You huffed at his demeanour, yet your eyes were still fixated on the way he walked over to your bed with intent. You threw your phone to the side. Felix would have to wait for your half-typed text message.

“Back again so soon?” You quipped, and he raised an eyebrow. He was only in grey joggers, the thin material highlighting his thick dick imprint between his legs. The fabric hung low, showing off the body that you knew he worked so hard for. His chest was honey toned, yet covered in light, sparse freckles - you wanted to make yourself acquainted with every single one. You felt a little overdressed in just an oversized t-shirt and shorts.

Seeing the frustrated expression on your face, Chan’s own face fell. “Do you not want me here?” He said, voice no more than a whisper. “I can go, if you don’t want to see me tonight. I just thought-”

“I do,” You nodded, finally raising yourself from your position lying down to sitting up cross legged. Chan laid on the bed in front of you, one arm propping his head up. He gazed at you for a few moments, and you could see the relief in his eyes at your words. “I do want to see you tonight. I want to see you like… a lot. Don’t you think it’s weird though? I’m your girlfriend’s daughter, Chan, and we’ve kissed and- and done other stuff, and-”

He scooted over so that he was next to you, and you leaned into him subconsciously. He pulled you in with his arm around your shoulders, broad and muscled. You felt content, comfortable and most of all safe. It was a feeling you’d never felt before.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Chan hummed, his chest vibrating beneath where you’d landed when he pulled you in. He chuckled, then, his hand moving to your hair comfortingly. “Okay, maybe it is a little weird. I’m just very interested in you. I know you heard me on the phone to Minho, and yes, you are my type - I want to know more about you. Like, even beneath the sexually charged tension, heh.”

Oh. You licked your lips, eyes fixated on a random spot in your wall. “You do?”

He nodded. “I do.”

You couldn’t help yourself. You raised your head, surging over Chan’s body to press a kiss to his lips. His hair was soft when you ran your hands through it, despite random curls getting caught in your nails and causing him to groan at the pain flooding through his scalp. His hands went to your waist, licking into your mouth while he effortlessly pulled you on top of him. The show of strength had you whimpering into the kiss, hands moving down to his jaw. It clenched and unclenched while he had full control over your mouth despite you being on top.

You pulled away with a wet sigh, moving downwards to kiss at his neck. He groaned underneath his breath at the sensation of your lips on his skin. Your bed squeaked awkwardly as you moved down it, too quick for the old springs to handle. It felt naughty, kissing him like this in your childhood room - it felt even dirtier than the night before had, and you hadn’t done anything yet.

“I need you, Chan,” You whispered, nipping at his collarbone. “Need you. Please.”

He gasped as he felt your tongue trace the outline of his collarbone. He flung one bicep over his dark eyes with a deep sigh, allowing you to kiss and bite all over his skin. He looked like he was trying to control himself. You didn’t want him to.

Your hips started to grind against him, and you placed your palms flat on his chest. Both of Chan’s hands moved back to your hips with a surprised noise, but he didn’t stop you. His dick was hardening in his joggers, and it was providing the best clothed friction to your aching, needy clit below your pyjama shorts. You saw how big it was before, yet the length of it still shocked you when you slid your clothed core up and down the shaft.

“Daddy,” You whined, hips starting to buck frantically. You were sure that you had never felt this needy in your life. “Daddy, daddy, I want you so bad. You turn me on so bad, make me feel so hot, please-”

“Baby,” Chan groaned, his head falling back against your pillows. The soft pink bed sheets juxtaposed completely with what you were doing, and juxtaposed completely with him - Chan, the muscled man with dark hair who wore black and grey clothes constantly. It was as if he was corrupting you, and he was in a sense, being so much older. “Baby, c’mere, come and lay on the bed. Let daddy eat you out, yeah?”

“No,” You shook your head, hips still moving on his erection. Chan’s chest had started to accumulate a thin layer of dewy sweat, slick on his skin and making you want to lick it off. “I want your cock. I don’t wanna wait, I don’t wanna wait, please, just put it in, I’m wet enough, I promise.”

He knew you were babbling, incoherent in your haze of lust, but he still entertained you enough anyway. You spread your legs wider when his hand met your thigh, and then he was pushing two fingers beneath your shorts. He was met with your slick folds, and you gasped at feeling the touch of his fingertips, calloused from years of working with music.

“Oh, fucking hell. Dirty girl, dirty fuckin’ girl,” Chan moaned, his eyes almost rolling back into his head. “This pussy’s so fuckin’ wet, baby. All we did was kiss. Are you that much of a slut for me? Are you that much of a slut for your mother’s boyfriend? That’s filthy.”

“Yes!” You wailed, nodding. You reached down, canting your hips backwards a little bit so you could spread your thighs wider before hooking your fingers in your shorts and pulling them to the side. The movement revealed your pussy, clit swollen at the top of soaking wet folds, covering your drippy hole. “I wan’it so bad, so bad, so bad, please, please. Just push it in, make it hurt, I don’t care-”

Chan shoved the fingers of his spare hand between your parted lips, effectively shutting you up. “Shut up. You’ve got to prove to me you deserve it, baby.”

With those words, he was pushing a finger past your entrance. It breached your hole easily, the digit sliding through your wetness and curving up past your g-spot. Chan shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and shock, and then he was pulling his finger out. With a quick movement, he’d yanked his joggers down and let his cock spring out. The coarse hair was trimmed above his long, thick shaft and you couldn’t help but imagine the type of friction that would give your clit - you couldn’t wait.

“You were right. That slutty pussy is wet enough,” He mused, pulling your hips over his bare cock. Your pyjama shorts were slightly in the way, and you pulled them aside even more, letting your folds leave wetness over his shaft. “Lower yourself on it. Stretch yourself out. Slowly.”

You did as he asked, lowering your body onto his length. You felt the stretch immediately. You moaned, loud and ringing off of your walls. You didn’t give a shit if your mother heard. Fuck, you needed this. You wanted to bounce all over his cock until there was nothing left and your hole could do nothing but remember the tight fit. Trying to sit down quicker, Chan grabbed your hips, stopping you while only half his length was in you.

“You're gonna hurt yourself like that, sweetheart. That hole is so tight around me.”

“Please, daddy,” Your head fell into the nape of his neck. You wriggled yourself in his tight hold, trying to get more of his length in your pussy. He shook his head against you, chuckling.

“You want it? Fine, but don't fucking cry to me when it hurts,” Chan said, letting go of your ass. You realised he'd been holding you up, and within a millisecond you'd slammed down onto him. You wanted to scream, the stretch more than you could take. He laughed again, raising his eyebrows at you mockingly. “Too big?”

"N-No, perfect," You retorted. He moaned, spreading his legs and placing his feet flat on the mattress. More. More. Fucking more. You began to raise on him, expecting to ride that perfect cock, but he started to thrust up into you at an unrelenting place straight away, his balls slapping against your ass. You moaned incoherently, almost babbling, hands digging into his toned biceps. He leaned up to nip at your neck, and then he was pulling your t-shirt off of your body.

“No fucking bra?” Chan laughed in disbelief. His mouth went straight to your nipples, biting and sucking on the hard peaks. You jostled on his lap with his thrusts. You wanted to rub your clit, but you felt like he probably wouldn't let you. “Knew you were fucking filthy, sweetheart. You didn't even care about me going raw, did you? You want my load in that dirty hole. And now I find out these pretty tits were only one layer away from me…”

His voice trailed off. You whined, leaning down to try and kiss him again. He shoved his two fingers back in your mouth, making you suck on them. His bruising sucks caused your nipples to hurt, and you fucking loved it. You knew he was marking you up and you'd just have to deal with it.

You tried to start riding him. He didn't let you, manhandling you off of his cock.

“Daddy!” You whined in protest. Chan chuckled. He lifted you and manhandled you so your back was facing him on your bed, and you immediately repositioned yourself so you were face down, ass up. He reentered you in one swift thrust, causing you to jolt in surprise.

“Fucking tight pussy,” He groaned, thrusting into you with the same vigor as before. You almost screamed, but managed to just moan incoherently. The mattress creaked, the sound of old springs ringing around the room. “Fucking dirty hole. Listen to that, sweetheart. Can you hear how wet your cunt is for daddy's cock? For your mother’s boyfriend’s cock?”

You tried to stop whining and moaning to hear what he was pointing out to you, hearing wet slaps. Your cheeks burned with humiliation, fingernails digging into the mattress. You knew you were dripping for a fact now. You could hear it, you could hear everything, his balls slapping against your clit as well as the wet noise of his heavy cock reentering you.

You threw your ass back against him, trying to get the tip to hit that special spot inside of you.

“I think that asshole needs me too, sweetheart,” Chan laughed mirthlessly, his hands resting firmly on your ass, encouraging your bouncing. You moaned in response, clenching your pussy tight. He was going to ruin you for everyone. You'd have to just keep coming back for more. “You want daddy's finger in there? You want me to finger your asshole?”

Oh, yes. “Please, daddy, need to be full,” You said, wiggling your hips against him. You vaguely registered him reaching around you and making you suck on the fingers that had previously been in your mouth. He was going to fill both of your holes, and he moaned loudly at the sight of you sucking his fingers. There was no way that the whole house hadn’t heard you both by now. You hoped they were sleeping.

You sighed in ecstasy, feeling the fingers begin to move inside your ass. His thrusting was now hitting your g-spot in your pussy, given the added pressure from being full in both holes. You felt the orgasm finally begin to build. You liked the way he wasn't rushing you to cum, not like those younger college boys. He was taking care of you and just having good fucking sex. “Feels so fucking good, daddy. Feels so good.”

You were now semi-incoherent, your words all joining together in one long moan. Chan loved it, judging by his moans. His cock was pulsing inside you. You wondered if he was close. You wanted him to fill you up to the point where it was dripping out of you.

He pulled out of you again, grabbing your leg with one strong hand and flipping you onto your back. You were out of breath from the exertion, despite him doing all the work, and he looked fully composed save for the thin sheen of sweat on his body.

“Feels good, baby?” He asked, looming above you. You squirmed feeling your sweaty back rubbing against the blanket uncomfortably, but you nodded anyway. You wanted to please him. He looked down at your writhing body, letting out another groan. “So fucking sexy. You don’t know how much you fucking killed me, teasing me like that. Touch that pussy for me again, show me.”

He started pumping his shaft quickly, still staring down at you. You reached down with one hand and immediately pressed two fingers against your entrance, collecting the slick gathering outside before diving straight in. You curled your fingers against that spot inside of you, whining out. It wasn't enough. Not after having that fat cock in you. He definitely had ruined you for everyone else, including yourself. Nothing was ever going to feel the same again.

“Mmm. Looks so wet, sweetheart. Daddy wants a taste, is that okay?” Chan questioned, moving back onto his knees. You pulled your fingers out and tried not to cry at the loss.

“Please, daddy. Wanna cum in your mouth,” You slurred out, pushing his head towards you. He moaned into your pussy, taking his fat tongue and licking one wet stripe up your slit. He pulled your pussy back, exposing that throbbing clit to him, and placed one lick directly onto your button. "Fuck, daddy, feels so good! Suck it, please, suck it. I - please - need to cum so bad!"

“Need to cum, huh, sweetheart? I'll make your little pussy throb for me and then I'm putting my cock right back in that tight hole, where it belongs,” He spoke. He thrust two fingers into your slit, much thicker and longer than yours. You spread your legs, holding them up against your chest. You literally almost purred when he started moving his fingers, curling them up into that spot and sucking on your clit whilst he did so. It wasn't going to take long. The man was clearly amazing at every part of sex.

You focused on the feeling of his wet tongue rubbing up against your clit and writhed, feeling closer and closer to the edge. He knew what he was fucking doing. Your thighs started to shake, taking everything in you not to just let them go from your hold and clutch around Chan’s head. You wanted him to permanently live between your thighs. Your eyes clenched shut, a deep sigh leaving you.

“Fuck, I'm g’na cum,” You mumbled out, chest heaving and flushed a shade of crimson. Chan pulled away, causing you to whine. You pouted, reaching up to grab his shoulders. "No, no! You said I could. You said you would help me.”

“What I said was that I'd make it throb for you and then I'm sliding back right in here, sweetheart. Be good for daddy, you'll get to cum,” He positioned his length at your core again, sliding right back into home. You both moaned, and he was fucking you in a mating press this time, almost as if you were a couple in love. You wished you were, and realised this was definitely your favourite position so far. The man fucked like an animal and now he was fucking you like he was going to breed you, and you loved it. He reached down with one hand to rub your clit rapidly, trying to bring you to the edge. “This is my fucking pussy. My favourite fucking pussy, my only girl, the only pussy for me, okay?”

“Fuck!” You cried of overstimulation, hands still wrapped around your legs. “G’na... getting close again, gonna-”

“Cum then, sweetheart, flood my cock. Make a mess for me, come on, do it," Chris encouraged, breathing heavily next to your ear. His eyes were focused on where he was entering you over and over again, taking note of the white ring of slick that had formed around the base of his cock, soaking the hair that rested there. You scrunched your eyes shut, feeling overwhelmed with bliss. “That's it. That's my good girl.”

White hot ecstasy overtook your body. You wanted to squirm, but with the pressure of the muscular man on top of your body, you had nowhere to go. You focused on the feeling of his slick chest rubbing against your sensitive nipples, whining and moaning as the orgasm coursed through your body and made it feel like you were being electrocuted.

“Fucking clenching on my cock, shit,” Chan groaned, his hand falling away from your clit once your breathing had began to calm slightly. His hands went down to grab your hips, and before you knew it, he was lifting your hips up and fucking you senseless, treating you like a toy. “W-Wanted to be soft with you for our first time, sweetheart. I'm not normally like this, not at all, but this fucking pussy is driving me insane, fuck... I need to fill you up. Will you let daddy fill that pussy with my cum, sweetheart? Let me breed you, make you mine?”

You nodded quickly, unable to speak at this point. Your hole felt raw, sensitive and fucked open, but you needed his cum in you. You thought you might die if you didn't get it soon. His tip jabbed into your g spot incessantly, almost causing you to cum again, but you subconsciously knew you couldn't take another orgasm at the same level as the previous one. You might die.

“Fucking- g’na breed you, sweetheart. Gonna make you mine. G-Gonna give you a baby, g’na fill you up, fuck!”

With an animalistic growl, Chan’s head dropped to your neck, biting into the skin there and definitely leaving a mark. You felt his hips still and cum flooded out of the tip of his length, flooding your hole with a new sense of wetness. You sighed with content and laid there until Chan’s breathing calmed, his body weight fully on top of you and yet not uncomfortable.

“I have to be honest about something,” Chan sighed. You looked up at him from your position on his chest, and he looked down at you with an apprehensive look. He looked a lot shyer than he did moments before, when he was fucking you senseless and calling you a slut - he was blushing now, embarrassed. You were sure that’s what you liked about him. “You’re- it’s like you were made for me. I don’t know what the fuck to do, heh. I’m falling for you, I think.”

You blinked, leaning up to rest inches away from his face. Got him. You’d got him. “Well, that’s okay, Chan. You’re closer to my age anyway, right?”

6K notes · View notes

hanjisick · 2 months

Text

Orders.

genre. mafia au. bodyguard!lee know x fem!reader

desc. your father is an elite, high ranking official in a mafia family. after your first kidnapping, a bodyguard was hired to ensure your safety.

warnings. nsfw. fingering & sex. torture. kidnapping. murder. violence.

wc. 10k

✉️ : this is my first writing after a 9 month hiatus. i apologize for the unannounced break and i will be answering and writing again shortly. enjoy! :)

You sit in a wooden chair, wheezing and thrashing from days of sleep deprivation and torment. Your body aches, wrists bruised and bloody from the ropes, and you almost feel like giving in and spilling Daddy’s secrets— allowing them to kill you and the family.

But you knew better than that. You knew that you'd be saved.

The gunshots and cries for help weren't unexpected from above the dark bunker.

With an ear-piercing creak, the door swings open and the shadow of a man emerges through the doorstep, shoes squeaking with fresh blood underneath.

He doesn’t let out a single word as he kneels to grab your face and examine it. Your attention follows the ring on his finger. An insignia that he is part of the family. You can depend on him.

But still, you wince, sharply inhaling as his fingers aggravate your wounds.

“Don’t get their blood in my wounds, I don’t know what kind of freaks they are,” You grumble, voice husky from days of screaming.

You let him turn your head, retaining eye contact with the floor as you grit your teeth.

“Relax,” he mumbles, “I don’t bite.”

He leans closer to examine your wounds. “You took a lot of hits. How many people are here?”

He draws back as you reply, “Can’t tell you exactly.”

“About four of them grabbed me while I was leaving the house— stupid on their part, no wonder you were here so shortly,” You trail off before catching yourself back on topic.

“But I’ve only seen three different men since I’ve been here. Only to beat me and interrogate me. Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything to put Daddy at risk.”

“I heard two other unrecognizable voices. That would make nine people in the building that I know of. Of course, there could always be more. How many did you shoot?”

“Six,” he responds before looking down at your scrapes and wounds again.

You feel him caress your cheek once more, his cold skin sending shivers down your spine.

“You’re in bad shape.”

“If there’s more here, we need to get out as soon as possible. We can worry about my wounds as soon as these people aren’t on our ass.”

You struggle in your bounds, the ropes burning your already bloody wrists, “Could you untie me, first?”

“Don’t move.”

You obey his command, halting as he unties the ropes, uncovering the painful burn marks and blisters.

“That fucking hurt,” you rotate your wrists, “I could’ve gotten out without your help eventually, though.” Your voice is rough, breath coming out in harsh, sharp drags.

“Sure, you would’ve.”

You stumble to your feet as he pulls you into him for safety. He reeks of gunpowder and high-dollar cologne— presumably something that Daddy has made sure that he has the money for.

“Stay close to me, when we get to the front, you go out first and then I’ll leave right after.”

You follow the unfamiliar man out of the maze, almost slipping on the floor blanketed in blood.

You adjust to the bright sunlight— and it feels gentle against your damaged skin. It seems like time has stood still while you were captured. “Did Daddy order you a car?”

“Yes,” he answers, “Some men are waiting out front to take us to the closest hospital— which isn’t too far.”

“I’m being hospitalized?” You follow him into the backseat, finally slacking for a moment ontop of the fresh leather.

“It’s not my choice to have you taken to the hospital, it’s the orders.”

“Do I have a statement to tell the nurse?” You look at him in concern.

“Am I supposed to say, ‘Oh, I was kidnapped by Daddy’s enemies! By the way, he’s in the mafia! Who wants to arrest Daddy?’”

“Tell them you fell down the stairs.” His flat tone contrasts your own, remaining unfazed.

“How would that cover up my wrists' burn marks?” You hold up the bloody and bruised dents, “Nobody gets these from falling down the stairs. There's way too much blood— and some of it isn’t even mine.”

He raises an eyebrow, looking over to the burn marks on your wrist and then back to you.

“Then tell them you accidentally burnt yourself while cooking.”

“Are you even listening to me? Are you stupid?”

He doesn’t respond for a moment, not seeming to care about the situation.

“It’s not hard to pay them to be silent.”

“How about I tell them that I was heavily bullied at school and a couple of classmates did this to me? I think that could work.”

You two arrive at the front entrance of the emergency room, he follows behind you, strolling through the automatic door.

“I’m fine, really, I was just beaten by classmates,” You lie through your teeth to the front desk, “My boyfriend took me here to get it checked out.”

He raises an eyebrow.

You comply with the nurses as they check your weight and interview you.

“I don’t have any stab wounds, at least I don’t think so— I don’t remember what they did to me. I was held captive for a few,” Your voice trails off as you wince at a sudden pang.

You glance down at your bleeding side and are unexpectedly whacked with all of the distress that you had been repressing at once.

Your vision starts to fade, face pale as a ghost.

The man rushes over as they carry you to a bed, and he kneels beside you to review your condition. Your body is pale and cold, breathing jagged and rapid.

You hear the whispers of the staff panicking. One nurse checks your pulse, and another elevates your legs.

“I need my blood sugar up,” the first words that come out of your mouth sound weak and painful.

You look over at the man beside you.

You need to lie. But you don’t even know his name.

“Boyfriend,” you determine, “please get me a sugary drink from the vending machine.”

A subtle smirk forms upon his lips, but it vanishes as soon as it appears.

“Fine,” he rises to his feet.

You hiss as the nurses sterilize your wounds, shrieking and thrashing on the mattress at the sting. You try to stay still, but the pain is intolerable.

Footsteps echo and you find the man returning with a chocolate bar, which he holds out to you. He brings it close to your lips and holds the chocolate against your mouth for you to take a bite, “Slowly.”

“I told you to get me a drink,” You disregard his command, biting the chocolate quickly, almost aggressively.

His lips turn up, amused by your action.

The nurses finish stitching up your deep gashes and bandaging your wounds, recommending that you stay the night.

“Pay for the bill with Daddy’s cash and let’s get out of here,” you state coldly, “I need to shower and get all of this blood out of my hair. I don’t want to stay here.”

“As long as you can walk by yourself, we can leave right away.” He replies. The man takes out a wad of bills quickly counts the money and pays for the bill.

You stay speechless until entering the car.

“Who are you?”

“I’m your bodyguard. Your father hired me to look out for you after the kidnapping.”

You nod in acknowledgment. “Will you be staying at the estate with me? Or is it a ‘only when I leave the house’ kind of deal?”

“My primary duty is to protect you from anyone or anything that could harm you, whether that be outside or inside the house. I could go wherever you wish me to follow you, and I will be there.”

“You won’t sleep in bed with me though, right?”

He stays silent for a moment.

“You are correct, I am here to protect, nothing more. I will not sleep next to you. I am merely your bodyguard and take your orders.”

“Good boy,” you grin, “I bet Daddy will pay you very nicely. Why else would you take this job? How much does he give you? Either way, I’m sure you have enough to buy a mansion.”

The bodyguard holds back an eye roll. “I will have more than enough money. Not only that but he also provides me with a home.” He adds with a smirk.

“Good.” You reply.

You fall silent, allowing him to drive, taking in the past few days.

You were never worried about surviving, You understood that Daddy would handle it. But you didn’t expect to be as hurt as you were.

He could’ve saved you sooner.

“When we get home, order the chef to make me something sweet, I deserve a treat,” you state, “I’m going to shower and you are not allowed to enter my bathroom under any circumstance. Even if I’m dying.”

“You would die before letting me enter your bathroom? I get it.” He retorts.

Once you both arrive at the estate, you stumble out of the car. You don’t linger for him.

You’re welcomed by a handful of workers as you enter the home, but ignore them as you make a beeline up the stairs and towards the bedroom.

The door locks behind you and the room is silent. You feel the weariness creep on as your wounds sting. You lean against the door, sliding down.

After a moment of peace, you head towards the shower to comb the dried blood out of your hair.

You scrub your face carefully, avoiding the stitches above your eyebrows.

You wash your body entirely, removing the blood stains with soap, water, and a wash rag. Then you comb out the dried blood.

Once you finish, you dry yourself off and dress in a plain, silk nightdress.

Leaving your bedroom, you turn to look for your guard. He is at the doorway of your room when you walk out. His eyes roam around your body for a brief moment, examining the nightgown.

“Do you require assistance?”

“Did you place an order for something sweet, like I asked?” You peer at his suit, moving in to adjust his tie.

He follows your hand as it moves, eyeing you for a few moments before he utters, “I did, the chef will be bringing it to your room once it’s prepared.”

“Good boy.”

You look up at his face once you are pleased with the positioning. You grimace at his sharp, cold face. The blood was dried, brown, and unpleasing. The man’s hand relaxes on the gun holstered on his hip.

“I order you to come into my bedroom.”

His eyebrows crease. He understands his role as your bodyguard— nonetheless, he doesn’t get a kick out of being ordered around in this tone.

He takes a deep breath. “Your wish is my command.”

The room is massive, a silk-covered canopy bed sits in the center of it. He pays no mind to looking around, concentrating on the job at hand.

“Sit down on my bed,” you demand, steering towards the bathroom and pushing open the double doors.

He obeys your orders without question, crossing his legs, and keeping his hand resting beside his gun.

The bodyguard keeps a close, attentive eye on the doors, supervising the way that you soak a washrag with warm water, squeezing out the excess.

You sit beside him, grabbing his chin and leaning into his face. He tenses.

“Relax, I don’t bite,” you smirk, reiterating his first words from the moment he met you back to him, massaging the dried blood off of his face, “No guard of mine will have a messy appearance.”

You can tell that he feels uneasy, but he can’t reject you. If you wish for him to relax, he will make an effort to relax.

You can’t help but notice his complexion when he isn’t scowling. The apathy melts away as you wipe the dried blood, giving you a new perspective on his appearance.

“You’re handsome,” you state bluntly, “Especially without blood covering your face.”

You toss the rag into the laundry basket carelessly, waiting for a maid to take care of it.

“Thank you.”

“What is your name? You never told me.”

His eyebrows arch slightly at the question.“It’s Minho.”

“I am Y/N,” You reply, holding out your hand to shake his own. His grip is firm and warm.

He keeps a stoic face as he glances at your face and back at your hand, as if he is searching for an ulterior motive behind this handshake.

The food.

The bell rings and the sound of it shatters the stillness of the room. Minho’s head jolts towards the door, hand back on his gun.

He rises instantly, opening it to reveal the maid with a tray of sweet snacks.

He takes it from her. “I will bring it in.”

“What a good boy, Minho,” you praise, clapping your hands together as he sets the tray on your lap.

“I don’t take you for a man who enjoys sweet food much. Do you like sweets?”

“Sometimes.”

You unwrap a piece of high-dollar chocolate, “I command you to open your mouth.”

Minho can’t deny you, it would be disobeying your orders.

He opens his mouth as the chocolate is positioned between his lips.

You relish in the chocolates with Minho and once finished, you set the tray on the floor for a maid to pick up at sunrise.

“I don’t think I mind you being around all that much, Daddy makes good decisions.” You lay down on the mattress.

“Your father does make good decisions.”

His gaze wavered on your face until you drifted off to sleep. Only then did they slowly trail down to your body.

The way your body was built captivated him. Minho was glued to your sleeping form.

He stayed in the room, taking a seat on a chair in the corner to watch you.

He didn’t know how long it had been since you had dozed off, but by the way that the room was now pitch black and noiseless aside from your figure rising and falling, he would imagine that it had been a couple of hours.

“How long are you going to sit there?” Your sleep-filled voice questions him, causing him to snap out of his daze, hand reaching for his gun out of instinct.

“Do you sleep? Are you allowed to sleep?”

“I will only remain in the room as long as you order me to. I do sleep,” He replies, “Now is there anything else you need my assistance with? Or can I return to my duties?”

“So you’re only staying in the room because I ordered you two hours ago?” There’s a tinge of dismay in your voice, but it was masked by sleep, “You can leave if you want, I don’t mind.”

Minho felt a sudden pit in his stomach. You sounded disappointed by his statement.

Your words are perplexing him, and he can’t conclude what you want from him. To stay or to go?

“Should I stay for a bit longer?”

You were already asleep again once he had responded.

You and Minho both wake to a maid opening the blinds and ringing a bell. You groan, stretching your body.

“Miss, let’s get you dressed for today.”

She pulls your nightgown up above your head as Minho’s eyes wander toward your laced underwear.

“What’s on my schedule for today?”

He quickly forces his gaze to look away and stares back at the maid.

“We want you to heal from your injuries, miss,” she answers, “we will start with a nutritious breakfast to encourage recovery, and attend to your injuries, and then you will speak with Daddy about your incident.”

The maid buttons your fitted dress, glancing in Minho’s direction, “Your bodyguard will need to be there for your conversation with Daddy.”

“He will?”

“He needs to tell Daddy what he witnessed from the facility.”

You nod, following her lead down the stairs and towards the breakfast table.

Minho follows suit, remaining at your side the entire time and he watches you eat, staying observant and cautious.

“Are you hungry?”

This question catches Minho off guard.

“No.” He adds in a dull tone— but in actuality, he is starving. He was entrusted to watch over you. He shouldn’t eat on the clock.

“Maid, go order,” You look Minho up and down, “A side of crepes. Blueberry crepes. And two cups of coffee.”

The maid hurries to the kitchen to place the order, and it is brought out a couple of minutes later.

He stares at the crepes being placed on the table, and his belly grumbles. “Thank you.”

The maid carries the mugs of coffee to the table. But it doesn’t take Minho long to catch sight of her cunning smile and the perplexing liquid that the maid slipped into the mugs of coffee.

He stares quietly, calculating his next action.

“Don’t drink it.”

“Why not?”

Minho’s sight narrows as you bring the cup of coffee to your lips.

This time, his tone is warning and direct. “It’s better that you don’t.”

You halt your sip at his harsh command.

The maid pulls out a handgun swiftly after realizing that she has been caught, aiming it at you.

A switch swiftly flips inside of him.

He lunges forward, grabbing the woman’s wrist and twisting the gun to the right, snapping a couple of fingers in the process.

It’s a rapid movement, and he had little time to think before shooting her in the head, watching the life leave her body. His face is apathetic and almost casual.

The maid’s blood spilled onto the floor as the others ran to clean it up.

“He passed the test, we can keep him. A promising guard so far,” Daddy compliments from behind you, “Urgently acting to protect. He knew that she was mindless and weak. He comprehends crises well.”

The older man slips a wad of cash into the breast pocket of Minho’s suit. “Good on protecting her. That was a setup with a stupid maid who was just aching to betray us. You will have the same fate if you are wavered by another team.”

“I think he’s a good boy. He won’t betray me.”

“Y/N, meet me at my office. Guard, follow her.” He swiftly turns away to lead the two of you as you eye Minho.

“You can relax now. No more tests.”

He nods in understanding, heeding silently towards the office.

“Tell me about what you saw at the facility.”

You nod. “Four men had taken me from our garden entrance and used Chloroform to knock me unconscious. I woke up in their van, where my hands and legs were tied. I heard them talking about what they planned to get out of me. They had intentions of murdering me if they got to a week of no answers.”

Minho listens to your explanation with hawk-like eyes, paying close attention to all the details and descriptions.

You clear your throat, running your fingers across your bruised wrist, “I was tied to a chair in their questioning room, and they used forms of torture for me to open up.”

“I was deprived of sleep and beaten if they caught me closing my eyes— trying to get my lack of sleep to cause me to open up about your activities.”

Daddy nodded solemnly, leaning into his chair.

“Waterboarding was their favorite method, but they enjoyed beating me. I assume that was mainly for fun.”

You continued, “Minho appeared and killed a couple of them and saved me, but most are still alive.”

“Still alive? You didn’t find and kill them, bodyguard, why?” Daddy’s intense eyes moved toward Minho, who appeared unbothered.

The fact that he missed a few guys is enough to drive him crazy.

“I had to get her to safety as soon as possible.”

Daddy merely nods. “I will send my men after them. Y/N, did you get any names?”

“They wouldn’t tell me anything about themselves, but I saw a couple of signs of their rival gang.”

“Guard,” he veered towards Minho, “Describe the faces that you saw. I need as much information as possible.”

“They look to be between the ages of 20 to 30, their faces covered in scars. One man had dark skin, and his facial scars were faded. His most notable feature was a slit across his brow. He wore a dark suit. I left him alive but with a bullet in his arm. The other man had a lighter skin tone and his scars were similar to knife wounds. He had gotten away.”

The boss nods.

“Good. I can work with that. Never let my little girl get into trouble like that again, alright?”

The second the words ‘my little girl’ leave his mouth, Minho can’t help but gaze at you. He observes your reactions and motions.

His heart beats by hearing his boss call you that, and his attention is now focused on every single twitch that you make.

“The nurses will be waiting in her bedroom shortly. Be good and do as they say.” He adds, snapping Minho back to him.

“Guard, do not let her go against any of the nurses' rules. She can be convincing. Do not give into it.”

“Yes Sir.”

You roll your eyes, turning away to leave the room.

“Stay safe.” That is the last utterance of the boss before you drag Minho out of the room and towards the bedroom.

“Sit on the bed,” a nurse commands you, and you quickly obey.

She dabs at your abdomen stitches with antiseptic soap and your eyebrows furrow.

“You can’t move around much, got it? No exercising for three weeks until we get these stitches out.”

You agree as she moves on to your wrists, rubbing cream into them, “You’re going to visit us twice a day for six days until the healing is almost complete.”

She yanks a bandage off of your face, causing you to groan in pain. She rubs another ointment on it before substituting it with fresh dressing.

Minho supervises each step that the nurse takes, noticing how she takes care of your body as if it’s her most precious gift.

She turns to Minho, “I need you to make sure that she’s well rested, drinking enough water, and not doing many straining activities. Take her back here once again in the evening, and then we will see her again this time tomorrow morning, got it?”

“Yes, I will take care of her.”

“What about him, nurse?” You eye the small cuts across his face and hands.

She smiles and leans over to you. “He is well trained. Trust me, he’ll survive a few scratches.”

Your eyes narrow. “I order you to treat his wounds to the best of your abilities.”

She sighs. “Yes ma’am.”

She moves towards Minho and checks his wounds, patching the ones that were newly caused. She brushes his face softly with an ointment.

“I don’t like it when my guards don’t keep up a good appearance,” you try to explain away your worry for him, “and being injured will only slow you down when protecting me.”

The man stares straight ahead, listening carefully. “I’m fine. I’ll recover just fine. I don’t need much care as you do.”

“Let her rest now,” the nurse tells Minho, “order the maids to bring her a glass of water and have her sip on it until lunchtime.”

Once she leaves, Minho turns towards you, “I’ll make sure the maids bring you water. You need to stay hydrated”

Once water is on your table, your gaze returns to Minho

“Now, I order you to sit down on my bed with me.”

He examines you with a neutral expression and waits for you to say what you mean, not wishing to assume or take anything wrongly.

“Sit down with me,” you demand again, patting the spot beside you, waiting for him to follow suit.

As soon as you ask him to, Minho does not waver. He sits down beside you, body brushing your own.

You turn to meet his cold expression with intensity. “Do you like your job so far?

Minho is taken off guard by your switch of topic. He stays where he is sitting, but turns his body as well and faces you.

“I enjoy my duties.”

“Good. Because I’m fond of you. You’re handsome, and you are good at your job.”

He stares at you with slight surprise. “Thank you.”

Your hands grab for his, playing with the ring on his finger.

Then, you reach your hands higher, tugging his sleeve up to reveal a cluster of scars littered across his forearm.

“How long have you been in the business?”

“Since I was fourteen. I was trained from a very young age.”

“Have you always been in Daddy’s family?”

“I was loyal to your Daddy from the moment I knew what this life was like. I haven’t had a moment of doubt.”

“Good. That means you won’t leave us, right?”

“I will serve your family until my last breath. You have nothing to fear about that.”

“What a good boy,” you reach to ruffle his hair, landing a swift kiss on his sliced cheek. “That’s exactly what I like to hear.”

Minho stiffens.

“I order you to take off your jacket. I want to see your body. To see if you’re strong enough to be a good guard.”

Your words are sharp as a knife and they cut deep through his defense system. His jaw clamps and his breathing accelerates.

Minho swallows his breath, nodding his head. His movements are rigid, starting to cautiously peel off his jacket. It takes him a moment to unbutton it, but once his jacket is off, he stays there, waiting.

You slide his jacket to the floor, touching the muscles of his bicep through his button-down. “You’re fit. That’s good.”

Minho yearns for you to keep feeling him. To keep praising him. He swallows. Your words sound like a honey trap to him, and it’s working as intended.

“I order you to take off your tie.”

“Yes.”

That is all that he says, slowly slipping his tie from underneath his collar and tossing it aside.

Unexpectedly, you’re climbing on top of his body. “Take off your button-down.”

He unbuttons his shirt as your eyes sear into his chest. He is now only wearing a black undershirt.

“So many clothes,” you sigh out, groping his bare arms. You run your hands across his biceps, listening to him shudder underneath the touch.

“Take off your undershirt now. I want to see your chest.”

You can feel the heat radiating off him as he shivers. His body is now sensitive, and your hands are making it worse for him.

Your orders are evident, and he hastily lifts off his undershirt, waiting for what is next.

You can see his whole chest with all of its blemishes, with every muscle covered in sweat, exposed for you.

Your hands travel down his chest and abdomen, feeling each ragged scar with your bruised fingers. The delicate contact causes his breath to catch and a soft groan leaves him, fighting to not show that he relishes in your touch.

“Let me kiss you.”

He stares at you for a moment before his eyebrows slightly shift— his way of showing you that he approves of that request.

Minho leans in slightly and closes his eyes, gently placing a timid kiss on your lips.

You smirk against him, pushing him to lie against the bed frame and deepening the kiss. Your hands reach for his dark hair, clasping a handful in your grip.

He kisses you deeply and wraps his arms around you to pull you in closer, offering full control to you. His breath speeds up.

You pull away after a moment, lips brushing against his as you catch your breath, but only for an instant before moving towards his jaw, sucking marks onto his skin.

Minho quivers at your touch, his breathing speeding up once more as you leave red and purple blemishes on his skin. He bites his lip to stop himself from groaning.

Your mouth moves from his jaw to his neck, leaving kisses and hickeys all across him, making sure that he is covered in them.

Your hips grind against him, breathing heavily with anticipation as you make your way to his chest.

Your hands and mouth are touching all of him, and each sensation triggers a reaction that he tries to conceal.

Your lips hover back to his lips, staring at him longingly. “Do I have to command you for you to do anything to me? You don’t have to ask. You have my permission. Do whatever you want.”

You can see his gaze shifting from your eyes to your mouth, to your neck, and then towards your chest.

You swiftly lift yourself off of him to let him remove your dress, leaving your body as bare as his own.

You grasp onto his neck, bringing him in for another deep kiss. Minho remains silent as he kisses you, allowing you to leave him as many marks as you desire.

“What are you thinking, Minho? Speak to me.”

He takes a moment, letting out an unstable breath. “I’m thinking of what you are doing to me. I,” he stammers, “I want to make you feel good.”

“Then do it. Please.”

“I don’t want to harm you,” he breathes out, “you’re injured.”

“The nurses said to not do,” Minho presses his eyes shut as you bring your hips up to meet his, “fuck, anything straining.”

“Remember what Daddy said? I can be convincing.” You sneer as your bodyguard fails to keep his cool composure, but the aching cock pressing into you is giving his true desires away.

You eye his internal struggle between following your orders and his cravings, or the nurse and his boss.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I can go relieve myself in the bathroom.”

“I like being hurt.”

You notice his lip twitch at the comment, and you decide to provoke him further, grinding into him, and set a steady rhythm with your hips.

He groans as his head drops back, tugging onto your hair and trying desperately to control his breath, “Please, Y/N, I just want to take care of you.”

“You can take care of me in another way.”

“I need to follow orders.”

“Then I order you to fuck me.”

His eyes pinch shut as he tries to clear his head and reason with himself.

Perhaps if he were gentle, it would be alright.

But how long could he remain gentle when you were splayed out in front of him, willing to take anything that he gave to you?

He made his decision, gripping your shoulders gently and flipping you, pinning you to the bed, and surveying your face for any discomfort.

When he finds none, he impatiently unclasps his belt, throwing it to the floor along with his dress pants, leaving him in just his boxers.

You hold yourself up by your elbows, thighs pressed together and mouth watering at the man in front of you.

His hands were delicate, although they could easily snap you in half, as he unclasped your bra, leaving your top half bare.

Minho stopped to take in the view for a moment before grabbing at one of your breasts, his mouth attaching to the other.

Your whines were like music to him— something that he wanted to hear more of.

Your back arched in pleasure as he moved one hand down to your thigh, caressing it for a moment before slowly slipping his hand into your panties.

“Try to stay quiet, darling, I don’t want any staff checking on us,” He hushed you with his lips attaching to your own once again, feeling your wetness all over his calloused hands.

His thumb brushed against your clit and you whimpered into his mouth, clenching around nothing.

Minho then plunged two fingers deep inside of you and curled them. He was becoming lost in pleasing you, overlooking his own ache between his legs.

Your thighs shook beneath him, feeling him brush against your g-spot brutally. “Minho please, please just fuck me. I want you inside of me so bad.”

At your request, he slipped his fingers out, feeling your cries against his lips from the loss of friction.

“Yes ma’am.” He pulled away from your lips, replacing them with his now dripping fingers, lapping it up with his tongue.

Next, your ruined panties were yanked off of you, with his boxers soon to come after.

One hand gently relaxes on your hips, cautious to avoid aggravating your injuries as he uses the other to guide himself inside of you, a deep groan followed by your whines.

He gives you a moment to handle the stretch, but you hardly need it, already begging for him to move.

Minho cautiously thrusts, taking in a deep breath and furrowing his eyebrows in concentration.  This is the ultimate test of patience for him. He needs to be as gentle as possible with you.

Ultimately, he sets a slow pace, hands locating themselves on either side of you, letting out uneven breaths as he tries to control himself from how good you feel around him.

“You really do care, don’t you?” Your hand reaches to cup his face, gazing into his eyes that are hazy with pleasure.

He keeps his response short, too concentrated on the waves of bliss through each thrust, “I do care.”

“Is it because you’re my bodyguard or something more?”

You study him, watching his adam’s apple move as he swallows deeply, inhaling sharply. He halts his thrusts for a brief instant.

“Both, maybe. I can’t tell.”

That was enough for you to continue, grabbing another handful of his hair and bringing him in for another hungry, deep kiss.

With each deep thrust, Minho’s mind got hazier and hazier, losing himself to pleasure bit by bit. You could feel it by the way his rhythm became rough and desperate, and his pace picked up.

One of his hands left your side, creeping towards your throbbing clit, causing you to let out sobs, all of which he ate up with his mouth against your own.

“Are you gonna cum for me?” He coos, knowing that you’re too lost in bliss to respond.

He takes your whines as a ‘yes’, his thumb rubbing circles faster, coaxing your orgasm out of you.

Your walls fluttered around him, squeezing your eyes closed and letting out a lengthy, drawn-out moan as his pace picked up even further.

“Just like that. You’re so good for me, so, so good, fuck,” he talked you through your orgasm between his thrusts, chasing his own high.

His brows crease, hips stuttering at how good it felt to have you gripping so tightly onto his cock. Finally, he let go, his load spilling inside of you and seeping out.

Both of you took an instant to catch your breath, coming down from your highs.

His hands slowly traced your curves in contentment, paying attention to the way your chest rose and fell.

Finally, he has a justification to gape at your body up close.

From your jawline to your hickey-covered chest, down to your bruised sides and stitches near your abdomen, and— Oh fuck.

Your wounds.

Minho slowly pulls away, feeling a sense of post-nut clarity and fright.

His hand slides away from your body, staring at you with concern.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, your own anxiety suddenly displayed on your face, “Do you regret it?”

“No! No,” He panics, “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?“

Back in reality now, your wounds ache and your head pounds with exhaustion and overexertion.

His mind calculates the solutions to the situation— ways to explain to the nurses, to fix you, to help you feel better.

It was his shortcoming, after all. He let his urges get to him.

“Let’s run you a bath.” He pulls himself up, tugging on his boxers and heading towards the bathroom.

You hear the tap turn on, lying in bed trying to catch your breath. Your breath is harsh from both adrenaline and pain, but you can’t help but feel as though the latter is more of the cause.

You had slept with a small handful of men, primarily Daddy’s men, but none of them were quite like Minho.

He was tough but breakable. He was still kindhearted at his core— something that wasn’t all that common in the business.

You could tell from the way that he ran the bath, bare muscles glistening from sweat, running his hand through the water to make sure that it was the ideal temperature. How concerned he was about your protection, even through his pleasure.

Not many other men that you’ve met throughout your life have been the same way.

You’re quite fond of the man that you have just met.

You hear the water shut off and footsteps coming towards the room. He holds a faint smile as his steps come towards the bed. Your gaze slowly wanders to his physique.

“It’s ready for you.” He says in a slight whisper.

“I order you to pick me up and bring me to the bath.”

He nods at your order, hooking his arms underneath your thighs and back, his strong grip securing you.

You inhale the powerful stench of gunpowder stuck to his skin, finding comfort in your bodyguard’s presence.

“Will you wash my hair?”

Studying his expression, it’s hard to read, but you let him carry you and place you into the water.

‘I do care,’ you recall his words.

‘Is it because you’re my bodyguard or something more?’ ‘Both, maybe. I can’t tell.’

Perhaps you had feelings for the man, especially while he massaged shampoo into your scalp with tough hands, making sure to rub your temples.

“Have you ever been a bodyguard before?”

When Minho hears your question, he hums while he proceeds to wash you, working on scrubbing the areas where he touched you earlier. “No, you’re the first one I’ve been a bodyguard for.”

“I did things for your father before this. Not as a bodyguard, a more, I guess, dangerous role,” he dismisses the question.

“Is that so?” You fall to silence as he continues to wash you, taking his time and guaranteeing that he gets every part. He hesitates when he washes around your injuries— every stroke and movement of his hands is smooth and temperate.

“Let me relax for a minute alone,” you murmur, “You should put your clothes back on, the maids should be here any moment to take my order for lunch. They won’t find it suspicious that I’m bathing, but they will question why you’re with me.”

Minho nods and pulls away from your body.

He stands up and his feet splash on the wet floor. He takes a double take at your closed eyes.

The way your body floats in the bath is something that catches his attention. You look very pleasing in such a vulnerable position.

He leaves the room, cracking the door to make sure that you are safe.

Minho buttons up his wrinkled shirt, pulling the jacket over it and smoothing it out to ensure that nobody suspects anything.

Minho’s eyes turn to the maid who enters the room with the ring of a bell.

His demeanor is unfazed, a hand on the gun in his pocket once more. He holds eye contact, his stare intense.

He would make sure that there wasn’t another incident.

“Where is Miss Y/N?”

“She is bathing at the moment.”

She nods, walking towards the bathroom and knocking on the door.

You hum, allowing her to enter.

“What would you like for lunch, ma’am?”

“I don’t know, surprise me.”

A few seconds go by as you immerse yourself entirely in the water before rising back to the surface.

“Minho,” you call out, “What would you like?”

You hear the faint sigh that Minho gives as a response back to your question.

“I’ll just have a sandwich or something, whatever you have is fine.” He replies to both you and the maid as she exits the bathroom, fulfilling her duty of reporting your lunch choice.

The bedroom door shuts behind her.

“Minho!” You call out once again, “I order you to take me out of the bath.”

A few seconds pass before you hear Minho’s footsteps come near the bathroom once again. He grabs a towel as you stand, body bare and dripping with water.

His eyes have an intense focus as he reaches out his hand.

Minho pulls you up from the bath wraps the towel around you, making sure to cover all of you, and begins to dry off your hair.

“Minho,” you begin, “Daddy can’t know about what happened. He’d shoot you dead on the spot.”

Minho pauses for a moment, his eyes darting across the floor.

He is silent for a moment. “I won’t reveal anything to him.”

“Good boy,” you cling to the towel covering your body, “Go fetch a maid to dress me. While she does so, I want you to change out of that suit and shower before lunch.”

“Then I’ll go shower now. I’ll be back.”

You hum in agreement, stepping towards your bedroom as a maid rings the bell.

You drop your towel, letting her sift through your drawers to find decent clothing.

She eyes a hickey on your breast, along with the other injuries across your body from the kidnapping.

“Your injuries look agitated, Miss Y/N, are you sure that a bath was the best idea for you?”

“Don’t question me,” you grumble, “I took a bath because I wanted to.”

“Yes, miss.” She pulls the dress above your head smoothes it out, and clasps a necklace behind your neck.

“You’re all set for lunch.”

The moment that you come out of your room, you can feel his presence. He is leaning against the front door of the room with an unreadable expression.

He has another suit on, a fresh one. Minho’s previously muskier, dark scent has been replaced by a new, sweeter fragrance.

“First shower at the estate?” You question, “Our soaps are quite lovely and mild on the skin. You smell wonderful.”

Minho’s lips curl at the compliment, looking you up and down, “Seems that we both are putting our best foot forward.”

You look around to see if anyone is watching before leaning to ruffle his damp hair and leave a kiss on his cheek, taking the man by complete surprise. He makes an effort to regain his composure, but you can see that his cheeks are blushed from the touch.

As soon as you lean in to lock arms, you feel him lean over to you to whisper something.

“I would love to do that with you again.”

You froze in your spot, heat rushing to your thighs.

You must regain your composure, caught off guard by his blunt words, something unlike the ordinary nature of Minho.

He takes a seat across from you, watching every move that the maid makes to be sure that she doesn’t try anything— he has learned his lesson.

“Pressed Italian Picnic Sandwiches and tea,” The maid states, setting the plates on the table.

You scrunch my nose up. “What’s in it?”

“Artisanal prosciutto, aged provolone, and sun-dried tomatoes inside of a crusty ciabatta,” She doesn’t hesitate to list the ingredients, “and a fragrant blend of rare loose-leaf teas with fresh cream and sugar cubes.”

She sets the teapot and cups out, along with a carton of cream and a bowl of sugar cubes.

Minho’s hand rests on his gun, waiting for her to leave before taking a sip of tea.

You follow his action, dumping a couple of cubes into your tea and bringing it to your lips.

I finish my lunch with Minho.

“Let’s go back to my room now. I'm exhausted.”

Minho nods his head and you both finish up the meals quickly.

You both leave the dining area and stroll back to your bedroom.

As soon as you get back into the room, you feel Minho close the door behind you.

You don’t hesitate to climb into bed and lie down.

The guard looks over at you, observing the way that your chest rises and falls as you breathe. He notices every movement that your body is making.

“I command you to lay down with me.” You lean back against the bed, your body still and eyes focused on his unmoving body.

He slips off his shoes silently, slipping into the canopy bed.

You grin, curling at his side, pressing against his body.

His breathing is deep and steady as he struggles to get into a more comfortable position.

Your mind began racing with questions about the mysterious man that you were slowly falling for, burying yourself further into the sheets.

“Minho,” you start slowly, “How did you become tangled with our family?”

Minho stays silent for a few moments and you feel his body shift a little against yours.

“I didn’t have a lot of money or family growing up,” he kept his answer short and simply, “the moment that this job came my way, I took it. The people connected to this business have always stayed on the down low, so this is an easy job to keep."

“Daddy seems to like you,” you grit your teeth.

Minho turns to you on the bed and sits up a little. He looks at you from top to bottom, reading the worry on your face with ease.

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

“He will kill you on the spot if he finds out. He’s done that to almost every man who has flirted or slept with me.”

You pause for a moment. “God forbid the one he hired as my bodyguard.”

“I am not so easily killed.” The words leave his mouth with a tinge of arrogance.

“I trust you.”

“Good.”

There is stillness between you both for a time, but he breaks it by grabbing your chin and leaning in to kiss you. You soothe into his touch, smiling against his lips briefly before he pulls away.

“I order you to stay here. Like this.”

It’s not difficult for you to drift off to sleep beside him, and as always, Minho pursues your request, keeping a close eye on you. You relax, your breathing slow, and he notes all of the occasional twitches and movements that you make in your sleep.

A couple of hours later, the door is knocked on by a maid.

“Dinner order?”

Minho jolts awake from the knock on the door, a hand swiftly placed on your shoulder to protect you from any threats before turning his head towards the noise.

His voice is full of sleep. “Repeat that?”

As she opens the door, there is a look of inquiry on her face, one that she won’t ask to ensure her job and health.

“Is she asleep?” She questions instead, glancing over at your peaceful figure.

He turns his head towards you to double-check, observing your napping body.

“Yes.”

“Alright. I’ll advise the chef to prepare her dinner later tonight.”

She gives a sharp nod to the guard and scurries out of the room, quietly shutting the door to not disturb the girl.

Minho’s eyes rest on the door for a moment, fully alert now with a hand resting on his gun.

Eventually, he turns over to you. He has his eyes on you for a few seconds before leaning down to kiss you on the forehead, letting out a small sigh.

You stir at the warm touch, scrunching your face up and stretching your body.

“What time is it?” You ask groggily before burying your head into his neck.

“Dinner is in about half an hour. You hungry?”

“Not really,” you pull yourself up and rub your sleep-filled eyes.

He notices your body shiver as you pull yourself up. Minho lets out a short exhale.

“Did you sleep?”

“A bit.” He doesn’t look away or turn his head as he admires the way you stand and stretch your body, smoothing your dress of its wrinkles.

You walk towards your vanity mirror, plopping down in the chair to readjust your necklace to the center. A few marks on your collarbone catch your eye.

“The nurses will be in shortly.” You grit your teeth. “I hope they don’t notice.”

“They won’t notice.”

His figure can be seen from behind you in the reflection of the mirror. His lips are turned upwards as he watches you fix your appearance.

You pull out a couple of foundations and concealers, working on concealing the marks left from earlier.

“The maids wouldn’t, but the nurses will tell the difference between a hickey and a bruise. Especially since these are fresh.”

Even though you are busy with your makeup and covering up the bruises, Minho’s eyes are never off of you. It is a feeling that you will have to get used to— always having a watchful eye on you.

Once you were satisfied with the coverage, you rose from your seat quickly.

“Get up, we’re going to dinner.”

“So bossy.” He retorts. “What will you have?”

“I want to go out, let’s go somewhere fancy. Daddy will pay.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You want to go out when you have had a beating just two days ago?”

He asks it like he thinks it’s an absurd idea, almost condescendingly, yet his tone of voice is soft and full of concern for you, causing your stomach to flip inside out.

“I’m tired of staying inside already. This estate is suffocating,” you pull on your slip-on shoes.

“That’s how I got myself into this mess in the first place. I left the house and got kidnapped. That won’t happen with you here.”

“I guess you’re right. We’ll go somewhere nice.”

“Good. I’ll go tell Daddy.” You leave the door open for Minho to come after but don’t wait for him, yet you can tell that he follows behind silently, attending to the way your body moves in the dress as you make your way down the halls.

The door is slightly ajar, so when you knock, it pushes open with a creak, revealing your father inside.

Minho stands behind you like a shadow, his lips pressed into a straight line, gaze locked on your father, keeping his distance from the both of you.

“Come inside,” the older man invites both of them with a welcoming grin, “sit.”

You can sense that your father has something on his mind, which is never a good sign.

“I was going to call you to my office shortly, anyway.” Instantly you assume the worst.

You sit down, taking a seat in front of him. Minho is still standing in the back, his priority on you and your father.

The man looks over at Minho. Their eyes lock for a moment. “Guard, go lock the door. There is a conversation that needs to be had.”

Minho nods and he turns his head, locking the door behind him.

He turns his attention back to you, who is frozen in your seat, breath hitching.

The elite man fiddles with a pen at his desk, clicking it to drown out the tense silence.

The silence in the room seems so heavy that you wonder how neither you nor Minho is feeling sick. Judging by the thick atmosphere between the three of you, it is easy to tell that he isn’t pleased right now.

He fidgets with the pen and you wait for him to finally speak.

“Do you find my daughter to be precious, Guard?” He addresses Minho with a stern voice, finally setting the pen down at his wooden desk with a smack.

“Yes sir,” Minho replies flatly.

“Are you willing to protect her at all costs, even at your life?”

After moments of silence, he answers back confidently. “Yes sir. I am.”

A hand comes to rest at his side, toying loudly with a handgun, which he eventually pulls out of his pocket.

Tears begin to well up in your eyes, yet Minho stays concentrated. There isn’t a single sign of fear on his face. He is unshaken, calm, and collected as if he had been foreseeing this exact scenario.

“Do you know why you were assigned to guard my daughter, Minho?”

“I know the reasons.”

“There was a leak to the rivals from a previous staff member that I had a precious daughter in my life,” He turns towards you, “the one that I had climbed to the top of my career to protect and assure her safety and security.”

He cleared his throat before darting back to Minho, “It took less than a day for her to be taken from my hands and placed in the hands of one of my greatest enemies.”

Minho pays attention to every word that he speaks and clears his throat, waiting for your father to continue.

“I care for my daughter more than anything in the world. Which is why I had appointed the most valuable, honest, and competent man in the family to ensure her protection.”

Minho nods.

“Please don’t kill him, Daddy.”

The boss meets you with cold eyes, disregarding your words to proceed with his lecture. “You are my most prized possession. I would hurt anyone or anything to make sure that not a single person touches you. The men who kidnapped you are all taken care of, wiped out by my command.”

He continues. “I know everything that goes on in your life. Every meal, every kiss, every injury, the staff must report every minor thing that occurs in your day. I have eyes on you at all times, and you’re more than aware of that.”

Your shoulders stiffen. He knew.

“Minho,” his stare is burning into the other man, “I’ll get to the point. Did you sleep with my daughter?”

He doesn’t blink. His body tenses up and his voice remains neutral.

“Yes.”

The boss turns the safety off of his firearm and you dig your head into your hands, unable to observe the scene that is about to unfold.

The gunshot is fired, but the man deliberately aims to the left of Minho, grazing his cheek with the bullet before standing up instantly from his seat. The guard doesn’t react with more than a blink as the blood pools at the cut.

“I trust you, Minho. You are a good man. If there is a single person who I would choose to give my daughter to, it would be you.”

Finally, Minho takes this as a sign to let his guard down for a moment as his shoulders drop, lip quivering slightly. It was evident that there was more emotion that the guard was holding back, especially when he took a moment to look away.

“You have my approval.”

Your eyes widen.

“Take care of my daughter. If you break her heart, I’ll feed your own heart to her for supper.”

“Understood.”

“Take her to dinner,” a wad of cash is pulled out from one of the drawers, “buy her flowers and anything else that she asks for.”

“Yes sir.” He responds, “I’ll make sure that she gets the treatment that she deserves.”

You run to embrace your father, to which he places an arm around you, rubbing your back before pulling away.

“Get yourself dressed more sufficiently, I will have a car ready for you soon.”

Minho follows you out of his office, letting out a breath that he had been holding in once the door was closed.

“Did you hear that?” Do you know what this means?” You beam at the man before grabbing at his cheeks and pulling him in for a kiss.

He lets out a surprised noise, hesitantly wrapping his arms around your waist and kissing back.

When you break the kiss, he stares back at you with the first big smile that you’ve seen from him displayed on his face.

“Let’s get you ready.”

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0x1lovebot · 3 months

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— random bf! jeongin texts —

genre — crack, smau

warnings — unserious behavior😭, cursing, inappropriate jokes.

a/n — in honor of i.n’s birthday I wanted to make something fun for him!! (even though I barely have any time😭) ENJOY

#skz smau #skz fake texts #yang jeongin #jeongin x reader #skz i.n #skz i.n x reader #yang jeongin x reader #yang jeongin imagines #skz x reader #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #skz #skz crack #skz fanfiction #faithwrites🌱

1K notes · View notes

godslino · 3 months

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PIECE BY PIECE | minho first date series. friends to lovers.

pairing: minho x fem!reader word count: 6.2k genre: college au, mutual pining, fluff, angst warnings: drinking, referenced injury (very minor) summary: minho, on a drunken whim, asks you out on a date.

a/n: finally!! the minho part!! i’ve been sooo excited about this one since i first got the idea. i hope you guys enjoy! once again any and all feedback is appreciated, happy reading <3

“Dude, I think it’s clean.”

Minho looks up from where he’s scrubbing the counter, eyes narrowed. So what if it’s his third time going over every surface in the kitchen?

“Are you going to help me or are you just gonna sit there and make more crumbs?”

Jeongin’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline. He holds up his hands in surrender, the bag of chips in his lap crinkling. “I’m just saying. You’re acting like she’s never seen the place before.”

That’s the problem. You’ve seen his place. Minho has to stop the shudder that threatens to overtake his body at the thought.

“So you’re not helping? Great. Get out.”

“I live here!” Jeongin whines. “Why do I have to get out? You can’t banish me like this.”

“I can and I will. Now leave. I have two hours to make sure everything is ready and I am not going to vacuum for a fourth time.”

“Yes mom,” Jeongin rolls his eyes as he unfolds his legs from underneath him.

He stops just short of the kitchen counter, points an accusatory finger at Minho’s disheveled figure still hunched over an imaginary stain.

“For the record, Chan hyung would never do this to me. He loves my crumbs.”

Minho throws the scrub daddy at him.

🏠

The night it happens, all it takes is approximately three shots and a pep talk from Hyunjin for Minho to finally find the nerve to ask you out.

“You’ve got this,” the younger boy says, words slurred, his hands steady on both Minho’s shoulders. The bass thumps loud in the other room, drowned out by the walls of the kitchen until it’s nothing but garbled nonsense going in one of his ears and out the other, vibrations low in his chest.

“I’ve got this.” Minho repeats, the thrum of alcohol already spreading to his fingertips. He feels warm, light on his feet. His limbs are starting to loosen up and his insides are turning to jelly. He might even be floating.

“You look hot.”

“I look hot.”

“She’s gonna say yes.”

“You’re gonna venmo me twenty dollars.”

“I’m gonna venmo you twenty dollars.” Minho parrots before he can even process what he’s saying. Changbin, who’d been watching the entire thing unfold from where he stands with his back pressed against the sink, snorts.

“Wait, what the f—”

“Go get her!” Hyunjin screams, pushing him through the door of the kitchen with one last pat on the back, “And send me my money!”

Minho stumbles over himself, just barely able to stop in time before he goes crashing into a group of people. The living room is crowded: there’s furniture pushed up against the walls, bodies pressed front to back in the middle of the floor, a makeshift DJ stand in the corner where Chan is controlling the music from his laptop, drink in hand. Minho catches his eye from across the room, the glow of the LEDs reflecting off the toothy grin he shoots his way, dimples on full display.

“Hey!” Minho feels someone grab his arm, and he turns to find you staring up at him. “Where’d you go? You said you were gonna get a drink.”

Minho follows your eyes down to where you’re staring at his empty hands. “I—uh, well. I ran into Hyunjin and we took a few shots.”

The pout you give him does nothing but spur on the fluttering of his chest, his brain still hyper aware of the way your hand was resting on his elbow. “Shots? I want shots!” you whine, and Minho has to avert his gaze from staring at your lips when your pout only worsens.

“How much have you had?” he tries to ask over the music. There’s a shitty pop song playing, high pitched and wonky. If he remembers in the morning, he’ll make sure he berates Chan about his DJ-ing abilities.

“What?” you scream back, tiptoeing to bring your mouth closer to his ear.

Minho is only a man. A man who's been in love with you since the moment you accidentally spilled your coffee all over Hyunjin in the quad during freshman year. He remembers that day well, remembers the way your eyes went wide and your lips parted. He also remembers the way he wished it was him with the large wet stain on his shirt, that way it was him that was offered to have his lunch bought as an apology.

He’d never admit it, but sometimes really late at night, when the moon is high in the sky and he’s feeling oddly sentimental, he counts his lucky stars that Hyunjin had been in a relationship at the time. Minho doesn’t know what he would’ve done had he been forced to watch the two of you hit it off—some form of arson, presumably. Anything to take the edge off. But because of the fact that Hyunjin was not trying to have his head cut off by said girlfriend at the time, he invited Minho along as some sort of collateral damage. That’s when the two of you became friends. Kind of perfect if you ask him.

With the jumbled mess of butterflies in his stomach that he gets whenever you’re near him, and the threat of the alcohol slowly seeping through his skin, his brain short circuits the minute your breath grazes the shell of his ear. When your hand follows not long after, fingers gripping the nape of his neck to hold him in place, he almost passes out.

“Min? What’d you say?”

Minho is rendered completely useless by you. Absolutely ruined. Your existence has thrown his entire plan to woo you off course and now his mouth is opening and closing like a badly programmed robot. Pathetic. Nuts and bolts for brains.

By the grace of God (or some other higher being that Minho’s never bothered to believe in until this very moment) he finds his voice, but not before you’re pulling back with a confused look on your face.

“I asked how much you’ve had to drink,” he says, straining against the music.

A saccharine sweet grin that has him seeing stars spreads across your face, “Not enough!”

Minho is not an enabler. Never has been, never will be. There was one time, back in that fateful freshman year that also introduced the two of you, that he let Hyunjin get blackout drunk. A terrible decision on his end, if the earful he got from Chan the next morning was anything to go by. And as if that wasn’t enough, he was finding remnants of the resulting hacking session for the following week. So yeah, never again.

But while Minho isn’t an enabler, he is smitten, and the way your hand feels wrapped around his wrist as you drag him into the kitchen has his soul threatening to leave his body. He thinks that maybe he could do anything as long as you asked. He also hopes you can’t feel the way his pulse is rabbiting beneath his skin, right under the press of your thumb.

“There’s, like, nothing here.” you say as you rummage through the cupboard near the window, nose scrunched and a frown on your face.

Minho laughs, rounds the kitchen island to crouch down and open the cabinet under the sink. “That’s because you don’t know where to look,” he smirks, pulling out a fresh bottle of tequila. “Also, Chan hyung is greedy. He knows people like you will go scavenging his supply if he isn’t careful.”

“I resent that.” you frown, taking the bottle from him. “Besides, people like me deserve to have fun too.”

“Mhm, sure.” Minho says, grabbing a solo cup. He holds his hand out for the bottle, pours just the right amount before sliding it over and following it up with a can of coke.

“A man after my heart.” you joke, holding your cup up to him in a mock toast before downing it in one go. Minho watches with so much focus, fighting against the way his head spins. He doesn’t even know if it’s the alcohol anymore, it might just be the effect you have on him. Dizzying—you flip his entire world on its axis in the best way possible.

Minho’s gonna be seeing your exposed neck in his dreams later, he’s sure of it—it’s branded into his memory.

“That…is so fucking bad.” you giggle, holding your cup out. “Another one.”

Minho clicks his tongue. “I don’t know…”

“Pleaseeee Min,” the lilt in your voice sounds oddly familiar. Minho holds his breath just in case you—yup. There it is. There goes that pout again.

It’d be so easy for him to lean down and kiss it right off your lips. He could blame it on the alcohol, maybe, but then that takes away from how he actually means it.

He sighs instead. “It’s gonna cost you.”

“An arm and a leg?”

“What? No—I meant some water.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Three shots and a full bottle of water later, Minho knows you’ve hit your limit. Cheeks flushed pink, a dopey grin on your face, pupils blown wide. Even in this state, Minho is certain that you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Anotherrrr,” you slur, waving your cup in his face.

Minho shakes his head. “No can do. You’re cut off.”

“Please,” you whine, placing both hands on his shoulders, “I’ll do anything.”

Minho, completely taken back by the sudden closeness of your body to his, freezes.

“Anything?” he asks before he can stop himself.

This is stupid. You’re drunk. There’s no way you’re going to remember anything in the morning, much less within the next thirty minutes. He’s pretty sure that you’ll lose control of all your senses soon, which is why he’s already texted your roommate Jiwoo to unlock the door so he can carry you inside. Nothing he hasn’t done before.

“Anything,” you repeat, eyes going cross-eyed where they’re fixing on the mole he has at the tip of his nose.

This is stupid. But then again, so is Minho. A big, stupid fool that blames everything on the fact that he’s so in love with you it hurts. This might be the only chance he gets to shoot his shot.

Minho takes a deep breath, says something similar to a little prayer that’s more like Hey, if anyone’s listening, help a guy out, and hopes that the twenty bucks he sent Hyunjin works.

“Go on a date with me.” he says slowly, wincing when your eyes snap up to meet his gaze.

Well, there’s really no going back from that. The only thing that could possibly grant him redemption now is banking on the fact that you don’t remember anything in the morning.

Minho waits with bated breaths, watches as your eyes search his for a long while. He waits for the anger, the disgust, the visible repulsion that he starts to think might happen the longer the silence continues.

He’s about to backtrack, quickly conjuring up an excuse about how Oh, haha, gotcha! when your hands suddenly drop from his shoulders. You grab the cup, your chin tipped upwards, and hold it out for him to fill.

“Okay.”

“O…kay?”

“Yeah. Okay. Pour me another one.”

The next morning, when Minho all but drags himself into the kitchen in search of water and something to soothe the throbbing in his head, he nearly spits a mouthful at Jeongin, the poor guy too busy eating his cereal to realize he’s gotten a front row seat in the splash zone.

Y/N [10:34am]

when do you want to do that date?

🏠

Are candles too much?

Minho has options: clean linen, lavender breeze, ocean mist, warm vanilla. He really just needs something to get rid of the smell of cleaning spray.

He thought that having a night in for a first date would be ideal—less pressure, no unwanted attention, a bathroom that he can run into when he starts to hyperventilate if you smile at him for too long. But now that it’s happening, he’s convinced that every surface of his and Jeongin’s shared apartment will scare you away if anything so much as looks off-putting.

Minho is, to put it simply, freaking out. All the other times you’ve been over to his place were on a completely platonic level. Movie nights with all the other guys in tow, dropping off food that you felt generous enough to buy every once in a while, one time because you’d accidentally worn Minho’s jacket home from a party and needed to return it to him.

But this is different. This is a date. Minho’s not dreaming—he already pinched himself a dozen times in the bathroom mirror, tiny red marks on the inside of his forearm to prove it. He’s going to open the door, invite you in, cook for you, and then proceed to resist the urge to tell you how beautiful you are for however long the night continues on after that. He can practically hear Jeongin’s laugh in the back of his head, sneering at how pathetic his inner monologue sounds right now.

He needs to find another stain to scrub.

By the time you’re knocking on his door, Minho has changed his outfit seven times. Sweats were too casual, a button up was too fancy. Should he not have done his hair? No, that’s just lazy, the way his fringe is swept up and out of his forehead adds a nice touch that doesn’t scream Hey! I’m trying to woo you! You’ve never been the type to be impressed by grand gestures and shows of confidence anyways, he knows that well.

One time, when a guy from one of the frat houses hired the campus quartet to sing a song for you in the quad as he stood there with big beady eyes and a bouquet of roses in his hand, you’d all but ran from the scene, Minho following close behind as you called out to him over your shoulder. It’s one of his fondest memories. As soon as the two of you made it around the back of the science building, you’d doubled over in laughter, the both of you in disbelief at what had happened. Minho has had that information tucked into the deepest parts of his brain ever since, saved just in case he needed it.

(Later that night, in the safety of his own bed, he’d laughed maniacally at the situation. Something about watching you reject another guy filled him with a sense of joy he couldn’t explain. He just hoped he was never going to be on the receiving end of it.)

He does a quick once over of the kitchen: double checks that all the ingredients are out, blows a speck of dust off the glass stovetop, spins the tiny floral arrangement he bought so that it’s sitting at just the right angle. When the doorbell rings, the chime bouncing off the walls of the apartment, he visibly pales.

He has to reel it in, to remember that it’s just you. You might not even be here with any intentions other than to fulfill your end of the deal; one date in exchange for the extra three shots he poured you the other night. Minho takes a deep breath, grips the doorknob with conviction, and decides that he’s determined to show you the way you deserve to be treated. The opportunity is there, and he’s gonna take it.

As soon as the door swings open, every nerve that had somehow crept its way into his brain disappears, the sight of you standing on the other side immediately sending the anxiety scrambling and replacing it with fondness instead.

“Hi,” you smile, and Minho sees images of you coming home to his apartment flash across his mind. After class, after work, in the winter when it’s cold and your nose is tinted pink, on rainy days where the ends of your hair are damp and you have a wet umbrella in tow. He could get used to it. He’s so in love that it hurts.

“Hey,” he breathes out, stepping aside to make way for you, “Come in. Are you hungry?”

“Starving, actually. Been saving myself all day since I don’t always get to have your cooking.” You hop on to one of the stools, your attention momentarily stolen by the flower arrangement. One point for Minho.

I’d cook for you every day, he wants to say. But that’s weird, right? So instead, “Well then I guess today is your lucky day.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” You say softly.

Minho can’t see you with the way his back is turned, hands moving to grab out the knife and cutting board, but if he could he’d see the way your eyes are staring softly at his back, the ghost of a smile on your lips.

Conversation flows easily after that, despite Minho’s original worries about it being awkward. You’re not necessarily treating it as a date, and he isn’t really either. It feels more like a glorified hangout, just the two of you spending time together with the added glances and smiles that normally wouldn’t be there.

Minho finds it easy to get lost in you. He finds himself craving to know more about your day, about the things that’ve been on your mind lately and the hobbies you’ve picked up. Most of the conversation is a continuation of stuff that’s fallen through the cracks during the times you see each other, but he doesn’t miss the way you ask about him too, your eyes shining with genuine interest. It makes his heart slam against his ribcage.

“How are your cats doing?”

Minho looks up from the cutting board, follows your gaze to where it’s fixed on the scattered pictures that litter his fridge. “They’re good,” he says, smiling down at a head of garlic, “My mom sends pictures all the time. She says they claw at the door to my room when they miss me.” He smashes the garlic under the knife’s blade by hitting it with the heel of his palm. “It’s cute.”

“You’re cute.”

Minho, in a very flashy demonstration of what it means to be cool, calm, and collected, slices his thumb mid-chop.

“Shit.” he mutters, dropping the knife.

It’s not that bad, just a little nick, the surprise was mostly what scared him. He probably doesn’t even need a bandaid. But despite how small it is, nothing stops you from hurriedly walking up to him and taking his hand in yours, his thumb held closely to your face for inspection.

“Are you okay?” You turn his hand over between your fingers, the soft pads of them against his calloused ones. Minho is dumbfounded, struggling to find the words to say.

“Yeah—um, it’s fine. My fault. I was distracted.” He stammers out, pulling his hand back and holding it up. He wiggles his fingers, making a show of bending and twisting his thumb that, at most, has just a small cut on the side. “See? Perfect.”

Your face relaxes, and then you’re laughing. Why are you laughing? Either Minho looks like a complete idiot or he’s suddenly the funniest person in the world for being clumsy and reckless and almost ruining the night by losing a finger. Whichever one it is, he doesn’t care, as long as he gets to hear that sound again.

“Let me help cook, please? I know you said you would do it all but clearly you’re a threat to the integrity of this meal.” You say, bumping your hip against his to move him away from the cutting board.

Minho scoffs. “I wouldn’t have done that if you didn’t catch me off guard.”

“So what? You admit that I make you flustered?”

Oh.

Minho wasn’t prepared for this. He wasn’t prepared for the—the flirting that’s clearly happening. You’re flirting with him, right? Why else would you have called him cute or given him that suspicious side eye after you asked that question?

You and Minho have joked around like this before, but it was always empty with no real feelings attached—as far as he could tell. You’re a naturally friendly person, getting along with others comes easy to you. He’s seen the way you talk to the other guys and has always just assumed he was no different in your eyes than they were. Sure, there were moments where maybe your hand lingered on his arm for a little while after he made you laugh, or the two of you would steal glances across the room. Sometimes when Hyunjin said something stupid you’d both catch the other’s eye and make a face, just another funny way of proving that you were both on the same wavelength most of the time. It’s kind of why Minho is so taken with you—he’s never met anyone that gets him the same way.

Reluctantly, Minho puts his pride aside and allows you to help. And as it turns out, you’re actually really good at cooking. Minho doesn’t have to instruct you much, and before he knows it you’re both working like a well-oiled machine, scooting past one another as you switch places between the stove and the sink, reading each other’s minds without even having to ask.

“Taste this.” You say, holding the spoon up to his mouth. Minho leans forward, front teeth poking out, and brings the spoon into his mouth. You cup your hand under his chin to catch any droppings, watching in anticipation as he smacks his lips together.

His eyes light up, big and brown and twinkling under the light of the kitchen. “Perfect.” He smiles.

“Oh you have—uh,” you stop him with a hand on his forearm just as he’s about to turn back to the sink, your other hand hovering next to his face hesitantly, “It’s just, um, your—here.”

Minho’s eyes go wide when your thumb swipes against the corner of his mouth, your touch feather light. It’s so intimate, the only sound being the music playing low from the speaker on the counter. He’s half convinced that you’re able to hear his heartbeat, blood pumping loud in his ears.

“You had some sauce…on your face.” You say shyly, your palm still pressed to his cheek.

“…Oh.”

Minho’s never really looked into your eyes from this close up before. He’s always known they were beautiful, the shape of them soft, full of nothing but the world. He can see himself in them from here, and, selfishly, he hopes you can see yourself in his, too.

He might be imagining it when your gaze flicks down to his lips for just a fraction of a second, but there’s no time to unpack any of that when the sauce starts bubbling over the edge of the pot, spilling on to the burner as loud sizzling and smoke fills the kitchen.

It’s chaos. The bottom of the pot is burnt and there’s only so much of it that’s salvageable. He only bought the exact amount of ingredients too, because this is a self-proclaimed no-food-waste household (as explicitly stated in the napkin contract he has with Jeongin, much to his dismay). So, hooray for conscious consumption of goods!

At the end of it all, there’s no one to blame. You’re both guilty of…whatever that was.

Minho tries to reassure you that it’s okay as he dials the number for the pizza place just down the street, simultaneously shutting down all your attempts to pay as an apology. It doesn’t matter to him, he’d do anything as long as it means he gets to spend time with you. At the end of the day, it’s another memory that he’ll hold close to his heart.

“Listen,” you say, swallowing down a mouthful of pizza, the both of you seated on his couch with a half-eaten box of pizza open on the coffee table, “I know you wanted to cook and all—which, by the way, I’m still sorry—but this is so good. However I’m sure whatever you made would’ve been better.”

Minho chuckles. “Stop lying,” he wipes his hands on a napkin, “I can guarantee you that whatever I cooked wouldn’t be as good as this anyways.”

“Stop selling yourself short, Min. You’re good at everything you do.”

The words fall from your lips so easily, like it’s something you’ve convinced yourself of long ago. Minho’s never been the type to bounce around from one thing to another, always choosing to stick with it until he has it down to a science. Cooking is one of them. Jeongin can attest to all the times Minho has berated him with tasting his latest dishes, chasing him around the apartment with a spoon. The words tighten themselves around his heart.

“I’m not,” he rolls his eyes, “But nine times out of ten, grease and mozzarella cheese are gonna win. I know that for a fact.”

You laugh, and the conversation gradually diverts into a debate about the top ten best greasy foods in existence. You’re heated, half kneeling on the couch with a finger pointed at him as you plead your case for onion rings, when your eyes go past Minho’s head and settle on the shelf of games in the hallway.

“You have games?” you ask, suddenly giddy with excitement as you hurry over to inspect the selection.

Minho watches with fond eyes, collects the plates and napkins to throw away. “Yeah, most of them are Innie’s. We don’t really use them. Sometimes when we’re drunk, other times when we’re bored and decide to wager money for fun.”

You hum, not really paying attention. Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, some decks of cards, Uno—you scan the shelf until your eyes light up at what you find hidden at the bottom.

“Min! Can we play Jenga?”

“Jenga?” Minho asks, re-entering the living room. The coffee table is clear now, and he sits between it and the couch, his back against the cushion. “Isn’t that kind of boring? We have other stuff there.”

“It’s only boring if you play it the way it’s supposed to be played.” You roll your eyes. Minho turns to you when you situate yourself on the floor beside him and only momentarily contemplates running to the bathroom when your knee knocks against his. He’s been holding it together pretty well so far, however The Sauce Incident had him ready to book it if anything had gone further.

“Well how else are we supposed to play it?” He frowns.

“We make up our own rules.”

The pieces scatter across the wood of the coffee table, clacking as you diligently begin putting them together. “This is a date, right?” You ask, stopping for a moment to turn and assess his response.

Minho stills. He genuinely forgot the grounds on which tonight had even happened in the first place. Spending time with you makes him forget everything else. And, despite his fears in the beginning, being on a date with you has felt so natural that it almost seems like you’ve done it a thousand times before.

Your eyes meet. For a moment, Minho lets himself wonder what it’d be like if he went for it right then and there. “Yeah,” he says slowly, unblinking, hoping you can see the sincerity on his face, “A date. One of the best ones I’ve ever been on, actually.”

He almost cries out in victory when your face flushes pink. “Now who’s a liar?” You ask quietly, going back to piecing together the game.

Minho has learned something new tonight: he really likes seeing you flustered.

“Why do you ask?” he decides to cut you the slack, “Or what does this being a date have to do with Jenga rules?”

He waits as you finish the stack, your tongue sticking out in concentration. You’re so cute. Minho mentally pockets that image for safe keeping.

“Sorry, okay, it’s done. But basically, if we pull out a block, we get to ask the other person a question.”

“And if the tower falls…?”

“Hmm,” you think for a moment, chewing on your bottom lip, “Oh! I know. If you lose you have to tell me why you asked me on a date.”

Minho’s stomach flips. “Okay. If you lose you have to tell me why you accepted the date.”

Something unreadable passes over your face, but it’s gone in an instant. You hold your hand out for a shake, and Minho wraps his fingers around it gently.

“Deal.”

“Why are you taking all of the middle pieces?” Minho pouts.

The two of you have gone through a couple turns by now, throwing out random questions for the better half of fifteen minutes. Favorite colors, childhood foods you wouldn’t eat, the best memory you have from high school. Minho’s learned a lot, has fallen for you a lot more. But that was always a given. It’s impossible not to when he can feel the warmth from your body where you’re seated next to him, your presence overtaking all of his senses.

“Because I’m trying to win,” you laugh, putting your freshly pulled piece at the top. Just a little crooked, too. To piss him off. “Favorite movie?”

“Ponyo. Easy. My turn.”

“Seriously? Why Ponyo?”

“One question at a time, princess.”

He means it as a joke, really. He doesn’t even realize what he’s said until after the fact, the nickname making your heart skip a beat. Minho notices, the corners of his lips tugging downwards as he suppresses a smile. He manages to flick one of the side pieces until it gives way.

“What’s one thing you regret?”

“Ooh, getting deep I see.” You laugh, taking a sip of your soda. There’s a long pause, and then, “I regret spilling my coffee on Hyunjin that day.”

Minho’s brow furrows. You…regret it? He runs through all the possible reasons in his head. Surely it can’t be because you regret becoming friends with them, friends with him, right?

“Why?” He chances.

“One question at a time, princess.” You echo, laughing at his shocked expression.

You remove the last middle piece. “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate our first date?”

Minho’s brain is going a thousand miles a minute. “A ten. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.” He says it fast, wastes no time in moving forward to remove his own piece. He doesn’t even notice that your cheeks have gone pink again, too busy itching to ask his next question.

“Why do you regret spilling your coffee on Hyunjin?”

Minho watches you, lets his mind wander to the worst possible thing you could say in this situation, and mentally prepares to book it to the bathroom.

You take a deep breath, “I regret it because I wasn’t supposed to spill it on him. I was supposed to spill it on you.”

Wait, what?

Minho blinks. “What are you talking about?”

This is humiliating for you. A terrible thing to have to admit. Up until this moment, you’d thought that this information would follow you to your grave. You press the heel of your palms to your eyes, “This is so embarrassing,” you groan.

Minho pulls one hand away. He’s not really sure what to say, mostly because he’s confused, but, “You can tell me.”

“I had…” you start, looking up at him slowly, “A plan. With Jiwoo.” Minho nods for you to continue. “I’d seen you and Hyunjin walking through the quad a few times, and I thought that you were cute, but I didn't know how to approach you. So I did something stupid and decided that I would literally just crash into you. But I fucked it up.”

I thought that you were cute. The words echo in Minho’s ears like a bell. All this time, all those stolen glances and lingering touches, all the ways you would make hope spike in his chest that maybe you felt the same—they were real.

“So you, wait—” Minho shakes his head, “So you’re telling me that all this time…”

You roll your eyes. “Yes, Min, really. All this time.”

Minho’s never been skydiving, but he imagines that this is what it feels like. Free falling—his soul hurtling towards earth at a horrifying speed, slamming back into his body right here in his living room with a force so strong it would knock him off his feet if he wasn’t already sitting on the floor. You were interested in him first.

Wordlessly, you lean forward, pulling out a piece with practiced ease. Minho waits with bated breaths.

“Can I kiss you?”

Minho feels like he might pass out. “Am I dreaming right now?”

“You didn’t pull out a piece.”

He scrambles forward, clumsily nudging a piece on the side that ends up sending the entire tower toppling over. You smile at him, soft and sweet. “Looks like you have to pay up with an answer. You know, since you lost.”

Minho doesn’t care. “Because I like you,” he breathes out, “I asked you on a date because I like you. I like you so much, ever since I saw you that day. And, funnily enough, I’ve always wished you’d spilled that coffee on me instead, too.”

The confession feels like a weight lifted off his shoulders. He’s spent so long pining after you, laying awake at night thinking about how this would go down if he ever got the chance. He never expected for it to happen like this, much less for you to possibly feel the same.

Panic slowly starts to rise in his chest when you don’t respond. He watches as you reach an arm over, build a small tower out of a few pieces, and then knock it over. You turn to him with a small smile, “Oops, I lost too.”

Minho is so in love with you that it hurts.

“I accepted the date because I like you, Minho. I’ve just been waiting for you to ask.”

He doesn’t think twice before he’s surging forward, cupping your face with one hand and kissing you with a tenderness that has you melting into his touch.

There’s no fireworks behind his eyes, no big bang or grand display of whatever it is that happens in the movies. But there’s a warmth, it starts out small in the center of his chest and spreads throughout his entire body, lights his skin aflame and travels all the way to his fingertips. You’re like that. A gentle presence, someone who worms their way into the very essence of his being and burrows into the deepest parts of him, like it was never his to begin with. Kissing you is slow, and deep, and right. He wouldn’t want it any other way. Minho doesn’t ever want to stop.

He lets his other hand fall to your waist, pulls you closer until you’re practically straddling him with his back against the couch, your knees on either side of his hips. Minho lets out a long, drawn out groan when you tilt his head back farther, his lips parting and allowing you to lick inside of his mouth. It’s so good. So good. He can’t believe he ever lived without knowing what this felt like; lived without ever having you this close before.

After a while, Minho reluctantly pulls back, holding you by the shoulders. When he looks up, your eyes are half-lidded. You look utterly debauched, cheeks pink and lips swollen from how hard they’d been pressed against his own. “We should probably slow down.” He tries hard to convince himself, too. “Talk about it all, you know? I don’t—this isn’t a one time thing for me. I don’t want it to be. I like you. I want you to know that.” He says softly, reaching up to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear.

You lean into his hand, smiling when he flattens his palm to let your head rest there. “You’re like, so perfect that I want to kiss you until you forget your own name.”

Minho’s ears go red, his head falling forward until it rests against your collarbone. The feeling of his breath against your skin makes you laugh and run a hand through his hair, rubbing at the back of his neck fondly.

“This is gonna be so bad now that you say stuff like that.”

“Bad? No, I think it’s cute. You’re cute.”

“Shut up,” he whines, but there’s no bite to it. Not when he can look up and press a kiss to your lips. A dream come true. The entire world in his hands, exactly where it was always meant to be.

🏠

In the morning, when Jeongin comes back home, one hand covering his eyes just in case, he calls out,

“Everyone better be dressed! Or else I’m ripping up that napkin and making a new one with No fornicating on the furniture added into the fine print.”

When he doesn’t get a response, he rounds the corner, and finds the two of you nestled into the couch. Minho’s back is pressed into the cushions, his arms wrapped tightly around you as you nuzzle your face into his neck.

Jeongin huffs out a laugh, sends a quick text to Hyunjin that reads: Negative. Clothes are still on. But they’re so cute it’s almost sickening.

He snaps a picture to send to the group chat, grabs a piece of cold pizza, and retreats to his room.

Yang Jeongin Fanclub

jeongin: [Attachment: 1 image]

chan: AWWWWWWW

jiwoo: i’m gonna cry

changbin: dude is that the good pizza from down the street?

hyunjin: FINALLY

hyunjin: wait

hyunjin: does this mean i have to send back his $20?

[tags: @palindrome969 @summergirlsmj @n1staytiny @strwbrrychannie ]

#lee know x reader #first date series : minho #lee know fluff #lee know angst #skz x reader #lee know fanfic #skz fanfic #lee know fic #skz fic #lee know fanfiction #skz fanfiction #stray kids x reader #stray kids fanfic #stray kids fic #stray kids fanfiction #lee know #godslino #first date series

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scoupsofjisung · 2 months

Text

˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚ texting bang chan happy father’s day (best dad of 7 kids fr)

🧸 paring: bang chan x f! reader

🧸 warnings: mentioned implied possible pregnancy as part of a joke, brushed past v quickly

🧸 author rambles: i’m just having fun at this point guys, and i have the most schoolgirl crush on chan thus my urge to flirt with him and threaten everyone and anyone for him. maybe surprisingly, gift giving is my lowest love language, however it’s an easy way to show u care fr. go pick a flower from outside and give it to someone u love asap 🫵

masterlist

blog info post!

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lixiesfreckless · 2 months

Text

Into It | b. c.

➸ synopsis: the california sunset looks pretty damn good when you're on the hood of Chan's car.

➸ starring: bang chan x female reader

➸ word count: 3k

➸ general content: best friend!chan, car sex, drunk sex, chan is lowkey obsessed with you, mutual pining, dirty talk

➸ warnings: lots of swearing, sexual content, alcohol consumption, mentions of california(LMAO east coast on top)

➸ rating: 18+ MA

➸ author’s note: another oldie but goodie! also I don't even bias chan but I literally went insane writing this so what does that mean-

♫ into it- chase atlantic

Far away.

You feel like your mind is so far away.

The engine roars in your ears as you and Chan zip around the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles, convertible top down to let the wind whip through the vehicle.

Your hand dangles outside the car door, lazily twirling a half empty bottle of beer in your fingertips as you fully sink into the car seat. Your thoughts are fuzzy, his music is loud, and the breeze is enough to keep you from getting too hot.

This is as close as you can get to bliss.

Palm trees lining the road, orange and magenta in the sky, hell— if heaven didn’t look like this, did you even want to go?

The car slows down enough for Chan to make a right turn, angling the two of you to a desert close to where they host raves and concerts every summer. By the time the current song stops playing, Chan is pulling the convertible off the road, driving over hardened clay and rocks until he’s about 50 yards away from the asphalt.

“Pass me one of those,” he says, putting the car in park and slumping into the seat. You reach down to the six pack of beer near your feet and pass one to him, bringing your own bottle up to your lips as he takes it.

The guy sticks the cap between his teeth, cracking it open with a sharp twist of his arm, and flicks the cap into the cup holder.

“That’s one way to crack open a cold one,” you chuckle, taking another swig.

“Too bad I’m not with the boys…” he sighs, narrowly dodging a swat from your hand as he laughs.

“Hush, I’m better than the boys.”

The two of you fall into a comfortable silence, letting the troubles of the week dissolve under the tangy taste of the alcohol and the bass from the speakers.

You can’t remember exactly when you started spending your Friday nights like this, driving to random places in the passenger seat of Chan’s car. Usually you’d prefer to spend your nights indoors, but with him, it was never overwhelming. He was your weekly dose of adventure, and you became addicted easily.

But how could you not when he was so…Chan?

He always knew what songs to play, what you felt like talking about, what kind of view would cheer you up— he became someone that knew you better than your best friend, even.

And there was something so disarming about his vintage band tees, beat up converse, blond curls and dimples— especially his dimples. They were a weapon and he used them.

And they reappear right as you notice you’re staring at him. Serves you right for zoning out in his general direction.

“Something on your mind?” He chuckles, and you pop the passenger door open, shaking your head.

“Nope. Just need to stretch.”

You walk around to the front of the car, and the shell dips slightly once you perch on the hood.

This beer is defective, you decide. Alcohol is supposed to blur your thoughts, not sharpen them.

And yet all you can think about is the man moving to lean against the front of the car, standing just a foot away from you.

Your mind pretends not to notice the way Chan’s gaze lingers on your lips, almost glazing over every time you take a swig from the bottle in your hand. Your body however, burns. Reacts like water on hot oil. It feels like every cell is dancing in the remnants of the sunset when he looks at you.

It might just be the alcohol though.

You lean back and lie on the hood of the car, using your hands as a makeshift pillow behind your head as you watch the sky turn an even deeper shade of pink. Chan takes one glance at you and takes a long sip of beer as he quickly looks away, pushing the sight of your shirt riding up your torso far back into his mind. The…things he could do there-

“Shit, how many of those have we gone through,” you mumble, lazily shifting your eyes up to the sky.

“Uh, four?” Chan glances back at you, mentally cursing at the way your face matches the sky above, dusted with pink. He doesn’t know it’s from you staring at his arm veins. “We have water in the back if you want some-”

“No, no I’m good.” Your voice sounds like honey to him; maybe he should pass the bottle back to you, just so you’ll stay quiet. “Just feeling more than a little buzzed.”

“Oh yeah?” He chuckles, and the huskiness in his voice practically pokes you in the side. “Now would be the best time to do something crazy then.”

“Something crazy?” You laugh out loud, then sit up slightly on the hood, leaning back on your elbows. “There’s nothing but desert for miles. What are we supposed to do-”

Your sentence stops dead in its tracks as your eyes meet with Chan’s, the heat rushing to your gut all at once as the wind blows his blond curls into his eyes. He doesn’t even hesitate this time; his eyes wander lower and lower on your face until they land on your bottom lip, trapped between your teeth.

“God, why do you always do that…” he whispers, shifting his gaze back to the road.

…What?

The wind whistles in your ears as you feel them growing hotter, unsure what to make of his sudden statement.

“Do…do what?” He looks back at you with tortured eyes, as if you’re the only water in the California desert.

“Bite your lip like that; it makes me think-” he stops and drains the rest of the bottle in his hand, then leaves it on the hood and shakes his head. “Never mind. I’m gonna turn the music up.”

Your eyes follow him as he trails along the side of the car, and you feel a certain window of opportunity beginning to close. Summoning most of your courage, you jump off the hood and walk up behind Chan, waiting for him to finish messing with the stereo before tapping him on the back.

“Yeah?” He turns around and barely has any time to think before you’re pressing on his shoulders, pulling him down slightly as you crash your lips onto his. He immediately catches your waist, letting out a surprised muffle that dissolves into a sigh as he pulls you against him.

You break apart after a moment, lips still tingly and buzzing with excitement, but you wonder if you’ve made the right decision as you look up at Chan, who still has his eyes closed.

“You’re drunk,” he whispers, finally looking down at you with a flushed face.

“Not drunk enough.” You twist the shoulder seams of his shirt between your fingers in consideration. “I’m sober enough to know that look. And if you don’t do something about it, then I-”

“You want me to do something about it?” He pulls your hips tight against his, and now that you’re leaning on him, you can feel the bass from the car reverberating through both of you. That combined with the buzz of the alcohol and his hands on your bare midriff nearly sends you over the edge, but you keep your composure.

And by that you mean you pounce on him— you love his voice, but you’re tired of talking about something you could be doing.

If you both were a little less tipsy, the kisses would probably be less frantic. But neither of you seem to care, hands grabbing at each other desperately as you search for better ways to pull each other closer.

“You have no idea,” he pants between kisses, “you have no fucking idea how badly I’ve wanted this.” You shudder into his lips, raking through his blond locks and tugging at the ends as Chan’s grip tightens on your hips. He takes a sharp inhale before picking you up, waiting for you to latch your legs around his torso before he slides his arms under your legs. As he walks around the car, you both never separate; you’re actually surprised when you feel the cool metal of the hood come into contact with the backs of your thighs.

He nestles himself between your legs, resting his hands on your thighs and tracing the distressed hem of your denim skirt as the bass of the song picks up. You’re lucky you’re on the hood and not the trunk; the subwoofers vibrating against you would have been too much for sure.

He pulls away from your lips, dipping his head to catch his breath as he pants into the crook of your neck. To him, this is insane. He has you on the hood of his car. He has you on the hood of his car.

How is a man supposed to think straight in this situation?

Meanwhile, his hot breath on your neck is driving you to the brink of insanity. Just a raise of your shoulder and he’d be kissing it. Shoot, he could make you crazy with his fingers just an inch higher too.

“Chan,” you whisper, not realizing how close your breathy voice was to his ear, and the last of his resolve practically evaporates off of him.

“Y/n…” his nose follows the curve of your neck as he makes his way up to your face, “tell me if I need to stop, I just…”

He hooks his hands around your knees and pulls, effectively pinning your hips together in a casual display of strength, and you gasp before he seizes your bottom lip between his, sucking and biting until a soft moan slips from your lips.

“Fuck, make that sound again,” he groans, hands sliding back up your thighs to the hem of your shirt. You relent, no longer keeping your sighs and sounds of pleasure to yourself as his hands slide under your crop top, around to your back.

He makes quick work of your bra, releasing the tension around your ribcage before sliding his thumbs along the underside of your breasts. Just thinking about all of the things he could do to you has both of you buzzing with anticipation, panting against each other’s mouths.

His thumb just barely grazes your nipple and you swear you see the world begin to tilt.

You don’t know what it is; normally a gesture that small wouldn’t elicit such a reaction out of you, but the alcohol in your veins and the bass under your thighs seem to bring every motion of his straight to your core. And usually you’d be embarrassed at how loud you are, but you can’t bring yourself to care. Not when he continues just like that, both thumbs barely putting any pressure on the peaks under your shirt.

Your head lolls back slightly, and Chan wastes no time in licking a thin stripe up the column of your neck, stopping right at the shell of your ear.

“Ideally, I’d want to take my time with you, but right now…” his voice is thick with lust as he flicks both of your nipples, and you jolt forward. “I don’t think you’d want me to.”

“Chan, please,” you gasp out, wanting to press your thighs together, “get on with it already.”

He obliges you, hands sliding down to your skirt and then back up under it, looking for the edge of your panties. Once he has them, he pulls them down and over your Nike blazers, tossing them into the convertible onto the passenger seat.

He then reaches behind you, pushing two empty bottles off the car as he presses you flat against the hood. The sound of the bottles breaking against the rocky terrain is barely registered by you though, you’re more focused on Chan’s free hand snaking back up your skirt.

Curses slip out of his mouth once his thumb brushes across your clit; he’s more than shocked to feel just how soaked you are, but you shake your head vigorously, catching his attention.

“Skip it,” you say breathlessly, looking directly into his eyes. He understands instantly, coffee colored eyes practically turning coal black seeing your desperation.

The sky seems to swirl different shades of purple and pink as the wind feathers over your body, and just past the contrails in the sky, you can see the stars beginning to poke their faces into the rosy backdrop.

There is a very real possibility that you are dreaming all of this.

But the sound of his zipper being pulled down snaps your senses into focus, and the possibility of Chan fucking you under a sky like this seems more urgent.

The next minute flies by, and before you know it Chan is lining himself up at your entrance, checking that the condom is on properly before lifting your skirt to your hips.

His eyes flicker to yours momentarily, and you nod before relaxing fully, letting your head rest against the hood as he holds onto your hips tightly.

And then you instantly tense up once he starts pushing into you.

It’s almost embarrassing how easy it is for him to slide in without really touching you, but the hiss he draws between his teeth tells you he’s not really focusing on that.

You’re focusing on how you didn’t catch a glimpse of him before he put it in, and now your entire lower abdomen is tingling in excitement over just how much of him there is. Silly how you were trying to sober up for this moment, only for you to feel high all over again with him fully inside you.

“I- shit, okay wow,” he hisses, dragging himself out and back in slowly. “You’re so warm, god-”

You can’t even respond, you’re so occupied by the feeling of his ridges along your walls that your fingers are already looking for something to grab onto.

Somehow in the haze of it all, you still want to urge him deeper, so you wrap your legs around his waist and watch as he tilts his head back, eyes fluttering closed mid-thrust.

“Oh fuck,” he moans, picking up the pace and holding your hips tighter as you whine, feeling him finally start to brush one of your sensitive spots.

Chan cannot process the scene playing out in front of him. You’re draped over the hood of his car, taking what he’s giving you so easily, face flushed and hair falling over your face from the wind. Your shirt is halfway up your torso, but your skirt is up six inches too high, high enough to see where he's sheathing himself inside of you. He couldn’t make this up if he tried.

The pressure building inside of you jumps to the next level once his hand slides up your shirt again, gently rubbing circles over your nipple as opposed to the faster thrusts down below. Your back arches into his hand as you gasp, squeezing your thighs around him tighter as you do so.

“Chan,” you whine, scratching your nails against the car, and a few more curses tumble out of his mouth as he stares down at you.

“You’re so good y/n,” he pants, snapping his hips against you now, “better than I- ah, I imagined.”

“You’ve thought about this before?” You’re cut off by another moan; it’s a miracle how you can even speak.

Chan doesn’t reply; instead, he hooks his hands under your knees and drops them on his shoulders, then scoops his hands back under your hips and pulls them to his with a quick snap.

“I’ve thought about this before,” he says with a wicked grin, hitting you at just the right angle to pull a sharp gasp out from your lips.

“Oh my god, there-” you moan breathlessly, pressing your hands flat onto the hood of the car as he pounds into you relentlessly.

The sky is spinning. Your heart is pounding. You wish you could focus on something, anything other than the spongy part of you that Chan is hitting to the beat of the song under you, just so you could last a little bit longer.

But the sight of him with your legs around his neck, eyes closed with strands of gold wisping across his face, the look of pure ecstasy painted across his cheeks, ensures that you have close to three seconds before the knot in your stomach unravels.

“Shit, don’t stop,” you say as you feel yourself coming undone, back arching into your release which only makes Chan pound deeper, heightening the intensity tenfold.

He cries out once you clamp down around him, spitting out random strings of curses until he’s emptying his restraint into the condom, slowing down his thrusts as he finally opens his eyes again, locking gazes with you.

He looks nothing short of ethereal with the now purple backdrop of the sky, framing his blond locks with lilac clouds as he slowly pulls out of you, doing his best not to overstimulate you. You almost tell him not to; being that full was nice, something you’d probably never admit unless you were actually drunk.

“Wow,” you breathe out, watching him lower your legs down to the hood. “That was…”

“Crazy, I know,” he laughs, still trying to calm his breathing as he looks at you. “But you were amazing, holy shit-”

“…better than the boys?” You tease, smirking up at him.

He gives you a knowing look, picking up on the funny way you worded the question. But instead of getting flustered, he leans over the hood, caging you against it with his arms.

“Hmm…I don’t know. I think I’d have to try this a couple of times before I can give you a definite answer.”

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peanutbutterand · 19 days

Text

Fuckboy Bestfriend Hyunjin

FuckboyBestfriendHyunjin!

FuckboyBestfriendHyunjin! Who tells you he’d prefer to not fall in love because why would anyone willingly fall into anything with the potential for heartbreak.

FuckboyBestfriendHyunjin! Who tells you to be careful with your heart because men are terrible and they do terrible things but protests that he only wants the best for you whenever you call him out for doing exactly those terrible things to other people.

FuckboyBestfriendHyunjin! Who cringes but suppresses it with a smirk as he stands behind you, watching as the captain of the football team stutters, asking if you’d be available for dinner tonight.

FuckboyBestfriendHyunjin! Who whines as you get ready for your date, proclaiming acts of betrayal as you trade a fun movie night with him for spaghetti and meatballs with Captain Stutters.

FuckboyBestfriendHyunjin! Who wraps his arms around you, places a kiss on your forehead while mumbling to be careful, reminding you that he is only one call away if anything goes wrong or if you simply need him.

FuckboyBestfriendHyunjin! Who sinks into your couch, conflicted with what to do because he finally acknowledges the three facts he has continuously suppressed since the moment he met you:

1. That his mind is overwhelmed with thoughts of you.

2. His heart is filled with only you.

3. Maybe falling in love isn’t so bad after all. Especially not with you.

#hyunjin #hyunjin x reader #skz #skz x reader #skz x you #skz fanfiction #straykids #straykids x reader #skz imagine #hwang hyunjin #hwang hyujin imagines #silly #lee know #lee know x reader

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jilixthinker · 28 days

Note

hii 👋🏻 i don't know if this has been written before but i saw it in a comment and wanted to read it for skz.... 👀

🎀you are asking to put a ribbon on his d🎀 aaaand the reactions and maybe the events that follow 🤭🤭

it could be changbin or 3racha or skz all separately, whatever you want 🩷

candy boy

=͟͟͞♡ changbin × fem!reader

=͟͟͞♡ ribbon challenge

word count: 1.2K

content warning: explicit sexual content, established relationship, sub!changbin, oral sex (m receiving)

a/c: this took forever and i am very sorry! but Binnie was so perfect for this and I just needed to give it a go. hope you’ll forgive me hun ❤️‍🩹

=͟͟͞♡ please consider reblogging if you like my works!

Changbin eyes are pleading, lashes long and pretty against his full cheeks and a tiny tear nestled on the corner of his eyes. He’s been watching you for several minutes now, as you diligently apply some makeup on his face. The blush you did choose for highlighting his features is of a pretty cool shade of pink, and it matches the lipstick that you carefully selected between the ones he picked earlier. It’s a little bit sticky on his lips, and it shines as if it was a layer of caramelized sugar. It surely gonna taste sweet.

“Baby…” he whispers, a small whine escaping from his parted mouth, “how long is it going to take?”

You finish brushing the blush on his cheekbones and pout at him. “Binnie, you promised that you were going to stay still.”

Changbin shifts from his position. He is sitting on a chair, in front of the wall mirror of your bathroom, and he is wearing nothing but a big fluffy sweater. Pink, of course. His plush thighs are parted and the shiny head of his small cock is peaking out from the soft bush of jet black hair just at the end of his happy trail. That is soft as well, you know that. He always use shampoo and conditioner on that as well, and you always spend an insane amount of time caressing and twirling your fingers around his curls. But not today. Today he has to wait.

“Yes, I know – but…” he continues, puffing some air out. The fabric of the sweater accentuates the softness of his chest, and you softly let your hand fall in between his clothed pecs, “it kinda hurts now.”

Your gaze ends up on the soft pudge of his tummy, barely covered by the only piece of clothing he is wearing and you pinch it between your thumb and index, making him shiver. “Does it?” you ask, fake sweetness on your tone. “That’s because you got all hard while I was making you pretty, baby. If it would have stayed soft, it wouldn’t hurt for sure”.

Changbin sighs and his cock twitches in between his legs. “I tried,” he insists, “but you keep touching me, it’s not my fault.”

That’s not completely untrue. You have been teasing him for the last 30 minutes. Your thighs purposely brushing against his bare skin and hands wandering on his chest and shoulders, lightly grazing at his nipples from above the fabric. He’s been waiting for you to finish his makeup, as you asked, but he got hard, that was almost inevitable.

But he was the one asking for this in the first place. You were peacefully testing some new products that you’ve been wanting to try for a long time, and he interrupted you by showing you a tiktok video of some guy doing something called “ribbon challenge”, demanding your attention and pleading you until you finally gave up.

And now there he is, flushed and aroused, pretty makeup applied on his round and soft face, and a small tight ribbon tied at the base of his chubby tiny cock.

The ribbon is pink – as his sweater and as his face – and the tie is constricting his length at the limits of decency. If he just had stayed soft, it wouldn’t hurt. But you did nothing to make him stay soft.

“And what do I have to do about it?” you ask. Your lips find their way to the soft spot behind his ear and you place a humid kiss there.

Changbin hiccups and a pleading whine leaves his lips once again. His cock is bobbed against the fat of his inner thigh and the curls above it curls are glistening with a few drops of white precum. The ribbon stands cutely just an inch below that, the pink color in contrast with the redness of his length. The tip leaks just a pearl of dense liquid from the slit and Changbin eyes run to yours.

“I’ve been good. Please. Please, I’ve been good. Am I not pretty?” he asks as his cock tries to gain some friction by closing his legs a little. Your own knee quickly stops the movement, slotting in between his sturdy thighs.

“You are so pretty, Binnie. The prettiest,” you concede, pressing another languid kiss on the corner of his sticky lips. “I was just teasing you. What do you want, baby? You want my lips?”

Changbin almost mewls at your question and he nods furiously, making you chuckle. “Yes, please. Please, your mouth. Need s’ much, Binnie needs it.”

His cockhead bumps again his belly as you shift from your position to kneel down on the floor. The slap on the skin is lewd and wet, and it draws a thin stripe of precum on his bellybutton. Changbin soft grunts are delicious and you always try to elongate this moment more than you can just to feel him becoming restless under your touch. But today you played with him enough, and you decide to give him what he’s asking for as you lower you face, filling your lungs with his strawberry scent and finally mouthing at his shaft before grabbing the base of his cock with two of your fingers.

Changbin hisses what sounds like a curse, and you cup his balls with your other hand, suckling just at the gummy tip and swirling your tongue around it. “Like this, baby? My sweet candy boy wants me to eat him up like this?” you breathe, giving another kitten lick on the underside of the puffy head.

Changbin gulps again. “Yes. Oh god, please, yes. Thank you, thank you.” he pants out, teeth biting the fat of his bottom lip.

You smile mischievously as you grip his length, slapping his cockhead against your tongue. You do it a few times until Changbin is a shivering mess above you, and a spurt of white liquid shoots out of him. You use your thumb to spread it on your lips, mimicking the way you applied the clear lipstick on him.

“Baby, ah– please,” he keens as you slap his cock on your wet muscle a few more times before his hips buck forward and you curl your fingers around the base of his length once again. He lets out a shuddering breath, and with a quick movement you sink your head down to engulf the entirety of him.

When you feel him twitching against the roof of your mouth, you detach from his cock with a pop, hand lazily cupping one of his balls and rolling it on your palm. “Binnie, baby,” you coo, “I want to have fun too.”

Changbin pants heavily and hisses a painful whine at the loss of your heath. His cute face is flushed with a thin layer of sweat and the lipgloss is imperceptibly smudged on the corner of his lips. “W-what do you mean?”

You smile, and you nose at his tummy, biting it softly. “I mean…” you puff as you start a slow rhythm of stroking his aching girth, “that it would be so nice if you could pop that little ribbon with this cute little cock of yours. What do you think about that, baby? Can you get hard enough?”

Changbin eyes are glassy and teary, but he nods nonetheless. “I can. Binnie can.” he mutters in between his teeth, cock already engorged and impossibly red under your lustful gaze. “Binnie can make it,” he assures you with devotion. “Can make it pop.”

©️ jilixthinker, 2024. please do not copy, translate, or republish my works anywhere.

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fizzydrink698 · 4 months

Text

consort vi | minho

pairing: lee minho x reader

word count: 17.1k

genre: historical au, arranged marriage au, enemies-to-lovers

warnings: period-typical sexism, a boatload of family issues, a rapidly increasing amount of sexual tension, like reader is starting to go the tiniest bit feral about it

summary:

Minho paused, the lingering traces of cheer disappearing before your eyes. The shift in his mood was almost tangible, and it felt as if you had made some sort of misstep in a dance, thrown yourself and your partner out of rhythm.

His gaze flickered upwards, so very briefly, to look at you, before moving downwards. Down to your notes, down to where the space between your bodies was at its narrowest, barely a few fingers’ width between your skirts and his thigh. He took a breath.

An uneasy sleep must have reclaimed you in the night, because you awakened to soft morning light streaming through the windows – and chambers entirely devoid of Minho.

You sat up, unsteady, the beginnings of a headache already forming. Your thoughts were scattered, muffled as if wrapped in cotton, barely intelligible under the dull throbbing.

An empty bedchamber. Did that disappoint you? The sheets beside you seemed undisturbed, indicating that he hadn’t joined you at any point in the night, hadn’t risen from the couch he’d been sleeping on last night when –

Embarrassment – hot, ugly flashes of it – flared within you, so violent that you physically shuddered in an effort to suppress it. You wouldn’t be so careless again, risking something so mortifying and so vulnerable as being caught in a position like that.

A tiny voice in your mind uttered thanks for Minho’s order to keep servants out of his chambers without specific request. You didn’t want to imagine having to untangle these awful thoughts in front of an audience waiting to dress you for the morning.

The more you dwelled on the situation, the more you could feel something in your chest twist. Shame, perhaps. You couldn’t help but picture last night again and again, your awful thoughts painting over your memories, imagining Minho’s eyes open instead of closed, imagining the curl of his lip as he watched you in disdain, maybe even in disgust–

No.

You felt your expression harden, breath expelling from you in one sharp burst. You hadn’t realised how much anger you could summon at merely an imagined Minho. Already, even at just the thought of him, you found yourself itching to rebuke him, to challenge the contempt you had imagined yourself.

There was a danger that you could spend the whole day in this bed, imagining all the ways in which you could argue with Minho.

So, instead, you forced yourself out of bed, determined to focus on the rest of your day and leave last night firmly in the past.

It was strange to realise just how quiet these chambers were. They were so far removed from the bustling of the palace’s lower floors that even now, as scores of nobles and servants alike rose from their beds and began their days, you could almost mistake the palace for being empty.

The spring morning air was no longer a shock of cold, but pleasantly mild. Perhaps you should make use of the weather today, you thought. It would be good to get some fresh air.

And then, you came to a sudden halt – as a flash of orange caught your attention out of the corner of your eye.

You turned your head, startled, to find a tabby cat perched on the low table of Minho’s chambers, staring you down.

This was not the pampered sort of housecat you had seen in the houses of your mother’s friends during your youth. While this cat seemed well-fed, there were tell-tale signs of the fights it must have gotten into. There was a pea-sized chunk missing from its left ear, and a faint scar on its little orange snout.

Perhaps this was a kitchen mouser? But how had it wandered so far into the palace, all the way into Minho’s chambers? How had it gotten past those heavy wooden doors, not to mention the guards stationed nearby?

You dared to take a step towards it – to no response. The cat continued to stare. Its tail twitched from one side to the other, slowly, almost lazily.

It didn’t move as you approached, instead continuing to eye you with an expression so distinctly unimpressed for such a tiny face.

Of course, the second you lifted your hand towards it, it jumped away from you in the blink of an eye. There was no panic to its retreat, just a vague sense of disdain as it withdrew from your reach.

For one brief second, you were bizarrely reminded of Minho.

To your own surprise, laughter bubbled up in your chest, slipping out between your lips. It lifted a weight off of your chest, leaving you feeling just a little lighter as you observed the way the cat shot you what could only be described as the feline equivalent of a scowl before it padded over to the bed and disappeared beneath it.

Deciding against following the cat and disturbing its hiding place, you chose to head for the door and request breakfast be served outside.

It seemed only right that the lingering worries of the previous night’s events would disappear in the light of a warm spring day.

There was something so calming about the palace grounds in the morning. At your request, a table and chair had been set up at the base of a hill, just by the long winding steps back up to the palace itself, in perfect position for you to gaze out at the huge expanses of land in front of you.

Morning dew budded on the still blades of grass. Clouds slowly drifted across the sky above, the sun hiding behind them, only reappearing at just the moment the air grew too chilly. In the distance, a light layer of fog lingered amongst the trees of the royal forest, retreating further and further with each moment.

There was nothing but peace and quiet.

You breathed deeply, savouring the morning air, as you reached for the last slice of bread. Beside it, in a tiny porcelain dish, sat a little pat of creamy butter. You scraped the last of it up with your knife to carefully spread onto the bread.

Your plans for the day were the same as always. Studying, mostly. You were eager to crack open the most recent council records you could find, already making plans to note down the stances of each member, the factions that might have formed, anything that might be useful.

How soon would Minho talk to his father? How much time did you have to prepare? You should have pressed for more details.

You could ask him at dinner this evening, you realised. It was still such a strange idea, to think that you and Minho could talk to each other so…often, now.

Because you shared a bedchamber, a voice in your mind – one that sounded suspiciously like your mother – reminded you. You should be doing so much more than just talking.

A mouthful of bread lodged itself in your throat mid-swallow, making you cough and splutter as you reached for your tea.

Not that you were particularly eager for that, of course. Last night had been a brief moment of insanity, a sudden break from rational thought, brought on by returning to the bed that held so many strong memories. It had infected your dreams, and even seeped into your sleep-addled actions in the dead of night, but now you had recovered.

Now, once again, you were just as uninterested as he was. Moving to his chambers was good enough to mend your image as a successful, stable pairing. It didn’t matter what happened behind closed doors, because you had gotten what you wanted.

But before you could make an effort to divert your thoughts back towards the day ahead, the peace of the morning was broken.

You watched as a group of palace guards marched into sight, descending the palace steps – and you stilled when you saw the person they were accompanying.

Her Majesty, the Queen.

You sat up a little straighter, as your eyes met across the wide-open space of the palace lawns. She always seemed so perfectly put together, her long dark hair twisted and braided neatly into a bun, the soft and sweeping fabrics of her dress somehow spotless even when brushing against the ground.

In her fine features, there was so much of Felix. You almost wanted to look away.

Instead, you followed protocol to the letter, rising to your feet and bowing your head at her arrival. “Your Majesty.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she replied, and there was a genuine soft note of surprise to her voice that reinforced her words. “If you’re finished with your meal, would you like to accompany me across the grounds?”

You blinked, lifting your head in shock. You’d barely spoken to this woman in weeks. You’d half-expected her to ignore you. You’d half-given up on the affection the two of you had grown for each other during your childhood.

“Y-yes,” you replied, and cleared your throat. “Yes, I’d love to.”

She gave you a smile – one so deeply familiar that it made your heart ache for just a second – and inclined her head, silently offering you the place by her side.

You moved quickly, almost without thinking, barely retaining the grace expected for a lady of your position, as you tried to join her before she could change her mind.

Before the two of you could start walking, however, she first turned to glance at the guards behind her. With a firm, clear voice of a queen, she told them. “I trust I’m accompanied by guards possessing the respect of allowing two ladies some privacy while they talk. Am I not?”

The nearest guard’s eyes widened slightly in understanding, and he hurried to nod at her. “Yes, Your Majesty. Of course.”

“Delightful to hear. The usual twelve paces behind will suffice,” she said, her voice so casual that the comment could almost be described as offhand, before she finally set off. You had to quicken your steps slightly to catch up with her.

And, sure enough, the guards waited until you were twelve paces ahead before they followed – at the perfect distance to remain out of earshot.

This was the woman you remembered from your childhood. Always polite, always charming, and just a little cleverer than she seemed.

You fell into step beside her, searching for something to say to start the conversation. “I heard a delegation from the Lakelands are on their way.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding with a warm smile. “Most of the delegates only came to their position after I left, but I know a handful. Among them is a prince I last saw as a young boy. I look forward to seeing the man he’s now grown to be.”

“That will be nice,” you remarked, looking for something else to say. Something clever, or funny, or charming. It used to be so much easier to talk to her. “Do you miss the Lakelands?”

“Occasionally. Especially in the winter. I’ve never developed a taste for the cold that sets in here,” she said, but there was no trace of sadness in her voice. Nothing wistful. “But what about you? Are you keeping well?”

“Yes,” you replied – but it felt like a half-truth at best. “As well as can be.”

“I’m sure you’ve had so many pleasantries asked about your marriage,” she said. “That’s usually all people can think to talk about, with women like us.”

Her words struck something in you, hooking something strange and raw and tugging it out into the open.

“That’s usually the topic of conversation, yes.”

Her lips twitched, the briefest flicker of a smile. “Then we’ll speak about something else. Are you still keeping to your studies?”

“Yes!” you exclaimed, unable to keep your excitement from rushing out. “Practically every day. Mostly, I’ve been focusing on my histories and geography, but I like to brush up on my languages every so often.”

“You did always love studying your histories,” the Queen nodded, and for the first time in your conversation, you picked up on the slightest hint of sadness in her tone.

It sparked a vaguely familiar feeling. An old desire to cheer her, the feeling so ingrained that it felt like slipping on an old favourite coat.

“My new tutor has helped quite splendidly,” you said, with a smile just a touch forced. “I hadn’t realised how much more I could learn with someone following me in my interests, instead of just telling me what I should be interested in.”

The Queen smiled back at you, and hers seemed entirely genuine. “There seems so much to catch up on. I’ve been meaning to talk to you sooner.”

Her words, as light and carefree as she had offered them, managed to hit something deep within you. Your expression faltered, as you felt the words dig into you, like claws gripping your flesh, piercing you.

You blurted out your only thought. “Why didn’t you?”

The question came out in a rush, an outpouring of emotion that you had tried so hard to keep dammed. You watched the way she paused, caught off-guard by your sudden harsh words.

You swallowed, trying frantically to recover some sense of manners. “I mean, I…it’s just I’ve been…I’ve been so alone since…”

“…I know.”

Her gaze grew so soft, as she watched you sadly. There were moments, occasionally, when her eyes were so expressive, just as Felix’s were.

For a moment, you pictured what it must have been like for her, all those years ago. Newly married to a stranger, not just alone but alone in an entirely different kingdom. A kingdom that her father and her father’s father and his father before that had been at war with. A kingdom with a people who mistrusted her, who still mourned for her husband’s first wife, the beloved wife, the wife she must constantly be compared to in public and in private.

You wondered how long it took her to learn to hide those expressive eyes. You wondered if it saddened her to look upon her son, and see those same bright eyes shining back.

“I missed you,” you confessed. “I miss how it used to be.”

“So do I, sweetling,” she murmured. There were only two people in this world the Queen called ‘sweetling’. One was standing in front of her. The other was half a kingdom away, quiet and aching by the coast. “But that’s precisely why I’ve stayed away.”

“What?” You asked, sharp in your confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“There are whispers at court,” she began, before pausing. You detected the faintest of eye-rolls as she continued. “There always are. Right now, they are centred on you.”

“Me?” You repeated. “I haven’t heard anything.”

“Oh, the subjects never do,” she said, her tone sharpening just a touch. You knew she’d had her fair share of experience with court rumours. “It’s no fun for them if the rumour gets dragged into daylight and exposed for the nonsense that it is. Better to whisper in secret, and give their empty brains something to spin from nothing.”

“What are they saying?” You asked. You’d half-expected something like this to happen, but you’d always thought your first reaction would be worry, or fear – and yet, right now, the news filled you with nothing but anger.

“They’re harmless, for now. Idle gossip. But if any fuel is added to them, they could prove dangerous–”

“What are they saying?” You repeated, cutting her off. You needed to hear it. You already had an inkling, but you needed it in words.

She sighed. “…You and Felix. I’m afraid my son will always be a subject for scandal in your future.”

Felix.

You turned away, eyes searching for the horizon, for something to fix on in the distance.

You hated that this didn’t surprise you. You hated that your paranoia, your constant insecurity about how you were perceived, about how your issues with Minho were perceived, that constant nagging feeling of your marriage being forced under a magnifying glass, was partially justified.

“Anything in particular?” You finally managed to ask when your voice returned to you.

“The stories change every week. Nothing has truly taken hold, which is a good thing,” the queen reassured you. “But until you and Minho…well, when your marriage seemed on shakier ground, I thought it was wise to keep my distance. I thought it would make things easier for you.”

Easier.

Right.

A lump was forming in your throat. You did your best to swallow it down.

“I thought you were angry at me,” you admitted. “For marrying Minho, instead of your son.”

“You did marry my son.”

There was such strong feeling in her voice that it forced your gaze back to her. The queen’s jaw was set, her mouth curved downwards slightly. Years and years of learned authority, of power however scant it might be, radiated through her as she stood firm.

“Minho is my son. In every way that counts.”

You stared, silent, as the faintest hint of guilt began to warm your cheeks.

The queen continued to walk, her gaze softening as she fell back into old memories. “He was so tiny when I entered the palace. I helped him take his first steps. I helped him learn his letters, I selected his tutors and I watched him grow.”

She slowed her steps, as you reached the edge of the forest that surrounded the palace. The two of you would have to turn back soon, but you took a moment to observe the quiet of the trees, the way that sunlight filtered through the newly-grown leaves.

“I might not be called his mother, but he is my son,” she finished, quietly. “And I’m very proud of him.”

She blinked rapidly a few times, clearing her throat, and turned to flash you the briefest of knowing smiles. “As mule-headed as he can be sometimes.”

You couldn’t help but laugh – albeit quietly, softly, as the emotion of the conversation still kept its grip on you.

There was a pull in you – that familiar one, the one that urged you to please others, the one that pushed you to say exactly the perfect thing – to praise Minho to the Queen. To call him a good man. You knew she would want to hear it, she would want to hear how happy you had turned out in spite of it all, that by pure serendipity, your marriage to Minho was just as splendid and happy as the marriage with Felix you had been awaiting your whole life.

But the words stuck in your throat. You practically choked on them. Not just because they were untrue.

Because for a second – for such a brief, unthinking second – you had wanted them to be true, just as badly as she did.

Something cold began to take hold of you. It started in your gut, unfurling his long icy fingers, grabbing and twisting and squeezing as it slowly dragged the rest of you into its grip.

Betrayal. In that moment, you felt – you knew – you had betrayed Felix.

Did it show on your face? The queen was watching you now, and you couldn’t imagine the expression you must have had.

You swallowed, trying with all you had to shove that awful pain away.

You needed to say something. Anything.

“Minho…he’s always…he never seems to care when people believe the worst in him,” you said, the words stumbling out of you, as if your mind was two steps behind your mouth. “It’s almost like he prefers it. I don’t understand it.”

The queen took in your words. After one long pause, in which her eyes studied you so intensely that it felt they were about to burn through you, she turned to look up at the palace on the hill. Even from this distance, it seemed to loom over you, waiting so impatiently for you to return.

“This place…” she trailed off. Her jaw tightened - and in that one instant, as her eyes flashed, you saw the teenage girl that had first stepped foot into this court, so far from home and facing such a nest of vipers. “It pulls something out of the people here. A way to protect themselves. My husband already had his ingrained when I came here. I felt it take hold within myself. I watched it form in Minho, that desire to push people away. And you…” she turned to you, briefly, and you blinked at the twist of amusement in her lips. “What opposites you and he are. How perfectly you mirror.”

You stared. Her words were vague, cryptic…and yet, you couldn’t help feel as if you had been insulted. You opened your mouth to protest, but the queen had already turned away back towards the palace.

“You can’t live in a place like this without growing a few thorns,” the queen sighed. “Like the roses in my gardens, I suppose. The ones without thorns are the first to be eaten.”

There was something layered in her words, something sad, something resigned.

You realised then that of all the members of the royal family she had just mentioned, there was one obvious name left unsaid.

“Let us return,” she said, finally. “Before those guards grow too curious and drift too close.”

Not only did Minho keep his promise of returning for dinner again that evening, he arrived even earlier than you.

You almost stopped at the door, thrown by the sight of him at the table, as perfectly poised as he always was, flicking through a sheaf of papers by the side of his plate. He looked up at your arrival, eyes meeting yours, and something caught in your chest.

You hadn’t realised how strange it would be to see him in person after last night, how…affecting.

Clearing your throat, you gave him a tight smile and made your way to your seat across from him – unfortunately for you, as it gave you a clear unobstructed view of Minho at a time when you very much wished for anything but that.

You reached for the decanter in front of you, eager to pour yourself a drink to deal with this building lump in your throat. To your surprise, you found it to be filled with water, not wine.

“How was your day?” you asked, finally speaking, hoping to sound calm and collected.

Minho eyed you carefully, as if you’d offered some sort of complex riddle, and not a feeble attempt at small-talk. “…Slow. Until the Lakelander delegation arrives, there’s nothing urgent to take care of. I’ve been looking over budget proposals for the harvest season.”

The harvest season was months away. In fact, you were almost certain that the fields had only just been sown at all. That truly did seem like a slow day. “I see.”

You knew you should try to continue the conversation, to ask him more about his work. Instead, you let your eyes drop to the plate of food in front of you, words dying on your tongue as you tried and failed to push down the memories of last night.

It felt so…deeply indecent, to sit across from Minho, and pretend you hadn’t touched yourself just a few feet away from him. And it was only made more indecent by the fact that he didn’t know.

It was all you could think about when you looked at him. You knew a secret, and he didn’t.

For dinner, the kitchens had prepared some sort of fish beautifully. Perfectly cooked, tender and soft and practically melting in your mouth.

You barely tasted it. You just kept eating, preoccupied, eyes trained on your plate. You were certain that if you looked up at Minho for too long, you would give yourself away.

In fact, the longer you sat there, the more uncertain you became.

Were you acting unnaturally? Were you too quiet, too reluctant to make conversation?

But, then again, what exactly did acting ‘naturally’ in Minho’s presence entail? You might have finally found yourselves on better terms, but…

“Something on your mind?”

Your eyes jerked up to meet his, caught off-guard.

How long had Minho been observing you? It looked like he hadn’t even touched his food yet, one hand resting on top of his papers, his other arm propped up on the table, hand curled under his chin as he looked at you.

You made an effort to swallow down the food in your mouth, despite how dry your throat had become, and reached for your water with all the nonchalance you could muster. “Not particularly. I was just…”

Think of something, think of anything.

“Wondering about those budget proposals. The harvest season must be months away. Was there really nothing else more pressing?”

Minho was quiet for a second, just long enough to spark the tiniest flicker of nerves in the pit of your gut, before he let out a sigh. “My father likes to drip-feed me responsibilities, one at a time. If there is anything else more urgent, I won’t know until my next meeting with him. And that won’t be for several days.”

There was an edge of frustration in his voice, something long-suffering, as if this were the topic of multiple arguments in the past, arguments that never seemed to resolve themselves in his favour.

He reached for his water, taking a sip, before his gaze returned to you. “That will also be when I talk to him about you joining the council.”

For a brief moment, all thoughts about the previous night and your embarrassing secret disappeared from your mind entirely. You leaned forward, intrigued. “What do you think his response will be?”

Minho tilted his head slightly in thought – and it filled you with surprise at the fact that you recognised this subtle shift in Minho’s body language, that at some point you had come to learn how to read him, even slightly – and replied. “…I won’t mince words–”

“Do you ever?” You retorted, almost without thinking.

Minho’s lips twitched, fighting a smile, but continued without acknowledging your mildest of jabs. “It will be a hard sell. My father is not a revolutionary. A large part of his popularity has come from his upholding of tradition. But he’s been dragging his feet on filling this council seat for months now, and for good reason. It’s a political minefield, and you are the best compromise. I hope he’ll see that.”

Minho was right. Your appointment to the council, however perfect a resolution to the infighting between your father and the blue-blooded nobility, would not be an easy sell at all. “I hope so too.”

The rest of your dinner passed in relative quiet, but the little calm you managed to gain in that time soon evaporated when you exited the dining room – and found yourself confronted yet again with the question of sleeping arrangements.

Minho’s bed was now the site of two of your most scandalous transgressions. Both of which involved Minho, both of which rendered you almost completely unable to look him in the eye whenever you thought of them.

In contrast to your internal strife, however, Minho seemed perfectly at ease.

He transported his sheaf of papers from the dining table to the couch, seating himself comfortably and setting them down on the low table in front of him.

Actually, perhaps ‘stack’ of papers might be more accurate a description than ‘sheaf’. Just how much work went into preparing these budget proposals? Had he done so little in his office all day to bring so much work to do in his chambers? Or was this a far more demanding responsibility than you had assumed?

All evidence seemed to point to the latter, as Minho worked silently throughout the evening, brow furrowed just a hint in concentration. He didn’t look up once, not when you rose to start preparing for bed, not when you returned in your nightclothes, not even when you wished him good night. He returned the words with a quiet murmur, clearly too enwrapped with whatever he was working on.

He was so engrossed, he didn’t see the way you hesitated by the bed.

Should you invite him over? He might have had work to do, but this would be yet another night that you went to bed without him. You were sharing a bedchamber now, surely the two of you should…

At least once, you should…

You tried to decide on the words of the invitation, of how to phrase it. A suggestion that he should bring his papers to bed, if he had so much work still to do? That was a reasonable question, wasn’t it? If he refused, you could press him on it, demand to know why it was beginning to seem as if he were still avoiding you…

“Yes?”

You blinked, emerging from your thoughts, to find Minho had glanced over to you. You likely made a strange sight, hovering by the bed, still yet to get under its covers.

The words were on the tip of your tongue, carefully crafted, ready to ask.

And then, traitorously, you thought of last night again.

Minho had been on the other side of the room, able to sleep through it, but if he’d been next to you…

You pictured it. You pictured jostling him awake in your sleep, the embarrassing sounds you might make. What you might do.

An awful, awful wave of embarrassment crashed through you because what if you tried to grab at him in your sleep?

You swallowed, turning away without even attempting to reply to Minho, and slipped under the bedcovers without another word.

In the morning, you woke to find that Minho had already risen long before you. The bedchamber was empty, and again the sheets by your side were untouched.

When the third night elapsed in just the same way, and the fourth, it became clear that this couldn’t be mere coincidence. Minho didn’t just happen to be so enthralled in his work that he fell asleep on the couch four nights in a row.

He was refusing to sleep beside you. You might have forced his hand in letting you share his chambers, but apparently he would not let that extend to his actual bed.

You were half-convinced he still held that early contempt for you, that he was still stubbornly maintaining that unconquerable distance between the two of you out of disdain.

And yet, he still sat with you at every dinner. He talked with you about his day, about your studies, telling stories about a particular odious noble that had done something to irk him, or listening to you talk passionately about a particular historical figure or event that had come up in your research. He’d even teased you once, when you confessed that you didn’t have the patience to read through the handful of art history books that Seungmin had added to your list.

The two of you were very slowly developing some odd sense of…well, perhaps friendship was still too strong a choice of word, but at least an understanding around each other that definitely hadn’t been present in the first few weeks of your marriage.

Nowhere else had this become so apparent than on your fifth evening in Minho’s bedchambers.

For a change of scenery, you had decided to spend the afternoon catching up on your research in these chambers, taking lunch there with your books, enjoying the little pocket of quiet in which Minho’s bedchambers were nestled within the palace.

To your surprise, and delight, the cat was back.

Initially, it was just as sullen as you remembered. It eyed you from across the room, perched on the low table yet again, sat as tall and imposing as it could make itself.

That was, until you called for a plate of kippers to be brought to you.

Despite its surly appearance, the cat barely needed convincing before it wandered over to you and the plate of fish, taking each offered kipper from your hand without hesitation. After three fish, it allowed you the softest of pets between its ears. After six, it drew closer, jumping from the table to the seat next to you, a little more relaxed as it took yet another fish from your hand.

To your delight, once the plate was empty, the cat did not abandon you immediately. In fact, it curled up near you – not quite close enough to be within easy reach, but enough that you could lean over and give it slow and gentle strokes as you continued to read. It even began to purr, just a little, whenever you scratched just beneath the base of its ears.

The more attention you gave the cat, the more you realised just how cared for it seemed to be. How comfortable it was with being touched, how well-fed it was, how soft its fur was. Even in a palace, this was not at all typical for a kitchen mouser.

“Someone spoils you, don’t they?” You murmured, giving the cat more strokes. “I can see why, you’re lovely. So cute.”

The cat, while not acknowledging your words, leaned its head up into your hand a little, chasing after those little scratches.

You were close to abandoning your studies entirely for the day, ready to devote your full attention to this adorable little creature, when the bedchamber doors swung open.

The cat jolted a little, jumping from its place on the couch – but to your relief, did not run out of the room. Instead, it lingered by the low table, ready to disappear under it, and stared down the sudden arrival.

Minho, mouth still parted slightly in whatever greeting he’d been about to give you, was silent as his gaze flickered between you and the orange cat eyeing him from the floor.

“We have a visitor,” you told Minho, solemnly, gesturing to the cat.

Minho nodded, briefly, still looking between you and the cat. “Yes. Yes, she seems to like it in here.”

“‘She’?” You repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Minho’s expression immediately smoothed into the perfect neutral, refusing to give even the slightest bit of emotion away. “…I assume.”

“Mm. Well, she seems to be a sweetheart.”

“Does she?” Minho repeated, glancing at the cat again, who seemed to have now relaxed. She began to approach Minho’s feet, sniffing familiarly at his boots.

“I may have had to bribe her with a plate of kippers,” you admitted, increasingly amused by the way the cat began to weave her way between Minho’s legs, but managed not to let it show too obviously in your face. “She seems very well-fed, for a kitchen mouser.”

Minho made a non-committal sound in response, not meeting your eyes. “…Yes, well, I imagine people must toss her dinner scraps here and there.”

“I suppose so. But who would be so soft-hearted in this palace, to feed a kitchen cat from their own plate?” You wondered aloud.

Minho’s face was a mask at this point, unmoving, perfectly calculated. He made his way to one of his armchairs, attempting to ignore the way the cat followed him happily, jumping up and perching herself on the arm of his chair.

You continued. “In fact, I wonder what a mouser would be doing here, so far away from the kitchens. That’s quite a distance for a cat to wander unprompted.”

“I suppose so,” Minho stated, perfectly neutral, even as the cat moved from the arm of the chair to seat herself in his lap.

You continued to stare at him, wordless, eyebrow raised – and finally, he relented.

“I might have given her some scraps, once or twice,” he admitted, even as the cat nuzzled into his hand from where she rested nearby. “I suppose she can’t help it if she isn’t good at mousing, and goes hungry.”

“True,” you allowed, thoroughly unconvinced by his façade. “And do you know if this failed mouser has a name?”

“…I think I’ve heard someone call her Soonie,” Minho said, and finally let his hand drift over to Soonie and begin to give her gentle scratching behind her ears. She purred loudly enough that you could hear her from where you sat, utterly content to receive affection from someone she was clearly very familiar with. “Somewhere. At some point.”

“How odd. Not many kitchen mousers have names.”

“Mm,” Minho hummed, noncommittal, but when his eyes dropped down to glance at Soonie, he couldn’t hide the slightest of smiles.

You took in the sight, this cold and prickly prince melting as he pet the scruffy little tabby cat. Minho was still in his usual daily prince attire, all high-necked and formal. His legs were clad in those familiar riding leathers that you never let yourself look at for too long, so you moved your attention instead to his jacket. Instead of a royal scarlet, this one was a dark blue, the fabric glinting in the candlelight from the clusters of beading embroidered within it. It suited him, you forced yourself to admit, far more than red did.

In fact, you tried to remember the last time Minho had worn the colour red, but nothing recent sprang to mind. Perhaps…

“I’m meeting with my father tomorrow,” Minho told you, and immediately your attention was captured.

Tomorrow.

The word sparked something in your gut – not quite dread, or alarm, but something akin to that. Urgency.

You swallowed back your excitement, remaining as calm and neutral as you could. “And you’ll talk to him about the council?”

“That’s the plan,” Minho replied, enigmatic.

You paused, and a quiet fell over the room. It wasn’t as if Minho was expecting you to reply – in fact, as Soonie settled completely in his lap, chin dropping to rest on his knee, he was looking down and away from you.

But something still just…tugged at you. Just a little bit.

Your eyes darted down to the book in your hands, and as nonchalantly as you could, you spoke. “…Thank you.”

You saw Minho move out of the corner of your eye, head raising to look at you.

“…I’m just doing what I’m supposed to,” Minho said, his voice detached and light. “One of my duties is to recommend the most capable candidate I can find. Don’t think of it as a favour.”

His words rendered you speechless, heart beginning to pound in your ears.

Most capable.

You were the daughter of a rich, powerful man. You had been given many compliments throughout your lifetime.

None of them had ever caused the same kind of lump to form in your throat as you felt now. None had caused this kind of strange heat to bloom behind your eyes, this way your heart swelled.

Most capable.

And just like that, you were spurred into action. If you had only one night left to prepare yourself and construct the perfect defence to prove why you deserved to be on the council, you would take full advantage of it.

You began combing through the papers you had with you, reading voraciously, consuming every piece of information available to you. You did this throughout dinner, chewing absently as you turned pages and scrawled notes. You were so devoted to your studies, you made your way through two full cups of tea before realising, upon looking up, that it was Minho who poured it for you each time.

Your eyes met, just as he held the teapot over your cup to pour a third time, and your gaze held long enough to note the flicker of amusement in his before he looked away.

When dinner was over, you retreated back to the couch with more reading to finish. Minho did the same, taking up the same spot he did every evening, that familiar pile of paperwork set in front of him. There was a strangely companionable silence as the two of you worked into the night.

You almost forgot he was there, despite the sounds of his writing and the crisp sounds of paper-shuffling, slipping into a quiet rhythm of reading and re-reading until words began to blur together.

As the candles burned low, and the hours grew later and later, you felt your concentration start to slip. Your eyes would close, just for a few moments, and the will to open them again slowly began to elude you. Exhaustion crept up on you, an old friend, and you found yourself repeating paragraphs, reading over the same sentence again and again and unable to take in its meaning.

Your eyes closed again, and you vaguely remembered telling yourself it would be just for a moment.

Sleep found you instead.

Blissful, calm. Warmth from the fire. Papers slipping from your hand, but never landing on the floor. You felt safe, wrapped in the quiet.

Something brushed your arm. Soft. Fur. Soonie?

Your eyes opened, bleary, only to find grey instead of orange. The wrongness of it jolted you, your hand darting out to grab at something pale and moving.

Skin.

A hand. Soft.

Except for a callus on the edge of a knuckle on the middle finger. You recognised it, for you had your own on the very same finger. It was where the pen sat whenever you wrote.

Your gaze wandered, still sleep-fogged, and there was no surprise when you saw the hand attached to a Minho.

Your grip on him relaxed, fingers slipping from his, and you barely mumbled a half-formed thought. “Your hand matches mine.”

Your eyes closed again, just as Minho stilled, and you drifted back to sleep.

You woke up, neck aching, still upright on the couch. Your books and papers lay scattered around you, from where you’d been too tired to put them away properly. Morning light streamed in from the windows, and despite the ashes in the fireplace indicating that it had long since burned out, you found yourself unusually warm.

Ah. You had fallen asleep in the previous day’s clothes – and with very familiar furs draped over you.

There was a brief flash of a memory, of Minho’s hand pulling the furs over you. You dimly recalled saying something, perhaps, but the details escaped you. You pushed the furs off of you, your movements unusually gentle as you handled the blanket, as if it commandeered an unthinking respect from you. Sentiment, maybe.

As always, Minho had risen before you and left your chambers, but today this observation filled you with equal parts excitement and nerves.

Were they discussing it right at this moment? Did their meetings take place in the mornings? Or in the afternoons? Would other items be brought up first?

It was maddening, to have so many questions and no way to pursue the answers.

With a night’s worth of sweat sticking to your skin, you made up a bath for yourself, even heating the water entirely on your own. The only oils in Minho’s bathroom were lavender, suited for relaxation in the evenings rather than energising in the mornings, but you made do.

The water was a touch cooler than how you usually liked it, but you didn’t have the patience to heat more water. Instead, you stripped and climbed into the bath with as much grace as you could muster and set about cleaning yourself.

This wasn’t the first time you had bathed entirely without servants – in fact, since you had moved into Minho’s chambers, the only times a servant had been permitted to enter was to bring them dinner each evening.

You found yourself becoming…amenable to that arrangement. It gave Minho’s chambers a sense of quiet, a private solace, that could not be found anywhere else in the palace.

Perhaps that was why it was so jarring, almost invading, when you heard knocking from afar, the sound of a door swinging open, and a woman’s voice ringing out hesitantly. “Your Highness?”

You startled, upsetting the water, letting some of it slosh over the side of the bath and onto the floor. “Yes? Is something wrong?”

Footsteps approached – timid, rushed – and the voice drew closer. “You’ve been summoned, Your Highness. By the king.”

Your stomach dropped, your breath cut short.

“He…said it was urgent, Your Highness, but I can let them know you’re still bathing–”

“No,” you blurted out, quickly, sharply. You got out of the bath hastily, dripping water all over the floor. “Help me change into something quickly, and I’ll go now.”

There was only one reason you would be summoned by the king on this particular day, and from the sounds of it, it wasn’t to congratulate you on your new position on the council.

You needed to stand your ground, to explain your reasoning in the face of his refusal. And if there was any chance of persuading him to grant you the position, to ignore the concerns of your gender…

Well, telling the king that he needed to wait to discuss urgent business until the princess finished drying her hair was not the kind of image you wanted to present to him.

And so, you were laced into a dress with impressive dexterity by your maid, the luscious fabric increasingly dampened from your dripping hair. Was it an uncomfortable sensation? Absolutely, but it was difficult to dwell on it when all you could think of was why you were be summoned, what could have happened between the king and Minho to warrant such an urgent demand for your presence.

Discussions must not have gone as smoothly as Minho intended – but not so disastrously as to be dismissed out of hand.

As you slipped on a pair of shoes, your maid gave one last attempt to persuade you to wait. “Your Highness, are you sure…”

You turned, smiling politely at her. “Yes. I’m sure it will dry soon enough. Thank you for all your help.”

She returned your smile, somewhat nervously, eyes darting to the dishevelled aspects of your appearance, but seemed a little more assured. Marginally. Barely.

Before she could protest again, you marched straight for the door.

Of course, as was so often the case with grand gestures, there were certain factors you didn’t think through entirely.

The palace halls were unforgivingly cold, especially as your hair continued to slowly drip water down your neck, soaking into the back of your gown. It made every step uncomfortable, as every little drop of water that landed on the nape of your neck was another reprimanding shock of chill.

You made sure to stand tall, proud.

If your head was bowed, if your shoulders were slouched and your steps more resembling a scurry than a stride, you would have made a pitiable sight. It would look as if you were caught off-guard, as if you were panicked, incapable, scared.

But with your chin held high, with your shoulders back and a confidence steeling you, this was intentional. This was a statement. An image fit for songs, for stories, a princess devoted to her role and to the orders of her king.

As you drew closer to the king’s chambers, navigating through the ever-narrowing hallways, you felt your chest begin to tighten. You realised you might genuinely hate it here, this deep within the very depths of the palace, its cold little stone heart. A king might be well-defended here, the walls witness to nearly a thousand years of history, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that you were descending into a tomb.

And then, you heard the voices.

The last time you had been summoned by the king, you remembered catching a snippet of conversation at the very doorstep of his chambers. That was how close you had to get before Minho’s and the king’s voices could be heard through the thick wooden door.

But now? You heard them in the corridor - because they were loud.

Not quite a screaming match between father and son, but–

“–talk of duty, but what’s your solution, Father? Burying your head in the sand, that tried and tested trick?”

You almost stumbled, shock rendering you clumsy, because did Minho just say that to the king?

“Caution, boy, is not ignorance. How do you mistake the two? You’re well-versed in the latter.”

The two guards in front of you exchanged a glance. You noted that they did not share your horror. In fact, you could almost mistake it as…resigned.

“Was it age that turned your belly yellow? Is that my fate too? Cowardice?”

“I will not be lectured by a son still wet-around-the-ears on age.”

Not just resigned.

Long-suffering.

They’d heard this all before. Frequently, by the looks of things.

And then, as if that knowledge had unlocked something, had lifted the veil over your eyes, you could hear it. The hint of familiarity, the ease with which the two hurled insults at each other.

This was not the first time Minho and his father had quarrelled. In fact, you’d wager this wasn’t the first time this week.

The argument paused when the guards knocked at the door, announcing your arrival. As the doors swung open, you caught sight of Minho and his father – not a hair out of place, not even a flush of anger to their cheeks – glaring at each other with familial exasperation.

Minho looked away first, turning to look at you – and paused.

His Majesty followed his gaze, and you watched those regal eyes blink in surprise at your appearance.

You must have made a sight, your gown on its way to being ruined, your hair still slick and dishevelled, trying hard not to shiver in the cold of these chambers.

“Your Majesty,” you greeted, not even the slightest bit affected, and bowed low. You straightened up before offering Minho’s greeting. “Husband.”

“My dear,” the king spoke, just the slightest bit alarmed. “If my summons caught you at an inopportune time, I assure you it’s perfectly reasonable to delay answering until you’re presentable. Don’t concern yourself so thoroughly.”

You smiled brightly. The picture of obedience, of devotion. “I hated the thought of keeping you both waiting. I imagine I know what this conversation is about.”

The king’s gaze flickered between you and Minho at this, a frown soon beginning to form. Still, there was a subtle note of surprise in his voice when he spoke again. “I see. The two of you are conspirators in this…”

“Proposal?” you supplied, gently.

“Attack?” Minho offered, bitterly.

“…Folly,” the king said, finally, turning back to you.

You dipped your head, keeping your voice soft and sweet. “I’m sorry to hear that you see it that way. I believe it to be a fair compromise, to ease the tensions at court.”

“Yes, Minho said the same thing,” the king sighed, dismissive. “Both of you are blind to the same issue. Any conflicts that your position on the council might resolve are outnumbered by the discord it would certainly cause.”

Minho sighed, eyes darting up to the ceiling. You wondered how many times he had heard that argument this morning. “And yet, a good king prioritises the future of his kingdom above all else, is that not so?”

The king shot Minho a look. It didn’t take much to realise that those were likely the king’s own words that had come out of Minho’s mouth, not his own.

“Son–”

“Talk to her,” Minho interrupted, gesturing to you in pure exasperation. “Listen to her. Ask her anything. She’s more than qualified to be on the council.”

After a moment’s hesitation, in which it looked as if the king was debating whether to indulge his oldest son or nip this matter in the bud entirely, he turned to you.

“…Very well,” he said, giving in. You watched as he made his way to the splendid-looking chair behind a monstrosity of a writing desk, sinking into it. For a brief moment, you thought you caught something of a grimace in his expression.

Exhaustion? Perhaps. It must have been tiring work, running a kingdom. Let alone arguing with Minho too. You had first-hand knowledge of how that could drain your energy.

The king’s eyes became fixed on you, almost pinning you to the floor, as he spoke. “Suppose you were on the council, and a message was received, warning of a great army about to invade. What would you advise?”

Your brow furrowed as you considered the question. You needed to remain calm, measured, and use every scrap of information you had studied.

“Which border is the army advancing toward?” you asked, thoughtful.

The king’s face remained unchanged. “The one we share with the Lakelands.”

Interesting. No cardinal direction given – you assumed that must have been on purpose – but still plenty of information to form an answer. The Lakelands were in the north, and under treaty with your kingdom.

“I would advise you to send missives to Lords Kim and Geum in the north with instructions to muster their forces and man our security garrisons along the border. I would also–”

“Which garrisons?” the king interrupted, gently but firmly.

“Yalrock and Banna. Yalrock is the largest garrison on the northern border, Banna is strategically advantageous because of its position on the river plains. You’d be forcing the army to march along the mountain passes instead.”

The king’s expression remained cold, neutral – and you realised, in that moment, exactly where Minho might have learned the same habit. “Continue.”

“I would also advise you to send word to our allies in the hills and across the Sunrise Sea, informing them that the Lakelands have broken our treaty pact.”

“Broken the pact?” the king repeated. “I never said the Lakelanders were the ones invading.”

“The treaty pact also forbids the harbouring of any forces with aggressive intent towards treaty members. In this scenario, the Lakelanders would be doing just this – unless they themselves were invaded by this army too, which I doubt if we received no summons for aid or word from our ambassador there,” you said. Was this too much detail? Were you rambling? You did your best to keep your words steady, unrushed. “Therefore, the treaty would be broken.”

From out of the corner of your eye, you caught Minho watching you, a hint of a smile on his face.

The king, while perhaps a touch surprised at your answer, pressed on anyway with another question, changing the subject entirely.

“…Suppose Lord Sun’s lands are failing to produce the amount of grain demanded of them. How would you advise me?”

“I would be confused,” you admitted, “because Lord Sun’s lands produce fish, not grain.”

“And why is that?”

“Because his lands are in the east, along the coast. The land there isn’t arable.”

“Why?”

“The weather is too hot in the summer, too dry. There isn’t enough freshwater for crop-growing.”

The quickness of your answer was rewarded with the smallest – almost unthinking – of nods from the king. He paused once more, and spoke again. “Suppose I wanted to–”

“Another question?” Minho interjected, sighing, as he wandered across the room and took a seat by the window. He rested his head against his hand, elbow planted into the plush armrest of his chair.

The king shot him a look, either for the interruption, or for the flippant tone Minho had used, or perhaps even for the way he was lounging in the presence of his king, but he made no move to reprimand him. Instead, he turned back to you. “Suppose I wanted to offer a gift to the Lakelander delegation when they arrive next month to renew the treaty. A personal one, not a grand spectacle of an offering. What would you suggest?”

You paused. This wasn’t a question that could be answered with any of your recent studies of war or economics or geography. This was a question of hospitality, knowledge you needed as a queen, not as a councillor.

It took a moment, longer than it took with the first two questions, but soon there was an answer in your mind. “When the last Lakelander delegation came to this country to sign the treaty, one of the gifts they gave Your Majesty were wild rose seeds. Wild roses that were native to the Lakelands, difficult to grow in this climate, meant to symbolise a new peace and the care needed to maintain it. Her Majesty, the queen, still grows these roses in her private gardens, does she not?”

The answer to your question did not come from the king, but from Minho. “She does.”

“Then, I would suggest a bouquet of these roses. It would be symbolic of the care this kingdom has taken to nurture this new relationship with the Lakelands, a sign that we do not take their gifts for granted.”

The king eyed you carefully for a moment, silent. “…You weren’t present at the first signing of the treaty, were you? You’re too young for that.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t present, Your Majesty,” you replied. “But the queen graciously allowed me to play in her gardens when I was a child, and taught me the origins of those roses.”

Not quite. The queen allowed you and Felix to play in those gardens. She told you the origins of the roses when Felix tried to pick some for you, and accidentally cut open his palm on the sharp thorns of their stems. You remembered him, tears in his eyes, sniffling as Her Majesty held the both of you close and warned him gently that these roses were wild, were Lakelanders just like her and a little like him, and because of that, they were fiercely protective.

You remembered sitting and watching the two of them exchange smiles, and silently wishing that you were a Lakelander too. You wanted to be protective. You wanted to be like the roses, like them.

“Any more questions, Father?” Minho asked, jolting you from your memories. “Or has she proven our point? Impressively?”

And again, just as they had last night, Minho’s words stirred something within you. A kind of warmth, filling your chest.

The king regarded the both of you, silently, before sighing. “Your education is…indeed, as Minho says, impressive.”

Your heart soared, mind so entirely filled with elation that you almost missed his next words.

“But I’m afraid that still does not change the obvious. I did not secure decades of unprecedented peace under my reign by breaking with tradition. A woman sitting on the council is not tradition.”

You swallowed, heart sinking just as sharply as it had risen just moments ago.

“…There is precedent,” you pointed out, softly. “I found records of Princess Jiyoon on the royal council, less than two centuries ago.”

“That is true,” the king conceded, before tilting his head slightly. After a moment of consideration, he pushed himself out of his chair with the same half-grimace glimpsed earlier, and crossed the room towards a bookcase stuffed with leather-bound volumes. His hands hovered over them, fingertips brushing their spines, until he found the one he was searching for and pulled it from its stack with ease.

He made his way back to the two of you, opening the volume and thumbing through the pages as he walked, before offering the volume to you.

You took it, uncertainly, and looked down at what exactly he had handed to you.

Council records – but unlike the ones you had studied with Seungmin, you were shocked at just how much more detail this version contained. You supposed that made sense. The records in the library were likely censored, or edited for public consumption. These were private, a king’s own personal records, passed down from ruler to heir most likely.

Jiyoon’s name was there, listed amongst the other councillors, but these records included a strange symbol next to her name.

You frowned, and the king spoke again.

“I imagine you found no records of any contributions she made, correct? No votes cast, no motions brought to attention?”

“…No,” you admitted, reluctantly, looking up at him as dread began to curl in the pit of your stomach.

“There is a reason for that. Jiyoon filled a particular role. If you scour through the legal treatise of the time – dry reading, all of it, but it is there – you’ll find it. Jiyoon was not granted the role of an adviser, but of an observer. A silent one, there only to watch the council proceedings so that she could better educate her heirs in service of her husband. That is the precedent that Jiyoon set.”

Silent. Heirs. Husband.

Of course.

Of course. You should have known. That was what it always came down to. Centuries of royal women, millennia of royal women, and it was always the same.

Silent. Heirs. Husband.

You should have known. You should have known not to get your hopes up.

“What are you saying?” you heard Minho ask, dimly, as these thoughts repeated endlessly in your mind.

“The observer is required to be silent. She cannot vote, she cannot dissent, she cannot speak even when called upon to do so in session. She observes.”

Minho made a sound of disdain, maybe even disgust. “Then, what’s the point? Why have that great of a mind on your council if she can’t even use it? What a waste.”

“Perhaps, but that is the precedent you argue for. If you seek a compromise, that would be it.”

“A compromise? What–”

“I would accept it,” you interrupted, quietly. Your eyes were trained on the floor, voice barely above a murmur. Your brain still thundered with those three words, again and again. Silent. Heirs. Husband. “If Your Majesty were so gracious as to offer this role, I would accept it.”

You didn’t have to look at Minho to know the way his mouth was parted in surprise, astonished and outraged in equal measure. You could sense it in his tone when he spoke. “You can’t be serious.”

You raised your eyes to look at the king, purposefully avoiding Minho’s stare.

“I hope His Majesty knows that I don’t ask for this council seat out of personal ambition,” you said, softly, lying through your teeth to your king. “You said Jiyoon took the role as a duty to her husband and her children. If anyone objected to my position on the council, I would ask you say the same of me.”

“…You would take the council seat in service of Minho,” the king said, and even he sounded sceptical. You weren’t sure what that said about your marriage, but it wasn’t exactly promising.

“And our future children. We both take that duty very seriously.”

“Do you?” the king questioned, sharply, pointedly, but surprisingly it wasn’t you he was addressing – it was Minho.

You might have tensed at such an insinuation, but Minho practically bristled.

“Don’t,” Minho warned his father, straightening up in his seat. No, more than warned, he practically spat out the word. “I thought we agreed.”

Agreed? Agreed what?

You glanced between Minho and his father, sensing a tension that remained unspoken as the two eyed each other, jaws both set.

You were clearly missing something vital to this exchange, some secret piece of information – and, as always, the idea chafed at you.

And then, with a quiet and cold anger that you hadn’t heard in weeks, Minho told his father. “You owe me this.”

The king’s expression twisted. It was guilt, you realised. “Minho–”

“You owe me something.”

Another pause.

And then, finally, the king broke this staring contest with his son to look at you. “…The role requires complete silence. If I decided to grant you the seat on these conditions, and you flout them immediately, I will not look kindly on it. Do you understand?”

“I do,” you replied, solemnly.

“…Very well,” the king said, eventually. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

You did it.

It was a hollow victory, yes, but a victory nonetheless.

You couldn’t quite muster happiness about it, or even gratitude, but there was a sense of achievement.

You nodded, quietly, and curtsied low before the king. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

When you lifted your head again, you found the king glancing between your face and Minho’s before he spoke again.

“You do have quite the mind,” the king said, gaze still shifting between the two of you. “You might not be able to speak in the council room but…well, you share bedchambers now. Whatever you might discuss in there is your own private business. Is it not?”

Within days, news of your appointment to the council spread across the palace like wildfire.

You expected this, to some extent. Precedent or not, observer or not, this was still an undeniably shocking development. You knew there would be whispers about it, gossip passed around, growing and contorting with each telling and retelling.

All of this, and still you did not expect the conversation you happened upon one evening as you took a shortcut through one of the palace courtyards on your way back from a tutoring session with Seungmin.

The sun had just descended below the horizon, casting the square into shadow wherever the dim glow of torchlight did not quite reach. You caught snatches of voices as you walked, whenever you passed doors to parlours, to sitting rooms, to the dozens upon dozens of meeting places for the elite that resided within the court. Some of these doors were cracked open to enjoy the fresh air brought by the open-air courtyard on their doorstep, unaware of any passers-by.

And then, one particular comment caught your attention.

“Perhaps the poor girl is simply bored,” a haughty voice said, with a hint of laughter. “That council room might be a dreary place, but I’d wager it’s a damn sight better than her bedchambers.”

You froze, half within shadow, half without.

There was only one person that comment could possibly be referring to.

Immediately, you slipped behind one of the stone pillars lining the courtyard, heart pounding.

Finally, after all this talk of rumours, of whisperings at court behind your back, you finally had the chance to listen for yourself.

“Careful, Park,” another voice cautioned, although sounding more amused than concerned.

“A prince too scared to share a bed with his wife for weeks after the wedding,” the first voice – Park – scoffed. “What, did he hope no one would notice?”

A third voice chimed in, low and gleeful. “You want to hear something good? My wife heard a maid talking the other day. They change the sheets of that marriage bed every day. And they’re always pristine.”

Your face heated, something approaching bile threatening to burn the back of your throat. There was something about hearing your privacy be so…violated, and said so casually. Your bedsheets? They all talked about your bedsheets?

“You know my theory,” the third voice spoke again.

“Your wife’s theory,” Park corrected, sounding dismissive.

“It makes sense. She’s saving herself for the other brother. Traded one for the other before, maybe she’s waiting to trade back when he comes home.”

Felix.

Traded one for the other. Is that how they saw it? Is that how they all saw it?

“He’s not coming back,” Park scoffed. “Not for a long time. Not unless His Highness fancies looking down and wondering why all his children have the Lakelander look to them.”

Your heart stopped. You felt the blood in your veins freeze, matching the ice-cold anger settling into your bones.

“Gods be good, close the door before you say horseshit like that. Moron.”

This was more than fury.

This was wrath.

You stepped out of the shadows, just at the right moment to lock eyes with Lord Park as he stood by the doors, his too-late hand stilled on the handle.

“Good evening, Lord Park,” you said, voice so syrupy-sweet and cloying, and watched the blood drain from his face as he stared back at you in horror. You craned your neck to peek over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of the two other men with him. “Oh, I see Lords Song and Ryu have joined you. How nice.”

“Y-Your Highness,” Park stammered, and there was genuine fear in his eyes.

He knew what you had heard. He knew the words that had come out of his mouth, and how close those words danced along the line of treason. It would take you only one conversation with Minho, or with the king, and his career would be done. His family. His fortunes. Possibly even his life.

You smiled brightly at him. “I look forward to seeing you next week at the council. I’ve heard you’re quite the contrarian. You’ve voted to reject the last, what is it, seven bills put forward by my husband?”

Park didn’t answer. Perhaps it was more accurate to say Park couldn’t answer. You wondered what could possibly be going through his head at that moment. You wondered if he had ever felt this afraid in his entire pampered little life.

You tilted your head slightly, eyeing him. “Perhaps from next week, you might find yourself second-guessing a decision like that. Don’t you think so?”

Park’s face, still pale, twisted into something approaching realisation. He seemed to grasp exactly what you were hinting at – the threat that remained unspoken.

“…Y-yes, Your Highness,” Park agreed, nodding erratically.

“And your companions? Perhaps they’ll have similar changes of heart?”

From behind Park, his friends stammered their assent, just as rattled.

You beamed.

“Perfect. Have a nice night.”

You attended your first council meeting the very next week, finally taking that last empty council seat that had remained vacant for so long.

Sixty-two members attended the session in total.

You felt sixty-one pairs of eyes on you throughout.

You recognised quite a few of the faces in this meeting. Lord Young, as delightful as ever, sat just a few seats removed from the royal family – a position of great honour, especially for a man with neither blood nor marriage ties to the crown.

Lord Park had also made an appearance, and blanched the moment your eyes met his.

Good.

You paid the stares little notice, attention completely and utterly captivated by the debates that took place. Every idea proposed, every motion considered and accepted and denied, every opinion volleyed back and forth, you noted down.

You might have been silent, but you wrote feverishly. Pages and pages of scrawls, near indecipherable as you worked to keep pace with the spoken word of the other council members.

Minho was seated next to you. Of course he was – he served as a visible explanation for your presence there at all. To be useful to him, to educate his heirs and better his legacy. In the eyes of everyone else, your seat on the council was essentially just an extension of Minho’s.

You weren’t sure what to expect of him during these council meetings. You knew just how seriously he took his position as heir, and his duty to the kingdom – but you also remembered that carriage journey home from Lord Young’s orchards, the disdain he had for politicking, his derision in his voice when he talked of strings attached.

It turned out that in council meetings, Minho kept up the same perfect princely mask he always did in public. Never once raising his voice, never slipping into anger or mockery. Exemplary behaviour from the first second of the meeting to the last.

Except for one moment, when an old lord from the Tan family had loudly proclaimed an argument so poorly constructed, with parts so moronic that you made sure to underline his exact wording for its stupidity, that you heard the quietest of noises from Minho. When you glanced up at him, he was watching the debate with apparent rapt attention. If you weren’t sat so close to him, you would have missed the slightest way his jaw clenched, as if to fight a look of disdain as he watched Lord Tan blather on.

Minho proposed only one new bill – investment in a new mill, to be built in one of the kingdom’s slowly-dwindling rural villages, in the hopes of creating employment opportunities. You paused your notetaking to watch each council member cast their votes for or against the bill.

Most supported it. Some rejected it. Your eyes sought out Lord Park again, and you watched as he reluctantly raised his hand in favour of the bill, gaze nervously flickering towards you as he did so.

What an astonishing change of heart from the man. Who could have predicted?

Still, despite it all, the council meeting ended without incident. The issues tabled for the next meeting were fairly standard: a new maritime trade deal with a kingdom across the Sunrise Sea, preparations for next year’s census, the ongoing reports from the Lakelander delegation slowly making its way to the palace. You made note of it all, jotting down your own thoughts on each matter when you were able to, and kept the notes closely guarded on your person.

You made sure to take them straight to your bedchambers as soon as the meeting finished, intending to lock them away in your desk until dinner that evening, when you could discuss them with Minho.

To your surprise, instead of making his way back to his office to spend the rest of the working day, Minho followed you back to your shared chambers. You tried and failed not to focus on his footsteps, how they matched your pace precisely, echoing along the empty corridors.

The slightest sense of frustration sparked within you. If you had to be watched by gossiping onlookers, why couldn’t they at least see this? Minho ignoring his usual duties to accompany you back to your bedchambers? Let them whisper about that, sordid or not, that could at least be useful.

You pushed away the thought with one last scoff at your own poor luck, reaching your chambers without so much as a single pair of prying eyes to witness you.

“So,” Minho said, as the doors swung shut behind the two of you. “How did you find it?”

Frustrating. Exhausting. Borderline insulting.

“Informative,” you replied, collapsing into a seat. Your hands ached from how feverishly you had written throughout the meeting, and you began to clench and unclench your fists in the hopes of relieving the pain. “I made a few notes.”

“I noticed,” Minho commented, eyebrow raising as he appraised the pile of papers at your side. “They look…detailed.”

“They are,” you confirmed, picking the papers up and beginning to flick through them. “If I can’t speak my mind in that room, writing will just have to do.”

For now, you added internally. You refused to accept that this silent role would last forever.

“Can I…read them?” Minho asked, and his question came out hesitantly, almost cautiously.

You looked up, surprised. You weren’t sure how much use these notes would be – you were both just at the very same meeting after all – but there was something about the request that was almost…endearing.

Minho. Endearing.

Hell had truly frozen over.

“Of course,” you replied, holding the notes up.

Minho paused for a moment before, slowly making his way towards you. When he sat next to you, he was close enough that his jacket sleeve brushed your bare arm.

You cleared your throat, focusing your attention on anything but how close he was. “These pages are about the logging site proposals, this one was on the Lakelanders’ progress, this…oh, this page is actually about Lord Tan.”

“Lord Tan?” Minho repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes. He’s…” you trailed off, trying to think of a polite way to phrase it. “…He’s a blithering idiot, honestly.”

Minho, to your surprise, laughed. Openly, loudly, with a note of genuine delight. A few weeks ago, you wouldn’t have thought him capable of producing such a sound.

“Do you know how many hours of my life I have wasted listening to that old man ramble incoherently?” he asked. “There were moments I was driven half to madness. But he was my father’s first real supporter when he became crown prince, so he’s adamant on keeping the man around.”

You watched as Minho turned the page over, half-smiling to himself.

“He’s a sentimental old fool like that, sometimes,” Minho said, too lightly to really be considered critical – or treasonous.

“Who was your first supporter?” You asked, curiously.

“…Felix,” Minho said, softly, discreetly shifting away as he held your notes out to return them. “He was the only one to never doubt me. Not even for a second.”

Yes. Yes, that sounded like Felix.

You took back your notes, and tried not to notice how Minho avoided your touch as your notes exchanged hands.

A new silence fell between you.

Stifling.

Deafening.

You tried to take a deep breath, and stood up, making your way over to your desk to lock away your writings from prying eyes.

From behind you, Minho’s voice brought you to a halt.

“We haven’t talked about Felix,” he noted. “…And we probably should. At some point.”

He said it so plainly, so devoid of nuance or emotion. As if it were a mere observation, a comment about the weather and nothing more. As if his words didn’t strike something deep and vulnerable within you, like fingers clumsily probing a freshly-formed bruise.

You hated his apparent nonchalance. You despised it, and you envied it because you might never be able to do the same. To speak Felix’s name as if it meant nothing to you.

To speak his name as if…

To speak…

You…

Realisation – cold, violent realisation – hit you at once.

You had not. Not once. In months.

It had been months. And you had not spoken Felix’s name.

Not since your wedding day.

Others had. Countless others had. They murmured it gently and sweetly like Her Majesty, or they crowed it before you mockingly like those noblemen, or they threw it at you, cold and cryptic and horrifically empty like Minho.

They dragged him out of your memories where you kept him locked away.

Away, where he was safest to you. Safest from you. Safest for you.

“…No. We haven’t,” you said, and the words were quiet. Pained. Final.

The two of you did not speak again that day.

Soon enough, your father found you.

Your mother, all those weeks ago when she summoned you for that painfully awkward afternoon tea, had at least shown you the decorum your new status demanded and sent you a formal request.

Your father, a proud man, a pragmatic man, had no patience for such etiquette.

You were in the library, sat with Seungmin and poring over budgetary records with tired and bleary eyes, when he came marching in. He was flanked by two panicked guards, too fearful of your father’s status to lay their hands on him, too mindful of their duty to let him wander freely.

They fixed you with beseeching looks. “Your Highness, we – no one told us…y-your father…”

“Desires to speak with his daughter,” your father finished, in a tone you’d never heard from him before. “Urgently.”

Usually, your father was calm, collected, never one to show even a hint of vulnerability.

Now, here, he was impatient. Almost rattled.

You rose to your feet, so thrown off-kilter by the situation that you were a touch unsteady. After a moment, you nodded to your guards. “Very well. Please leave us.”

They did just that – and so did a third guard who had been sat just a few paces away from you and Seungmin.

Your father’s eyes darted to your tutor. “Him too.”

Seungmin, however, stayed seated. Slowly, he laced his fingers together and rested his hands on the table in front of him, returning your father’s glare with an unimpressed stare.

“It takes a bold man to order around a princess,” Seungmin remarked. Gently, as always, but firmly.

Your father’s expression hardened. He opened his mouth to speak back, but you cut him off at the pass.

“He’s right, Father,” you said. You couldn’t quite shake the nerves from your voice. You supposed that was only natural, after a lifetime of loyally following his orders and keeping your mouth shut in the process. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Mother?”

Your father stared at you for a moment, almost…bewildered. He recovered quickly enough. “Your mother is fine, which is more than I can say for the state of your…of…” he gritted his teeth, swallowing back whatever he desperately wished to say, and instead cut straight to the point. “You took a seat on the council?”

His question, and the venom behind it, almost took you aback.

Still, you lifted your head, trying to stand firm. “Yes, I did.”

“How could you be so…foolish?” your father demanded to know, anger giving way to frustration. “I could have protectedyou there.”

It took you mere moments to read between his words.

You didn’t take a seat on the council.

You took his seat.

“Could you?” you said, swallowing. “Or would you have protected your own interests?”

Your father’s eyes blazed at the accusation. You knew the look. Your own temper was a family trait – and it certainly didn’t come from your mother.

He thundered his response. “You are my daughter! My interests are your interests!”

“Are they?” You shot back, your voice rising to match his.

“We are family, we are blood–”

“And what have I done, except increase our family’s legacy?” you interrupted him. “I did that, I secured our first council seat.”

“And what seat is that?” he replied, incensed. “A mute councillor, never to vote, never to speak?”

Your face burned, as you tried to think of a rebuttal to his questions. Something began to twist in the pit of your stomach.

Your father sighed, fixing you with a stern look. “Let me be frank, girl, if you’re so eager to play politics. Your position is not secure.”

You swallowed. “I know–”

“No, you do not,” he snapped, briefly raising his voice, before dropping his voice to a more controlled volume. “You inspired the love of the people, but what else? I know half a dozen lords are plotting your annulment, and another dozen with their own girls waiting in the wings. What will you do with that council seat, when a proposal comes to terminate your marriage? Watch silently when they vote to cast you aside?”

You stared at him, as that twisting sensation in your gut finally earned a name: dread. You tried to respond. “Royal marriages are a king’s prerogative, they can’t–”

“Yes, they can,” your father said, simply. “Any silver-tongued politician could convince the king that your marriage is a matter of the state. Perhaps if you were married to the younger prince, you’d be safe, but you’re married to the heir–”

At those words, coming out of your father’s mouth of all people’s, your vision turned red. Your response, when it came, hung heavy in the air.

“And whose fault is that?”

Your father’s eyes widened, and he hissed. “Mind your tongue.”

“I did,” you said, your voice cracking. Before you could top yourself, words began tumbling out of your mouth, every secret silent thought that had festered in the darkest, most vulnerable corners of your mind, spilling to the surface. “I was happy and content and loved, and I still bit my tongue and let you scheme to take it away. I married the right brother for you, are you still not satisfied?”

In an instant, your father stormed his way towards you, eyes blazing as he loomed over you. “Be careful, girl.”

For a moment, you thought he was threatening you. Your own father.

And then you watched his body crumple slightly, panic and concern finally bleeding through all that pomp and anger. “Especially about…that. Him.”

You watched him take a deep breath, rendered speechless. You had never – not once, in all your life – seen your father like this.

He seemed almost…scared.

“If there are plots to annul your marriage, there are plots for something far darker. Annulment would be catastrophic, but bearable. But any whispers of adultery, of treason? To see you executed…”

Gently, he lifted his hand to cup your cheek. And for a moment, you were four years old again, showing your father your very first letters, beaming as he called you his little princess, long before the rest of the kingdom was obliged to.

“You are my child. My only child. Doubt my intentions, if you must, but do not doubt my love.”

You were stunned into silence. His words should have been touching, and you supposed on some level that they still were. But you felt almost numb as you absorbed them. Was it shock, hearing your father speak of his emotions so plainly? Perhaps.

There was a small part of you that whispered if this was all just too little, too late.

Your father dropped his hand and stepped away from you, silence filling the air between the two of you.

Then, he paused, and turned his attention to something behind you.

For a moment, you felt confusion, turning to follow his glare – before embarrassment consumed you.

Seungmin, of course, had been sitting there the whole time.

“And you,” your father interjected, his voice cold and bordering on menacing, pointing at your tutor. “If you breathe a word of this–”

Seungmin, despite showing the very clear signs of awkwardness one would expect from someone who had just witnessed such an intense and private family dispute, managed to keep calm as he replied with unfailing honesty.

“I am no fool. This position keeps my family fed, and will see my sisters marry well. I am only here at Her Highness’s request, and if the princess goes, this job goes with her,” Seungmin said, fiercely. “…And if nothing else, I know about your reputation, sir. I would rather like my tongue to remain inside my head.”

Your eyes widened.

That was a bold insinuation on Seungmin’s part. Tongue mutilation had been outlawed years ago, deemed too brutal a punishment when death was a surer way to guarantee silence.

You half-expected your father to deny this with bluster and offence. And yet, all he did was eye Seungmin silently, before nodding once and turning to the door.

As he approached it, your father spoke one final time to you.

“Keep your wits about you. You’ve made a dangerously bold move, and your enemies will use it against you,” he warned, before finally leaving, letting the heavy door slam shut behind him.

The echo of it reverberated across the library, as you stared after him with far more questions than answers.

It was Seungmin who first broke the silence, clearing his throat with just a touch of unease. “…Well, I imagine you’re no longer in quite the right mindset for last year’s harvest calculations. Would you like to finish our sessions early today, Your Highness?”

You didn’t speak. You barely looked at him, in fact, as you silently sank back into your chair.

Seungmin waited a moment or so longer, beginning to tap nervously on the smooth wooden surface of the table in front of him. “…Your Highness?”

“I…” you trailed off, as you realised the incriminating words that had fallen from your own lips just moments ago, and your head jerked towards Seungmin in panic. “Don’t… I don’t know how much you report to Minho about our lessons. But…please don’t tell him what I said about being…you know, about…”

“Biting your tongue?” Seungmin supplied for you, but his tone was heavy, knowing. He knew that wasn’t the offending part of your outburst.

“Yes,” you replied in the same tone, and when your eyes met, you knew you had an understanding. “He’s a smart man, I’m sure it’s nothing he doesn’t already know, but…it just seems cruel. I think. To hear it directly.”

Seungmin observed you for a moment, brow furrowing just a touch. He opened his mouth as if to say something, hesitated, before speaking anyway. “Actually, you should know that I don’t ‘report’ anything to Minho. Sometimes, he asks questions about what we study, and I answer them. Nothing more.”

You blinked, and before you could stop yourself, your curiosity won out. “What kind of questions?”

Seungmin eyed you again, and for a split-second, you could have sworn something akin to amusement quirked the corner of his mouth. Whatever it was, it disappeared in an instant, as he replied. “He asks about what interests you. Once, he asked about a book he’d seen you reading, and took a copy for his own use.”

“Oh.”

Whatever you were expected, it wasn’t that. A strange, unbidden feeling began to spread in your chest, warm for just a moment before common sense returned and drove it away.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense. Minho sometimes takes an interest in my education. Perhaps he wants to test me on it, make it a competition or something.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Seungmin said, perfectly politely. “Or something, indeed.”

Soon after that, the first move was made against you.

Details were leaked about the maritime trade deal discussed in the council meeting. Confidential details that were now freely gossiped about, within the palace and without. No one could say for sure who was the source of those leaks, but the evidence was damning.

Before you joined the council, there hadn’t been a single leak in years. And now, after you attended your first meeting, sensitive information was being bandied about within days.

There was only one simple conclusion to be drawn about the identity of the leaker.

You.

Your father was right. Whoever your enemies were, they’d been scheming, and they did use your position on the council against you.

Perhaps the library would have been a better place to take a breath, dwell on the knowledge a little longer, turn it over in your mind alone to work out the whos and whys and how to press forward.

But your feet drew you to your chambers, through the doors, and even once inside they refused to let you sit idle. You paced, backwards and forwards, going over the situation, the accusations about to be levelled at you, the defences you might need, the evidence you had and did not have to prove your innocence.

You paced and paced, and thought and thought, until your head spun and your feet threatened to leave its imprints in the stone beneath you, until it became clear to you exactly what you were doing.

You hadn’t chosen these chambers for silent contemplation.

You were waiting here.

Because when you imagined defending yourself, you didn’t picture a faceless mob before which to protest your innocence. You didn’t picture the king, and his councillors, and the lords scheming behind your back.

You pictured Minho. His expression flickering between accusing, betrayed, angry, cold, pitying, wounded. It was him you wanted to convince before any others, as illogical as it was.

It was hurt, perhaps, maybe, at the idea that Minho thought you would betray his trust. You knew how he’d pushed hard for your position on the council. You would never throw it back in his face like this, and you needed to make sure he knew that.

You questioned just when Minho’s good opinion of you had become so…important.

Eventually, the chamber doors opened, and your words came spilling out at the mere sight of Minho in the doorway.

“I didn’t do it,” you declared. You wished you could be calmer. You feared that the panic in your voice would mislabel you guilty.

Minho, blinking in surprise for a moment at your sudden outburst, regarded you calmly. “Ominous words to hear when entering a room.”

“I’m not the leak,” you clarified, with little patience for his cleverness. “And don’t pretend you haven’t heard about it. I know the information being spread, and I know fingers are pointing in my direction. With some reason, I suppose, but it was not me.”

“You seem agitated,” Minho remarked, maddeningly, all but ignoring your words as his hands moved to begin undoing the fastenings of his jacket. It was some sort of rigid construction, high-necked and broad-shouldered, and perhaps once the imposing princely sight of him in it might have intimidated you. Now, there was a familiarity to the sight – and a bizarre comfort that came along with it, perhaps. “Usually I’m the one to spark it. It’s actually quite bemusing when something else is the source.”

You stared at him for a second. Off-guard, waiting for any kind of actual response to what you were saying. When none came, irritation sparked in your chest. “Minho–”

“You’re innocent,” Minho said simply, halting you in your tracks. “I know. I told my father as much.”

It took you a moment to register exactly what he said, your head too full of practised arguments to leave much room for the recognition that Minho didn’t need to hear them.

He believed you without them.

It felt as if you had been barrelling towards something at high speed, a runaway horse, only to come to a sudden jarring stop. Air left your lungs in one unconscious breath, like a weight that had crushed your chest had been lifted.

“…Good,” you said, haltingly, and then relief struck you with such a violence that your eyes began to sting with tears.

At the sight of them, Minho’s expression shifted instantly from flippancy to something bordering on horror.

Frustrated, and more than a little mortified, you wiped them away impatiently. “Don’t. I’m fine.”

Minho opened his mouth, about to speak–

“No,” you interrupted, pointing at him, embarrassment warm in your cheeks. “This is just a serious allegation to be faced with, and I’m…relieved that I don’t have to waste my time defending myself.”

You managed to regain your composure, with no more tears threatening to make an appearance and humiliate you further. Taking a deep breath, you refused to look at Minho, refused to know if he believed your words or if that damned expression still lingered on his face.

“People are talking,” you said, finally.

“…People always talk. We’ve discussed this before.”

“It’s different now. I thought it was just idle gossip before, but…” you trailed off. “My father came to me a few days ago. He believes some of the nobles are scheming to dissolve our marriage. Free you up to marry a daughter of their own, and have me removed.”

Or worse.

You hadn’t fully comprehended what your father had hinted to you that day, not until now. You could see it all now. The image of your execution, a hundred smirking noblemen awaiting it, ready to thrust their own girls into your role. Perhaps to perish after you. Their scheming would not end with your death. They would simply turn on each other, try again and again, a dozen dead brides falsely accused and outmanoeuvred and doomed from the start.

And then, you snapped out of your dark thoughts when you realised that Minho had closed the distance between you, standing almost toe-to-toe.

His eyes sought your gaze, and held it.

“They can’t do that,” Minho said, firmly, gently. Certain. “We are married, and nothing can change that now.”

“It could. It would be easy, really,” you argued. “There’s no real proof of our consummation. You could say it never happened, and our marriage could be annulled by day’s end.”

“I would not,” Minho said, firmly. “Believe what you will about me, but I would never break off our marriage with a lie like that. Those are a craven’s actions, not mine. I swear it.”

Perhaps to your surprise, you found that you believed him. Minho could be called a great many things – indeed, you have called Minho a great many things – but ‘craven’ was not one of them.

Minho’s lips set into a grim, serious line. “Is that what concerns you? That I would set you aside?”

Would he?

Even after so many years around Minho, after weeks of being married, you still could not guess his true intentions.

“…I don’t know,” you confessed.

Something small flashed in Minho’s eyes. It looked like hurt.

“You have done a lot for me these past few weeks. More than I ever expected. More than I could ever ask for, truthfully. I think…I hope that we are friends, or at least something approaching it,” you told him, because it was true, and the lastthing you wanted was to destroy this budding trust you had developed between the two of you. Still, he deserved total honesty. “But I know you didn’t want this marriage, Minho.”

Minho was silent for a moment. You knew he couldn’t refute it, and he didn’t try to.

Instead, to your surprise, his hands lifted to rest gently on your shoulders. You could feel their weight on you, and how warm it was. Solid. Grounding.

He held you there and when he finally spoke, his tone was serious – grave, almost.

“…The night before Felix left for the coast, he came to me,” Minho admitted. “He made me swear – on my life, on his, on my mother, on my crown, on everything I have ever valued – that I would protect you from harm.”

Your lips parted in shock.

Felix.

“I love my brother, more than anything. He was once my only friend, in all the world. The very best of me,” Minho said, words beginning to pour out of him, as if finally freeing thoughts he had kept buried deep inside for months, perhaps even years. “I didn’t tell him how much he meant to me, not really. And now…”

Minho swallowed, eyes closing for a brief second, before meeting your stare again with a quiet intensity.

“He will never forgive me for marrying you. Never. The least I can do is honour the last thing – the only thing – he has ever asked of me.”

You didn’t know what to say.

A sudden realisation hit you. A small piece of an inscrutable puzzle, revealed.

“Is that what you meant, when you told your father he owed you something? For making you marry me?”

Minho swallowed, pausing for a second, and answered.

“Yes, in short. My father and I have had our squabbles but this marriage…it was the first true fight we had. The first time he’s ever had to order me to do something as a king, not asked me as a father. We haven’t seen many things eye-to-eye since. He doesn’t…understand,” he said, and then, almost to himself, “but he doesn’t need to. I know I’m doing what is right.”

There was a terrible sadness in his eyes, a shocking vulnerability. It was almost alien to see such an expression on Minho’s face, to glimpse beyond the walls he so skilfully kept up.

Unthinkingly, you surged forward and wrapped your arms around him.

He stilled in your hold, tense with surprise. You ignored it, squeezing him tightly, pressing your face into his chest. It was an awkward embrace, perhaps. The hard edges of the embroidery on his jacket dug into your cheek, stitching rough against your soft skin, and Minho’s movements were stiff and unpractised as he returned the hug.

But it didn’t need to be perfect. It only needed to prove the one thing you intended to show him.

Trust.

That night, when dinner was cleared, Minho retreated to his couch and paperwork. You left to change into your sleepclothes in private, as usual, and returned to slip quietly into bed.

There, however, you fidgeted and fumbled with exactly what to say before finally, bravely, breaking the silence. “…You can sleep in the bed. Next to me. If you were…unsure about it.”

Minho’s stare in response was indecipherable. But he nodded once, and when he finished whatever report he had picked up from the pile of papers, he disappeared to the bathroom and reappeared dressed for bed.

White linens. Thin, soft. You remembered them from your wedding night.

It was enough to make your breath hitch – and, embarrassed, you rolled to your side to avoid looking at Minho, lest you stared too openly at him.

You heard him pull back the covers on his side, and felt the weight of him sink into the mattress. He seemed to keep his distance, as not a single part of you touched, and yet you were painfully aware of his presence there.

Silence fell over the two of you, interrupted only by quiet breaths in tandem.

Something squeezed gently in the pit of your stomach. You recognised it as something like anticipation, which was bizarre, as you knew nothing was going to happen.

Nothing would happen.

…And yet, you supposed it would be easy for Minho to shift closer towards you. You could imagine him reaching over, and setting his warm hand on the curve of your hip.

Would he turn you, so you were facing him? Perhaps, but you could also see him keeping your back to him. Letting you hide your face, a small mercy, because he would probably know how embarrassed you would be.

Your eyes drifted shut.

It would be easy for him to press his face into the back of your neck, his mouth into the crook where your neck and shoulder met.

And perhaps he would whisper, soothingly, as his hand travelled lower, seeking the hem of your nightgown, sliding it up your thighs and…

No.

Your eyes snapped open as you scolded yourself, a mixture of excitement and shame heating your face. You banished every remotely inappropriate thought from your mind, turning to lie on your back and stare up at the ceiling.

You wondered, briefly, if Minho was looking up at the same thing too. You refused to glance over at him to check. The thought of seeing his face after all…that that had been swirling in your thoughts? Absolutely not.

It took far longer than usual to fall asleep in the deafening silence, but eventually you managed to.

The next morning, you awoke and realised, for the very first time, you had woken up before Minho. He was sleeping peacefully, unaware that the two of you must have turned to face each other in the night, bodies still a careful distance apart.

With one exception – Minho’s left arm lay outstretched, the knuckles of his hand just barely kissing the delicate skin of your wrist.

You stared at where your hands touched, skin-on-skin.

And you did not move your hand away.

625 notes · View notes

linosspam · 9 months

Text

- stray kids reaction (maknae line)

- when you send a picture of them sleeping

- boyfriend! stray kids x fem reader

- fluff | sfw

- hyung line

—————

a/n - lmk if you enjoyed it and would like me to make more fake texts!

- linosspam

2K notes · View notes

hyunsvngs · 9 months

Text

𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 - modern royalty au!lee felix x female reader

wc: 10.6k words

rating: 18+. MDNI

cw: felix and mc being dumbasses, no use of y/n, sickeningly sweet petnames, ANGST, fluff!!, smut warnings under the cut

synopsis: your childhood best friend, the prince lee felix, is due to be betrothed in an arranged marriage organised by his mother. the problem is, you’re her top choice - and you’re also secretly madly in love with him.

a/n: our first fic on the blog!! if anyone has any questions or any thoughts to share with me please feel free. this fic is my baby and i hope you all enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it ♡

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

sw: dryhumping, use of petnames in bed, no actual sex!!, soft cutie felix except nsfw!!!!

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

You'd loved Lee Felix since the day you met him.

Of course, your brain had always convinced you that he was unattainable. You weren't without status, so to speak - your mother was famously known as the Queen's lady-in-waiting, and it was through her job that you'd had the pleasure of meeting the two princes, Felix and his elder brother Chris. You and Felix had clicked instantly. You had no other siblings yourself, and your father had died in the army when you were a baby, leaving your mother widowed and you without one of your intended parental figures.

Felix had taken that all in his stride, though. The day he met you he stumbled up to you with the grace of Bambi's first movement on ice, all short chubby limbs flailing everywhere and eyes formed in crescent moons with the size of his smile. Chris had taken less interest in you. Although polite, he was three years older than the both of you and already had his own group of friends, but you and Felix hadn't even started formal education yet - and you were inseparable as soon as you met. You were enchanted by him, he had been your first crush, and your first love once you were old enough to understand what that was.

You began your life as a shy, timid little girl, just as clumsy as your best friend. Your knobbly knees were always bruised and scarred, peeking out from the tops of your white knee socks and covered in whatever bandages Felix could find to wrap around you. Felix had brought you out of your shell, introduced you to some of his other 'friends' - at the start, they were just kids with similar status to him, but they really did form a tight knit group eventually. Now, you were known to always be by the side of Felix and his group, getting up to whatever secret debauchery you could manage that wouldn't risk any of your positions in society. Your mother, thankfully, had turned a blind eye to most of it, and the Queen was always too occupied to notice.

When you were younger, you and Felix loved to go out gallivanting. You'd stumble to the nearest beach, bags of towels and books in your canvas bags and giggle as you threw them on the sand. You had some form of an unofficial book club, just the two of you. You saw him practically all day everyday, but you'd both discussed and had decided to designate a Saturday afternoon to discuss whatever books you'd found in the extensive palace library and you both avoided any and all kinds of book talk on any other day in the week. The beach had become your place to gush over whatever literature had caught your attention, with the calming waves of the sea crashing behind you and the tweeting of whatever birds had made an appearance that day.

Now, though, you were both of age. You were both twenty one, and that meant that marriage was around the corner for Felix. He'd been so busy lately, you'd barely had the chance to see him. You took upon completing mundane tasks of your own, helping your mother with anything the Queen asked for (much to her polite gratitude, but she definitely knew why you were sulking around), and sometimes you even helped the cooks make food for the whole palace. Felix had teased you relentlessly once he'd seen you in your white frilly apron and you'd had to chase him out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon.

It was weird not having your best friend around so much. Chris was already married, being the heir to the throne, despite the fact there were rumours he would abdicate to Felix. Felix hadn't told you anything about that, and you were sure he would have. Even Chris leaving had left a hole in your heart - no more seeing his muscly eye-candy group of friends around. Well, they still showed up uninvited sometimes. You were pretty sure Changbin and Jisung were never actually invited, not even by Chris, but they lingered around him like they were his little brothers, too.

"Hey, you've been making that daisy chain for like, twenty years," A familiar giggle chimed from above you, and you looked up. Ah yes, your Prince. You'd gotten so lost in memories that you'd been wasting a Saturday afternoon with him. Fuck, you're such an idiot. Felix was looking down at you in your position in his lap, your head nestled on top of his crossed legs in the dress slacks he was supposed to wear everyday. He was wearing a white silk shirt on top of it, billowing in the summer breeze, but the top two buttons were still undone due to the heat of the sun. The summer always made your Prince's freckles shine more on his tan skin, the fawn dots even extending to the exposed skin on his chest. Needless to say, you waited impatiently for the hot season to come around every year. His teeth were gleaming in his smile, radiating sunshine and the gleam bouncing off of the bleach blonde mullet he'd managed to convince his mother to let him have.

You had to deflect. He couldn't know you were upset at not seeing him, although you were nearly certain he must have worked it out already. You shrugged dismissively, looking back at the daisy chain in your hands. Your thumbnails were stained with green from the plant stems, but you were still determined to finish it. You were making it for him, as a crown, because you knew he'd keep it until the flowers wilted, and then he'd get the flowers pressed and he'd put them in his scrapbook. He was such a good friend. His scrapbook was full of mementos of the two of you, even sometimes extending to the whole group - you and Felix, your friends, and Chris and his friends. It was mostly full of just the two of you, though.

"Sorry, Lixie. I guess I'm not all there today. Sorry," You mumbled. "What were you saying?"

"I was saying about Rochester and how he's a possessive asshole- no, you know what, that's not important. What's on your mind, sugarplum?" The cheesy nickname worked exactly how he intended it to, making you giggle and your cheeks burn with embarrassment. You nudged his tummy softly with your elbow, the silk brushing against your skin and making goosebumps rise on your arms. Felix dog-eared the page of the book that he was reading from and shut it softly, placing it beside you both. It was one habit of Felix's that you absolutely hated - like, how could he sleep with a clear conscience knowing that he had creased the delicate pages of so many classics? You'd given him so many bookmarks over the years, even personalised ones that you'd crafted in your spare time with both of your names on, but he always lost them or claimed he'd forgotten them in your book club outings. He leaned back on his palms, smiling down at you fondly. You shifted, turning slightly to see him better. You felt the soft cotton of the navy and white plaid picnic blanket brush against the bottom of your bare legs. You weren't really allowed to wear short skirts, or low cut tops, but on a summer's day like this you were permitted to wear a knee length skirt, so long as it was a thick fabric. Nothing too revealing was allowed.

You hummed in response to him, finding him still staring at you. "You want me to be honest, Pixie?"

Felix giggled at his own cheesy nickname, then nodded eagerly, strands of hair falling over his face before he pushed them back. His forehead had a thin sheen of sweat adorning it. "I always want you to be honest with me."

You ignored the butterflies causing a storm in your stomach over the statement. He was so understanding, so sweet - he always had been, like when he would bandage up your scraped knees or comfort you when something went wrong in your favourite TV show. He was even understanding during one of your many nights of debauchery, when you'd all been playing Seven Minutes in Heaven like the horny teenagers you were and you'd been picked to go in with Felix. You'd been bright red, stuttering and giggling nervously about how you'd never had your first kiss and Felix understood, rubbing your arm softly with his dainty hand and insisting you didn't have to do anything that you weren't ready for. You were so embarrassed, but he made you feel so at ease, and you'd both sat in the storage closet and gossiped about Chris instead.

That was the moment you'd fallen in love with him, you think. You were fifteen.

"I'm worried," You admitted, finally letting the flower chain drop from your fingertips and onto your tummy. Felix instantly shot up. His smile had fallen, and he was now looking at you with a concerned look, brushing hair back from your face and tucking it behind your ear. The butterflies started fluttering even faster, if it was possible. You looked up into his brown eyes, and you looked at his freckles, thinking about the many times you'd tried to count every single one. This was your best friend. This was the love of your life. Your Prince, as you affectionately called him in your head. You could be honest with him. If you couldn't, who could you be truthful with? "I'm worried because I know you're getting married soon. We barely see each other as it is anymore, and I miss you, to be honest. It will be soon, won't it?"

Felix hummed. He nodded thoughtfully, eyes drifting to the daisy chain on your tummy. You saw a small smile at the end of his lips as his fingers brushed over it. He knew it was for him. He'd made you many over the years, too, and you'd kept them in your own scrapbook, despite it being much emptier than his. "It will be soon. My mother is picking the right candidate at the moment. But..."

You furrowed your eyebrows. He hadn't looked back at you, still gazing at the daisy chain and beginning to rub reassuring circles on your side. "... But?"

The smile finally formed on his lips. "You do realise you're her top option, right?"

You shot up from his lap, eyes widening. Felix bit his lip, holding in a laugh. He was laughing at you, that bastard, but it did make sense. You were the Queen's favourite, and she knew how close you and Felix were. She wasn't a nasty or a ruthless Queen. She was a people person, she always donated money to charity and the homeless rating in your country was literally almost zero. She'd done so much for people since she was in power, and she never cared about status - not that it had ever affected you, but she did treat everyone as her equals. She was like Felix in that way, a sweetheart, and she always permitted you and Felix to go on journeys wherever you wanted, so long as you kept safe and there was a guard in the area, just in case. There was one in the meadow with you now, but you couldn't even see them from where you were sitting. She was just... so cool, down to earth. She understood what it was like to be young, within reason.

You were flustered. Your brain had instantly gone to thinking of getting married to Felix, spending nights with him but not in the way you used to, and even... Well, you had to consummate the marriage, didn't you? You were extremely inexperienced in that department, save for a few drunken childish kisses with Chris' friend Changbin when you were just a bit younger, but you still found your mind racing and going through your deepest, darkest fantasies. Fantasies that you would never entertain outside of shoving a hand down your underwear in your bed at night and whining into the satin pillows. You had to hide that you were thinking about that, what the fuck is wrong with you? Time to deflect.

"Well, she does love me," You said boldly. Felix shook his head, punching you in the arm, perhaps a bit harder than he meant to because you let out a hiss and punched him back too hard, in the leg. His smile dropped, groaning and grabbing the spot on his shin where you'd hit him. "But, would you be okay with that, Lixie? It's... me. We'd be like... you know."

"Married? Well, yeah," Felix laughed, still holding his leg. You sighed, giving him a flat look. You needed to keep yourself occupied, so you picked up the daisy chain on the blanket and started to fiddle with it again, threading it through with nimble fingers. Felix finally let go of his leg, throwing himself onto his side so he was lying down on the blanket and facing you. He'd started to fiddle with the cover of the book. Another thing you were getting prepared to tell him off about. "I know what you mean. Honestly, though? I can't think of anyone better to do it with," You felt yourself suppressing a smile at his words, said lowly in that deep voice of his. Everytime he said something like that, your brain instantly went to shit, he liked me back, and you couldn't have that showing on your face when you knew deep down that wasn't the truth. He was unattainable- no, wait, now he wasn't that unattainable, now that you've actually stopped being angsty and depressing and actually thought about it. "I mean, you are my best friend, sugarplum."

You let out a fake laugh at his use of that stupid nickname again, and it seemed to placate him. Best friend. Yeah. Because one thing you hadn't thought about during your insane train of thought, one thing you had always considered and had been the main factor in not confessing to him, was that you couldn't risk ruining the friendship you had built up with him for sixteen years.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Unattainable. He was unattainable. You felt yourself mulling over that thought over and over as you paced in your bedchambers, in your silly Disney pyjamas that now barely fit you and you would never let anyone see. You had no one you could even talk to about this. It was clearly royal intel, secret information, and the only person you could have possibly talked to now never comes around anymore because Chris decided to get fucking married and now spends most of his time boning his wife for an heir. Or just because he likes boning her, you weren't sure, but Felix told you that he'd heard enough through the walls to know that boning was definitely occuring every night. Anyway, Changbin wasn't around much anymore, and he was your top confidant - bar Felix.

You liked living in the palace, but would you like living there as a Princess? Well, fuck yeah, obviously. It was like something out of The Princess Diaries, one of your favourite films which you and Felix had watched over and over. He hated it. You had a good, solid reputation. You were a high member of society due to your mother's job, and you and your mother were even placed on the royal side of the palace for your living quarters. You had a massive bedroom, an extravagant en suite with a relaxing bathtub and a sitting room with a huge TV that you and your mother always curled up in front of. How could it even get any better? You had seen Felix's room, when you were younger, but it kind of became unspokenly forbidden when you got to your teenage years, lest something gets out of hand. You understood it, actually. You'd been going through enough hormones to know that you had definitely come dangerously close to propositioning him a few times.

You had propositioned Changbin, obviously. You two had your first kisses together, and also a few drunken kisses, but you'd ended up as just friends. He was probably the only one who knew about your feelings for Felix, and he admitted you weren't his type anyway. You were sure he was in love with Felix's friend, Hyunjin, but you never commented on the way he looked at Hyunjin like he'd hung the stars in the sky. You couldn't really say anything either, knowing full well that you looked at Felix the same.

You needed to speak to Changbin. The unbearable amount of anxiety at not knowing was mounting in you. But it hit you, then, in the middle of your pacing and chewing on your thumbnail. You looked at the copy of Jane Eyre that Felix had given you, placed on your bed. Your mother knew. She had to have known you were a choice, surely, and she hadn't even told you?

You shook your head, resuming pacing. You couldn't blame her. Felix wasn't even meant to tell you. It made sense, though - you'd received pretty much the same education as a royal, and you and Felix were inseparable. You knew you had the etiquette, the social skills (thanks to Felix). You were pretty much a Princess without being a Princess. It had to be you, right?

Did you want it to be you?

You threw yourself onto your bed, wrapping the soft pillow around your head and screaming incoherently into the fabric. It didn't help. Who were the other choices? You thought of other girls who lingered around the palace, ones that had definitely had crushes on your Prince growing up and had given him fleeting glances with blushed cheeks and an agape mouth. None of their names even came to mind. Maybe a Princess from another country, for a marriage of creating alliances? You could see the Queen considering that. She was always very logical, but you also knew she had her son's best interests in mind. Chris had married a Princess from a different Kingdom, actually, but his marriage wasn't even arranged. He'd been in love with her since they were teenagers, and they could only meet once or twice a year in arranged legal meetings. You remember them having perhaps not so quiet dates together. Everyone knew, and when they announced their engagement everyone was happy but not surprised. Felix had taken too long to find a wife, and even the thoughtful Queen couldn't let that slide. People were asking questions, personal questions about his demeanour and whether he was off putting, and she couldn't deflect the questions for much longer.

You hadn't even noticed you'd drifted off, and you woke up to your face still smushed in the pillow. You immediately inhaled sharply upon waking up, taking in the light outside. You'd drooled all over your pillow, leaving a huge wet patch and your hair was knotted every which way, making you look like you'd been dragged backwards down the hedge. Damn. Thinking too hard has taken its toll on you, really.

A knock on the door made you spring up from your bed, smoothing down your hair with one hand, before another three knocks came in succession and you paused your movements. It was yours and your mother's secret knock - one knock, then three quick ones after. She'd seen you in worse states. Much worse states, even hungover states that you'd cried over while she held a bucket to your head and had promised to keep it a secret. You padded over to the door, opening it slightly just to make sure it was in fact, her. It was, obviously. Not even Felix knew your secret knock.

She came in and sat on the big armchair in front of the fire. Neither of you had said anything. You stood awkwardly, wringing your hands. She finally looked at you, a kind look on her face.

"I have two things to say," She smiled. You loosened up a bit, realising that it was just your mother. She'd always been stuck by you. It had been only the two of you, after all. It was all you knew. You nodded, rushing over to sit cross legged in front of her like a child. "First of all, the Queen would like to meet with you in an hour. Second of all, you're seriously still wearing those Dumbo pyjamas? The legs aren't even long enough anymore, I can see your knees, they're meant to be trousers not shorts-"

You blinked owlishly. Her rant went in through one ear and out the other, before she realised you weren't listening. She sighed. You blinked again, pulling the ends of your pyjama trousers absentmindedly to try and make them longer. "The Queen... wants to meet with me?"

Your mother nodded. She wasn't giving anything away by her face, but she definitely knew. She knew. She knew what you were going to be told. God, why couldn't she just ignore her job duties for once and be a fucking mother? You chided yourself mentally, she was a great mother. But you were frustrated. You needed to know now, not in an hour!

"Just... just me, and her?" You questioned, cocking your head to the side. Your mother shook her head, fingernails picking at a loose thread on her skirt. She was avoiding eye contact. What the fuck is going on?

Oh God, it's not you, is it? Fuck.

"Felix will be there," Your mother stated. She jumped up sharply. "I'll help you pick an outfit, dear. Come." She beckoned you to the armoire in the corner and you followed dutifully.

Your mother began to flick through pieces of fabric hanging off of hangers, and you tried to ignore the anxiety now mounting again in the pit of your stomach.

You so badly wanted it to be you. Just for once, you wanted to be selfish.

An hour later, on the dot, you stood outside the main hall. It was where everyone - royalty and staff alike - ate food together. That was, again, one of the kind Queen's rules. It was also where her throne was, where she had meetings with people. You'd never been on the receiving end of such a formal meeting, but one of the Queen's maids had come and collected you from your room five minutes before the allocated time. You'd managed to run a brush through your hair, thank God, and your mother had put you in a baby blue pinafore dress that came down to mid-knee on top of a white long sleeved turtleneck. The turtleneck was far too warm for the weather, but you knew the Queen would appreciate the conservative outfit. You stared down at the Mary Jane's on your feet.

You shut your eyes, trying to control your breathing, before realising you really couldn't afford to be late. Maybe you'd fucked up and done something wrong. You raised your hand, knocking softly on the door, but it swung open with the small force of your knock. The Queen sat on her throne, flipping through the pages of a book. Your Prince stood behind her, leaning over the throne, pointing at certain pages and giggling. She was smiling fondly at the pages, rubbing her fingertips over certain ones and mumbling statements to her son. She'd began to age slightly, with wrinkles adorning her eyes and mouth, but she didn't look any less beautiful. She had long, dark hair and freckles, just like Felix, but her smile was as kind as Chris'.

Oh? They seemed happy, at least.

You cleared your throat. The Queen, her Majesty, looked up at you and smiled acknowledgingly, shutting the book on her lap. She beckoned for you to come in and you did a small curtsy before shuffling into the lavish room. You could smell the kitchen from here, and you knew the cooks were whipping up something fierce by the enticing smell of it. You hadn't had time to have breakfast, because you'd slept in, and lunch was still around two hours away. You hoped your stomach wouldn't grumble too loud as you eventually approached the throne.

Felix smiled at you. He was wearing a similar pair of dress slacks to yesterday, but this time his silk shirt was a baby blue, the Kingdom's colours. A silver chain rested on his neck and you took note of the earrings dangling from his ears - another impulse decision you'd both done when you were younger. You know Felix had gotten in trouble for it at first, but the Queen seemed to be buying him a lot of expensive earrings lately. She knew what it was like to be young, after all. You smiled back awkwardly, rubbing your sweaty hands on your pinafore. It was then you realised you were in the Kingdom's colours too. Very patriotic of your mother.

"You want some tea, sugarplum?" Felix's voice drew you out of your thoughts, and you winced at the nickname. In front of his mother? In front of the Queen? Seriously? Your eyes seemed to convey a similar message to him, a flat glare, but he simply giggled. You saw him pouring from a teapot into a dainty teacup, and reverted your eyes to the Queen. She was still looking down at the book in her lap, and you looked down at it in confusion.

It was the scrapbook Felix made for the two of you. It was full of pictures from when you were younger to now, full of cinema tickets from secret outings and full of pressed flowers. Some of your favourite book quotes had even made it into there, scrawled in both of your handwritings. Even your school graduation pictures were in there. You'd been sent to a private school for the upper society, obviously, but you still had a normal graduation - albeit small, and full of snobby people.

"Thank you for meeting me, your Majesty," You were babbling in awkwardness. Oh, God. It was like word vomit, you couldn't stop it. "I'm really glad to meet with you today. I'm just wondering, have I done something wrong? You never ask to meet me."

The Queen laughed, her eyes forming crescent moons exactly the same as Felix's. Felix appeared at your side then, handing you a small teapot with what looked like peach tea in it. Your favourite, because of course, your Prince remembers that. You awkwardly shifted on one foot to the other, taking small sips of the tea to try and cool your nerves and almost screaming because it was still scalding hot. Felix was trying to hold in a laugh beside you, you could tell without even looking at him. Bastard.

"You haven't done anything wrong, sweetheart," The Queen's voice was soft, and she was now looking at you, taking in your outfit. She nodded approvingly. "You look lovely, very sophisticated. I believe I've made the right choice."

Your cheeks burned red. No. Fucking. Way. "T-The right choice? Do you mean...?"

The Queen beckoned over one of her staff members and they scurried over in a similar manner to the way your mother would have done. They placed a box in her hands, a small black velvet box that looked like it could be opened seamlessly. A... ring box? "I apologise, sweetheart. I've kept you in the dark a little bit with all of this. Would you bring her a chair, dear? A comfortable one."

The staff member scuttled over to grab a small chair with a red pillow on top of it and placed it behind you. You looked to your left side, still in shock, and the staff member simply smiled and motioned to the chair. You muttered a thanks in acknowledgement and sat on the pillow. Damn, the chair was comfortable. Felix was still standing, watching you hold your teacup awkwardly in a sweaty hand. He looked like he was about to die of laughter. God, you hated him so much, but you also really didn't. He just loved to tease you.

Maybe he would in bed, too-

"So, as you probably know, our favourite boy hasn't found someone to court yet," The Queen began speaking once you were sat down. Felix groaned, and his mother simply laughed. "Hush, now, sweetheart."

"Mum, you said you wouldn't be mean-"

Their dynamics always amazed you. She took the piss out of him, to put it quite literally, but in such an eloquent manner it could be easily missed as them having a difficult relationship. They didn't. He was a mummy's boy, through and through. It was one of the things you loved about him. You could tell a lot about a man from the way he treated his mother.

"Felix, hush now," She admonished again, but the smile on her face didn't leave. Felix mumbled something and then went back over to the side to fiddle with the teapots. Good, he should feel awkward. You looked at her outfit, beautiful in an ornate sense, pearl clips pinning her long, dark hair up so you could see the freckles on her face that matched your Prince. "I took it upon myself to find Felix a bride. I hope you don't think I'm cruel for doing so, I do have my baby's best interests in mind."

Felix groaned, putting his face in his hands. "'M not a baby-"

"You always will be to me, sweetheart. But it was time to get you courting, to get you married. I couldn't do that when you're always gallivanting discussing books with this one now, could I?" Your cheeks burned. You started to stutter out an apology, but she held up a hand to stop you. "Nonsense, sweetheart. Your friendship is one I've always admired. You're inseparable, and it is lovely to see you both so happy. You know that I value your mother highly, also."

You nodded, grinning. You felt a bit more at ease at the praise. The tea had also cooled down slightly too, so you started to sip it again, ignoring the way Felix was intently watching you with an evil smile to see if you'd burn your tongue again.

"Then, I thought about it. I thought, well, I do value your mother extremely highly, and you've been very helpful as of late. Obviously, that is because this one isn't taking up all of your time again," She nodded her head towards Felix. It was such an informal motion that you laughed in shock, and she giggled, a chiming similar to Felix's laugh that shouldn't have come from a middle aged woman who was literally the top of society. You still weren't completely getting at what she was saying, but you were enjoying the conversation. It was just praise, praise, praise. Amazing. "So, I want to offer you something. I want you to know you can decline, and you and your mother will remain here in your current roles. It would make me very happy, however, if you agreed to marry Felix."

You blinked. Okay, yeah, you kind of knew that's what she was getting at, but still - coming out of her mouth you thought you were going to have a heart attack. Your eyes flitted to Felix, who was simply nodding at you in encouragement, eyes widened. He... what, had he convinced her with that scrapbook? He wanted to marry you? Ugh, he probably just wanted to marry you so he didn't have to marry someone he didn't know. He doesn't even know you like him like that. But... a little part of you wanted to be selfish. You scratch his back by not letting him marry someone he's not close with, and he scratches yours by at least pretending to be in love with you. Could you deal with that, though? The pretending?

You nodded in acknowledgement at what the Queen said, looking at your tea again. The tea leaves were floating around in the liquid, mocking you, as if saying you were so fucking dumb. Of course you were going to say yes. "Um... may I ask, your Majesty, what would happen if I said no?"

You refused to look at Felix. The Queen hummed, looking down at the box in her lap. Oh, that was a ring box, definitely. Funny, in a weird way. "Well, this way, if you got married, you'd be able to spend a lot of time together. You'd see each other a lot. You'd be happy. If you decline... I'd have to find someone else for him to-"

"I'll do it," You grimaced at cutting the Queen off, but you couldn't even bear to think of him with someone else. Instead of chiding you, she beamed from ear to ear, and Felix rushed over to you.

He leaned down, wrapping his arms around you and leaning in for a hug. He felt so soft, all silk and soft skin, but you knew what was underneath that shirt. You'd seen it, and now you were definitely going to see everything else. He smelled of lavender and orange blossom, that expensive perfume he's always spraying on himself, but you could smell notes of the flowers in the meadow that were still left on his skin from yesterday.

Okay, yeah, you could get used to this.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

You didn't get a proper engagement, but that was alright. You'd been given the ring pretty much straight away after your meeting, and when you'd got back to your room after lunch your mother was still there, but now she was gushing, almost bouncing off the walls.

The ring was beautiful. Even using that adjective felt like an understatement. It was clearly an heirloom, passed through generations. The gem in the middle was blue tourmaline, and whilst it matched the Kingdom's colour it was extremely rare - or so you thought, you weren't sure - and it was surrounded by a cluster of diamonds and placed on a thin gold band. You'd always dreamed of getting engaged, even letting yourself think about getting engaged to Felix sometimes, when you were feeling particularly selfish. You always thought it would happen on the meadow, or on your guys' beach that you'd had less time to go to these days because it was further out. You didn't think you wanted it to be pretty lavish, just you two, so you weren't that angry about just being given the ring and told to prepare for an outing with Felix later on. He was your safe place, and you did want to talk privately about the engagement, so you weren't too angry.

You thought about it a lot, looking down at the gem glinting in the light. Your mother had left, and you were now just sitting at your vanity staring at your own hand. The public knew who you were. They knew you were Prince Felix's best friend, and more than a few people had deemed you two as soulmates, people from a similar status who were bound to fall in love and get married. Now, it just felt very one sided. You knew you were in love with Felix, and you'd agreed to the marriage with little thought, but now you felt a bit anxious. How were you going to pretend not to love him when you had to sleep next to him every night? Or when you had to go on dates with him? The engagement would be formally announced tomorrow, with the outing tonight being specifically for you to wear the ring in the public's eye and for you two to dial up the romance and get people speculating. The engagement party was planned to take place tomorrow night after the announcement, with everyone important there.

It was a beautiful ring. You just weren't sure you could pretend any more. You were sick of pretending to just view him as a friend.

When the night rolled by, you'd dressed in something a bit cosier - not too warm, because the nights weren't getting cold much anymore. You'd switched your pinafore and long sleeve for a thin knitted jumper and some long linen trousers, throwing a long but light jacket on top. You had to look sophisticated, respectful even. You deemed you looked alright after tucking the jumper into the trousers and adorning a belt, and when you swung the door open to your room, Felix was stood there.

He'd also put on a thin jumper in lieu of his thin billowing silk shirts, but he still looked just as good in the blue cable knit staring you in the eyes. He'd even put on a long coat just like yours. It was like you were matching, but you hadn't intended to. You looked up at him, meeting his eyes, and you swore you'd never seen him look happier, not even when you'd moan in delight eating his homemade brownies or when you'd go sick after eating too many of said brownies because they were too good. His hair was neatly styled, pulled back in a stylish half up-half down ponytail, with a few strands dangling in his face.

"Hey, sugarplum," He spoke, voice low. You groaned, pushing him out of the doorway and leaving the room, shutting the door behind you. He laughed in delight at your annoyance and linked arms with you. It was then you noticed he had a flower in his hand - just one stem, but the meaning was enough to almost make you cry.

"Oh my God, Felix, is that-"

"Baby's breath," He unlinked his arm with you, passing the stem to you. When you two were younger, you'd been entranced by the baby's breath growing in your meadow and you'd both been determined it was the work of fairies. It was too beautiful to be normal, and you and Felix had collected them endlessly until there was basically none left. You called them fairy flowers, and that's sort of where Felix's nickname had come from - your mother had called him Pixie affectionately when he'd revealed that he really thought these flowers were part of a fairy's little garden. He pretended to hate it, but you know he secretly loved it when you called him that. Chris had told you.

"You remembered. We used to call them fairy flowers," You brushed your hand over the flower, grinning at the softness. Felix chuckled, whispering a 'yeah'. He quickly pinched the flower from you again, tucking it behind your ear. You quite literally swooned, smiling up at his own beaming face. It got a bit awkward for you then though, because you couldn't even pretend not to be in love with him now, before you're even married. You found yourself in a state of word vomit again. "Jeez, dial down the PDA, Romeo. We're not even outside yet."

You walked off, leaving Felix trailing after you laughing at your words. "'Jeez'? What are you, a frat boy? You need to stop reading fanfictions, you know," He slung his arm around your waist, leading you out of the palace grounds. You rolled your eyes, ignoring him, but you leaned in closer to his touch. Tonight was meant to just be a late night walk, full of holding hands and perhaps acting like normal people getting some street food from a dodgy merchant that would give you a bad tummy for a few days. Once you'd left the ornate gates, with one of the guards waving you both goodbye, you started to walk down the street and into the busier part of town. The palace wasn't too far from the hustle and bustle of the city, because again, the Queen apparently loved to be normal. People came to the palace all the time and took pictures and whatnot, but they were never allowed into the actual building. That was too far, and a danger to security.

You both began to walk, feeling the much cooler breeze blow through your hair and rattle the petals upon your ear. It was a bit ticklish, but he'd put it there, so it was staying there. His arm stayed around your waist, but it was comforting. You'd done stuff like this a million times. You were both extremely affectionate and loved touch anyway, so it wasn't strange. Of course, it felt different. You were engaged to him now. You could like... kiss, and stuff. You felt like a high school girl kicking her legs and twirling her hair over her crush, but you decided you were going to allow it because you were still young, and still yet to have a lot of your firsts with someone.

Once you got to a street where there were a few people milling around, Felix motioned to a wooden bench on the side of the path. Overgrown moss and bushes wrapped around it, but it still looked quite cute. "Wanna sit down here for a bit? I think we should probably have a chat, you know. About everything," When you looked at him, he looked embarrassed for once, strange given his usual brazen nature. You found yourself wanting to comfort him, so you nodded, sitting down on the bench and smoothing your trousers down. He sat next to you, turning to face you on the bench and fiddling with the cuffs of his coat.

"Felix, are you okay about marrying me?" You blurted out. "I mean, I know you probably don't want to marry anyone else, but you won't even get the chance to try to get to know everyone. You're stuck with me."

Felix furrowed his eyebrows. His head snapped up to you. "Um, what the fuck? You're my best friend. I am absolutely okay with getting married to you."

Your chest heaved. You felt reassured, but still not completely relieved. "But... Lixie. We'll have to kiss. And we'll be sharing a bed. You know we have to consummate the marriage, right?"

There was that smirk on his face again. You regretted ever saying anything. "You've been thinking about having sex with me?"

You groaned, putting your head in your hands. You heard Felix chuckling next to you, his shoulders shaking the whole rickety bench. You finally looked up at him, punching him in the leg again. His laughter ceased as he yelped. Good, bastard. "You know what I mean, Lix. We are literally going to have to, or the marriage won't be like, real. Or something, I don't know."

"You do know, you know everything. You're smarter than me," Felix chided you. He sighed, leaning to put his head on your shoulder. "What are you actually worried about? Tell me."

"It's just..." You couldn't say it. But maybe you could, and phrase it differently. A conditional question, to answer the real question inside of you. "What if we fell in love?"

Felix hummed, shutting his eyes softly. "Then everyone would have been right about us."

"Y-You... you wouldn't mind it? What about our friendship?"

He rubbed his cheek against you comfortingly. "It would only be made better, sugarplum," He pulled back, grinning at you. Oh no. That smile meant a Dumb Felix comment was incoming. "Plus, I know you think I'm smoking hot, so-"

"Felix!" You whined. He stuck his tongue out at you cheekily, making you roll your eyes. You turned away from him, staring ahead at a large tree on the other side of the path.

"I mean, we are compatible. Would it be so bad?" He sounded insecure now. You looked at him. His eyes were gleaming from the moonlight, and he did look really nervous. Perhaps... he wants to know if you'd hate him if either of you caught feelings. He wants to know if you think it would ruin your friendship. Honestly? After that conversation, you didn't. You shook your head, smiling softly at him. He stuck his tongue out again, trying to lighten the mood, and you did it back. You both had a fit of giggles afterwards, hitting each other while laughing like you always do.

Then, you saw it. A distinctive flash of a camera behind Felix, towards the end of the path. Oh, yeah, you're meant to be like, loving it up right now. You grabbed Felix's arm, pulling him in.

"Wh- wha-"

You brought his ear to your mouth, looking down at it and whispering. "There's a reporter taking pictures behind you. Don't look, but we should probably be more affectionate."

Felix pulled away, nodding solemnly. You could practically see the cogs turning in his head as he spoke, then a lightbulb going off. "Kiss me."

"H- Huh?!"

"Or, I'll kiss you, I don't mind. But that would really prove a point, wouldn't it? So caught up in each other that we forget royal etiquette?" He'd leaned back more comfortably on the bench, slinging an arm behind you. His fingertips were dancing up your shoulder as you were turned to face him, faces only inches apart. You licked your lips. He licked his own. The flash appeared again. Oh, the reporter liked that.

"Felix... I don't know-"

"I know it's not your first kiss, sugarplum. Can't back out of kissing me now," You internally groaned at the mention of him knowing what you and Changbin had done. Fuck Changbin, stupid blabbermouth. Felix was smirking, looking at you.

"Fuck it. As long as it won't be awkward?"

"We're gonna have to kiss a lot more, may as well kiss now," He shrugged. You shrugged. He was right. Eventually, you nodded. His fingertips carried on tracing shapes on your shoulder - you managed to make out a flower, a heart, maybe even a cat's head. Or a dog's head, you weren't sure. His other hand went up to your chin, fingertips coming to lift your head up to be closer to him once again. His eyes went to yours, a silent question in those deep brown eyes, and you nodded in response.

With that, you were being kissed by your first love. Your one sided love, to be precise, but you actually couldn't find it in you to care. You didn't even realise the camera flashing repeatedly as you pressed your lips against his, a chaste but open mouthed kiss. His lips were extremely soft, and you fluttered your eyes shut and leaned in to get more. He obliged, hand now going to the back of your head to bring you in further. You whimpered at the dominance the grab showed, and he let out a sharp breath of air through his freckled nose in response. You wanted more, so much more. Your lips pressed against each other over and over, a little messy but you liked it like that. Just as you tried to get your tongue against his, he gently pulled away, with one more small peck to your nose.

You were embarrassed when you realised you'd tried to follow him for more kisses. You quickly avoided eye contact, and Felix elbowed you.

"Look at me!" He whined for attention. Ah yeah, same old Felix. You'd forgotten what he was like in that ten second kiss. He still had issues with wanting to be the centre of attention. You looked at him awkwardly, fists clenched in your sweaty palms. You almost felt bad the beautiful ring had to live there. Once you'd looked at him, his sad face fell and he smirked. "Good, huh?"

"W-Was I... good? I've only ever kissed Changbin," You admitted, grimacing. Felix sat up sharply, putting a hand on your knee. You almost flinched away to try and sedate your own sexual desires, but he would get suspicious.

"Uhhh, yes! It was good, I really enjoyed that. Thank you for doing that for me," Felix comforted. When you nodded in response, he grabbed your chin again and placed another peck on your lips. "I... honestly? I kind of wouldn't mind kissing you again."

The boy's boldness shocked you everyday, and you'd known him for sixteen years. "For... for practice, right? When we're married, we're gonna have to do it loads, so-"

"Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. For practice," Felix agreed. He was nodding eagerly. He suddenly shifted, looking down at the watch on his wrist. "Aw, shit. We should probably head back. Wanna watch a film in your room when we get back?"

You grinned. Back to the same old. This was better, though now you knew you'd be thinking about being on your back with him on top of you making out while you were watching a film. Quickly, you realised something. "That will look so sus though, now that we're engaged."

"We'll keep it a secret," He wiggled, elbowing you. You found yourself laughing, jumping up to walk back to the palace. You held your outstretched hand to him.

"Your majesty?"

"Ah, yes, my fine maiden," Felix giggled, sliding off the bench to grab your hand. You both started to walk to the edge of the path, skipping along as if you had no cares in the world. You heard rustling, probably the sounds of the reporter leaving.

You hoped you'd done okay. You hoped you'd made it believable. Well, you probably had, given your actual feelings - but had Felix?

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

You'd woken up the next day with a piece of popcorn stuck to your forehead and another person snoring next to you. You blinked yourself awake drearily, leaning up on your palms and looking around your room. Your TV had turned onto standby, and you looked to your right. Felix was in your room. Felix was in your bed. You'd- oh, no. You'd totally just fallen asleep watching a movie, nevermind. Totally fine.

No, actually. Totally not fine!

You shrieked, grabbing Felix's slender waist and wiggling him awake. He'd borrowed a pair of your more comfortable clothes and the t-shirt had been just a bit too small, riding up with every move and now exposing nearly his whole tummy. You tried to ignore it, continuing to shake him awake. The piece of popcorn stuck to your forehead fell onto the bed with an unceremonious noise and you groaned. Eventually, after what felt like hours of shaking your best friend, he opened his eyes and gave you a wide smile, pulling you in for a cuddle. You ignored how lovely it felt and tried to get him to regain consciousness and morality.

"Felix."

"Hmm?"

"You are in my bed."

"I know, dummy- Oh." Felix shot up, nearly sending you flying off the bed. His hand landed on the piece of popcorn, crumbling it into your pristine white sheets. You tried not to cry. His eyes widened, staring at you. "What's the- have you checked your phone? What's the time?"

You shook your head, reaching over to grab your phone. You seldom went on your phone, preferring to read and spend time with Felix, but you had it in case of emergencies and also sometimes for TikTok, but you'd never admit that. You blinked. 11am.

You'd missed breakfast, but you also had zero missed calls or texts on your phone. No one had woken you? Weird. You flipped the screen to show Felix, and he leaned in closer. You were brandishing your wallpaper of the two of you on the beach last summer, but you didn't care. He grabbed your phone, entered your passcode and clicked on the phone app.

"No one even tried to wake us?" He asked. You shook your head. He laid back down, seeming weirdly reassured. You didn't question it, slinking up next to him and putting your head on his shoulder. He moved his arm accordingly, pulling you into his chest and still clicking random buttons on your phone. Eventually, he landed on the search tab, and typed in 'news'. Oh, shit. Was it announced?

Yep. In blaring headlines, multiple news media sources were now releasing reports with every single detail of the story, including pictures of the two of you last night. The titles were all similar, going along the lines of "the sweet Prince and beloved best friend confirmed to be engaged!" or "sophisticated best friend and the lovely Prince taking a romantic late night stroll!". You scoffed, clicking on one and scrolling down. The pictures were cute, to be honest. Some even showed the two of you laughing and hitting each other last night, or you two walking home hand in hand and skipping as if you were kids. One picture, however, is what stuck with you. It was the two of you mid-kiss, Felix's hand on the back of your head and his other holding your shoulder, keeping you in place. It was fucking hot.

"Damn, we look good, you know?" Felix mused, zooming in on the picture. You hummed. You did, you couldn't deny that. "My mum was so real for thinking of us getting married. Like, we totally look good together. Imagine our kids."

Imagine what we'll do to make kids, you thought, but you bit your tongue. You giggled, slapping Felix's chest playfully, then a thought came into your stupid lizard brain. "Hey, Lix?"

"Yeah?" He was still scrolling through an article, laughing at some of the sentences. Everyone loved the two of you, but a few were jealous that you'd managed to snag him. Good.

"Did you mean what you said last night? About practice?" Felix's thumb stopped on the screen. His eyes darted to you, his hair still mussed from sleep. He just stared at you, and you lost your nerve. "Sorry. Weird thing to say. I was just wondering-"

"No, not weird. I meant it. You wanna make out? For practice?" Felix locked your phone, chucking it to the end of the bed. You didn't have time to scold him for throwing your things around like that before his hand was carding in your hair, fingertips scratching at your scalp. God, you loved it when he did that. Your eyes shut in bliss. You totally forgot what he asked. "Hey, earth to sugarplum."

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Sure. For practice."

Okay, so you were totally being super selfish. But, you were going to be having sex with him soon. You could do a little making out to prepare, right? You were just a woman, after all. Nothing wrong with that. His fingers gripped your hair with a different intensity then, pulling at the strands slightly, and you choked back a whine. You opened your eyes, looking up at him.

He hummed, looking at you. He tilted his head to the side, thinking. "Maybe... yeah," He grabbed your arm, pulling you over him. He positioned you exactly how he wanted you, on top of him, straddling his hips. His dainty hands went to your waist, rubbing circles. "Yeah, like this. For practice."

"For practice," You agreed solemnly. You were beginning to think that maybe it wasn't for practice. Maybe he just wanted to. He scooted up, leaning up against the pillows so he was sat up and you were sat on top of him. You tried to ignore the fact that you could feel what was going on between his legs through your thin sleep shorts. You couldn't get too wound up during this, just in case it was just for practice. Knotting your hands into the fabric of his - your - white t-shirt, you leaned down, brushing your nose with his. You were being selfish, but bold, but mostly selfish.

Felix's eyes flitted down to your lips, leaning up to place a soft kiss there. You smiled softly, and he returned yours with a smile that could only be described as filled with fondness. You bit your lip, noticing the way his eyes honed in on your teeth and perhaps his grip tightened on your hips just a bit, but he'd always deny it.

"Lixie." You muttered. You were too shy. He knew exactly what you meant, and raised one hand up to grab at the back of your head. He brought your lips to his, attaching his mouth to yours in a way that was completely different from yesterday. Yesterday was for show, but this seemed personal, hungry almost. You decided you were going to take what you could get. You pressed your lips to his harder, making him choke out a noise of surprise. It was messy, again, open mouthed kisses that were nothing akin to precise or experienced, but you could get to know each other, get to know what you liked. Right at that moment, all you knew was that you liked him, and you would be so pissed off if he didn't let you get your tongue in his mouth like he did last night.

Your hands went up to his face, cradling his cheeks in your palms and slipping your tongue into his mouth. Your tongues brushed against each other, and you whined, hips kicking up just slightly before you managed to stop yourself. He grabbed your hips, flipping you over so he was on top of you, not breaking the kiss. His lips kept brushing against yours as his tongue entered your mouth, groaning at the feeling. You couldn't stop breathing heavily through your nose, your hands roaming up his back and landing on his hair, pulling him down to kiss you harder. Your lips felt bruised, swollen, but you never wanted to stop kissing him.

With that thought, he bit your lip, pulling away and letting it release against your teeth. You squirmed, licking your lips excessively to try and stop them feeling so swollen. Felix looked debauched, his hair even more tangled and his lips just as red and swollen as yours. His eyes were dark, staring down at you.

"Baby. Bestie. I'm sorry, but I'm- I'm sorry..." He whispered, his head going to the crook of your neck to place soothing kisses there. He was breathing heavily, shifting ever so slightly on top of you. You felt it then, what he was apologising for. His length was rock hard, the shaft pressing into your core and giving you just the slightest bit of stimulation. "'M so fucking hard, sugarplum, I'm sorry."

"I-It's okay, Lixie. I think I'm... I'm wet, too," You whispered, and he threw his head back, groaning. "Practice makes perfect, y'know. We can keep making out." Felix nodded eagerly, and he grabbed your thighs, linking them around his hips. He ducked to place a few more kisses on your neck, biting a little at the area where your throat met your jaw. You let out a moan, neck bearing to the opposite side to give him full access and he clearly approved, biting harder.

"Baby, c-can I just," He ground his hips into yours, groaning and stuttering his words out. He immediately stopped, looking down at you. "Can I? I can make us both feel good, no sex. We can just grind a little on eachother. I won't put it in, I promise-"

With that, a knock on the door interrupted you both. You were fully prepared to start swinging at whoever was on the other end. Felix looked like he was about to die, cheeks flushed and hair tangled every which way. You both stared at each other in disbelief. Okay, so you had kind of really lost yourself there, and now somebody is at the door while the nation's favourite Prince is currently on top of you grinding into you with full intent to cum. You'd only just announced your engagement. You could've got pregnant before you even got married. Jesus, what is wrong with you? You sighed, moving to sit up, and Felix moved off of you. He ran a hand through his knotted hair.

"I should... fuck, Felix, what do we do?" You knew you both looked the image of lust, lips kiss bitten and swollen and hair everywhere. You could even feel the wet patch in your sleep shorts. Shit, okay.

Felix looked to be holding back a laugh. You felt terrified, but you almost laughed too, in pure disbelief. You both covered your mouths before you shot off the bed, slipping your shorts off your legs and replacing them with a pair of longer trousers from your drawer. You honestly couldn't care less if he'd seen you in your underwear, you'd bathed together when you were younger. You motioned to the en suite dramatically and Felix ran in there instantly, still giggling quietly, locking the door behind him. You shook your head fondly as another knock was firmly punched against the door. Jesus, couldn't even give you a second?

"Coming!" You called, walking over to the door and trying your best to fake yawn loudly so they thought you'd just woken up. When you opened the door, Chris stood there, a happy smile on his face.

"Okay, I'm so coming in! Why didn't you tell me you and Felix are serious now?" He pushed you back into the room, throwing himself onto your bed dramatically. It was quite funny, seeing him lying on the bed you'd just accosted his brother on. He was resting against the messy sheets in a perfect suit and tie. You shook your head, letting out a laugh.

"Okay, we're not. It's an arranged thing, Chris. We're still only best friends," You chose your words wisely, fiddling with the drawstring on your trousers. Chris hummed, giving you a strange look. Changbin. Fucking Changbin, he'd definitely said something. God. "And, why didn't you ask your own brother this? I'm simply an accessory."

"Because my own brother is currently locked inside your bathroom pretending he's not there?" Chris replied instantly. Your eyes widened.

"No, he's not. Why would you even think-"

"Okay, well. I know he is, so," Chris shrugged. You sighed.

"Felix, you can come out," You said. The lock slowly clicked open and Felix emerged, looking sheepish. Thank God the shock of Chris arriving had made his boner go down, so now he didn't look too lustful. He'd also clearly ran your brush through his hair before coming out. You couldn't say the same for yourself.

Felix threw himself down on the bed next to you and Chris, groaning and stretching his limbs. "Did anyone ask where we were?"

Chris chuckled. He fiddled with the wedding band on his left hand. "Yep. I made up an excuse, said you'd gone out for a walk again and were getting food out. I had a feeling you'd both be spending the night together. Princess Diaries again?"

You shook your head. "Nope. It's too real now."

"Mind you, I don't think there was this much 'practising' going on between Mia and her potential husband in the second one," Chris looked up from his hand. You averted your eyes.

"Dunno what you mean-"

"How much did you hear, what the fuck?!" Felix shrieked. Oh, great, thanks.

"I mean, the walls are thin, dude. I heard a lot on my way down the corridor. But, I'm glad you two are having fun with it, at least. Arranged marriages can be shit sometimes," Chris stretched similarly to Felix, before reaching down and clapping Felix on his back harshly. Felix groaned, throwing himself around the bed in protest. "Anyway, I should be off now. Congratulations again, guys. You should probably get ready for the party tonight though."

Chris began to walk out of the room, and Felix stood up.

"I should... go. With him. You know?" You nodded in response to his statement. He waited until Chris had rounded the corner, and leaned down, pressing a swift peck to your lips. You squeaked in surprise, cheeks burning crimson. He giggled, giving you a sweet wave and running off. "See you later, bestie!"

You wondered if you’d ever be permitted to drop the bestie, maybe once you’re married to him, but it couldn’t come soon enough. You wanted to let yourself be selfish just this once.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

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