#a list of things that this man has done so far:

[comicaurora]

hi red!! i'm doing an analysis of sun wukong's (and journey to the west in general's) impact on modern culture for my world mythology final, and for some reason i'm having a hard time finding sources. is there anything you can recommend?

The fact that Journey to the West has contributed an enormous number of tropes to modern media is very clear when the media in question is examined, but I don't know of a specific secondary source that's already done that analysis for you. However, this IS a very good excuse for you to plow through a metric buttload of shonen manga, since the lineage is basically Sun Wukong -> Son Goku -> like a solid third of all shonen action heroes written in the last forty years.

Dragon Ball kicks things off:

Started in 1984 and almost unquestionably the most influential manga ever made. Its first arc features the weird super-strong monkey-kid Son Goku - which is just the japanese pronunciation of the characters of Sun Wukong's name - meeting up with a wacky crew of thinly-veiled expys of the Journey to the West crew, with teen inventor Bulma filling the role of Tripitaka, Oolong the pig-man filling Zhu Bajie's role and Yamcha the desert-based bandit as Sha Wujing.

Hijinks ensue, and while the story drifts pretty far from Journey to the West's original plot, it actually stays pretty solidly referential in weirdly unexpected ways. Several the villains of the week are JttW references, and even the later appearance of three more Saiyans lines up with the surprise reveal of three more Wukong-like mystical apes in the original story.

The connection between Dragon Ball and JttW is very unsubtle and a frequent reference in the chapter covers and supplemental art.

Not every subsequent JttW reference is the result of Dragon Ball popularizing it or anything, since it was already enormously popular, but I think it's pretty hard to extricate Dragon Ball's influence on anime and manga from the original influence of Journey to the West itself.

One way that a distinction can be drawn is in the differences in characterization between Goku and Sun Wukong himself. A lot of the next generation of shonen protagonists were kind of Goku-alikes - pure-hearted dumbasses who only care for the three Fs: Food, Fighting and Friendship.

But the original characterization of Sun Wukong is not really all that similar. He's a trickster, sure, but he's far from a young, friendship-motivated goober. He's profoundly intelligent, pretty much the most well-educated entity on the planet, and routinely brings up that he's centuries older than most of his peers. The Goku-alikes from the later decades of shonen anime are tellingly far-removed from that original characterization. So you get characters based on Goku's cheerful idiocy, but it's just a small subset of the broader influence of Journey to the West on the space of literature.

In general, Journey to the West frequently shows up in very small, bite-sized tropes in other stories. It's less "this is wholly based on Journey to the West" and more "oh, I know where they maybe got this idea/aesthetic/power/weapon/villain of the week from." There are way too many to list, but some of the ones that tend to jump out at me are-

Sneaky characters with monkey motifs:

Tricksy, highly mobile characters who fight with a staff:

Characters afflicted with a magical restraint artifact that allows a much weaker character to stop them from misbehaving:

Specific esoteric weapons, eg. magical fans, rakes, gourds, namedropping The Sword of Seven Stars, etc.

Villains with prominent ox or pig design motifs:

Characters whose primary combat strat is just making Shitloads Of Disposable Copies Of Themselves:

Honestly it just keeps going like this. It's kinda everywhere. Finding the JttW in things is my favorite conspiracy theory rabbit hole because it's 100% harmless and more often than not completely correct.

[changbinlov3r]

More than meets the eye

Pairing: Chan x afab!reader

Inspired by Prison for life by Olivia Rodrigo

Summary: Chan is a pushover when it comes to doing things for you, but not so much when someone messes with his girl.

Warning: +18 MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

A/N: let's thank Chili(@baby-yongbok) for this brainrot, she's the one who planted this idea in my head.

Chan who's the sweetest person you have ever met, the one who blushed and stuttered when asking you out.

Chan who's always a gentleman, opening all the doors for you, pulling the chair so you can sit, throwing his coat over your shoulders so you won't get cold.

Chan who lingers a bit longer when he says goodbye to you after taking you back home, trying to gather the courage to kiss you.

Chan who's surprised by the way you grab him by the collar and crash your lips on his.

Chan who gets flustered when you ask him to come inside with you, so you can talk more.

Chan who can't help but feel his face on fire when you start undressing in front of him, not sure where he should put his hands.

Chan who eats you out slowly, enjoying every sound that comes out of your mouth, sure that he could make the prettiest song in the world with just your moans.

Chan who asks you to be his girlfriend the next morning, taking you by surprise when you wake up to a full table of breakfast.

Chris who loves to do everything for you, you want to stay home cuddling? Done, he'll make popcorn and prepare a list of rom-coms for you two to watch together. You want to go out with him and his friends? Sure, he'll make sure the guys are on their best behavior. You want to go shopping? Bet, he'll clean his schedule so he can spend the day buying you gifts, even though you always argue that you can buy things with your own money.

Chris who finds you amazing, you're strong, smart and capable, everything you have was earned with your hard work and he would never want to cross that line or take that away from you.

Chris who has to stand his friends making fun of him 'cause he's such a pushover when it comes to you. He would let you step on him if you asked him to and he would do it smiling.

Chris who loves to buy you flowers every time you have a date with him, so he always goes out of his way to buy you a bouquet.

Christopher who arrives late to your date because the flower shop messed up his order and witnesses a man grabbing you by the wrist while you argue with the stranger.

Christopher who sees red when he realizes what's happening, dropping the flowers and walking fast to where you are.

Christopher who puts his hand on the shoulder of the man, smiling softly and asking to talk to the man outside.

Christopher who's suddenly not a pushover anymore, not when it comes to someone messing with his girl.

Christopher who comes back inside after twenty minutes, dirty dress shirt and knuckles bloody.

Christopher who drags you out of the bar, hugging you tightly when the cold air outside hits your skin.

Christopher who fucks you in the backseat of his car, biting and marking you and calling you names, far different from the gentleman you are used to but you're not complaining.

Christopher who chants how much he loves you while you cum around his cock, overstimulated by the new side of your boyfriend that you're just getting to know.

Chris who helps you fix yourself so you can get out of the car to sit on the front seat, deciding that you should just grab some food on the drive thru and go home.

You're a feminist obviously, you don't need a man. But after that night you don't mind Chan saving you, you very much like his protection.

[yuriisclumsy]

What if there was an AU for [Name] being one of the top ranked mages in twisted wonderland?

╰Description: [Name] is one of the top mage in Twisted Wonderland, right after Malleus Draconia.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (You are here)

—May 3, 2024—

Thought… This is a continuation on the What if there was an AU for [Name] being one of the top ranked mages in twisted wonderland? 

So far—over a month—the students of NRC have become accustomed with [Name]...kind of. 

What do I mean by kind of? 

Let’s just say that those who have her are now dying to get out of the class. Too bad for them because their one-week deadline has passed, and now they can’t. At least they want to lose the credit and money.  

Turns out, having a pretty girl as your professor doesn’t make up for the torture you’ll endure. 

Now, everyone is afraid to even approach [Name]. She doesn’t mind this, in fact, she quite likes it. Peace and silence. The two things she adores the most. 

So much as to get the students to participate more. Thank Crowly for this. 

In the month [Name] had been teaching, all she’s done is give theory. Heavy for those that have advanced places, and slightly less for those who have normal classes. Though you’ll be damned if you thought that she’ll have it easy on you if you have normal classes with her. Aduece Duo and Grim are probably off complaining to Yuu about how difficult the class is. 

The members of the cast that follow rules and usually are studious find this class a bit…too much. But, not enough to make you want to jump off a bridge. The other students get by with deep dive studying. As for those that are lazy–AGHEM–Leona–COUGH–[Name] won’t let them go that easily. 

Why don’t we take a look at how well her students did in the first test, shall we? 

…

Because of the way [Name] likes to do this, all results are given a week after the test during a time when there are no classes. Which means all of her classes are gathered here in one spot. It’s easier for her to do it this way. If there are any questions, she can just answer them and not have to repeat it to her other classes. 

The first test on theory had concluded a week ago, and the students are now in [Name]’s class to get their results. They talk amongst their peers about how they think they did on the test. Some say they did poorly, others think they at least got a passing grease, no one will know for certain until they get those papers back.  

The class starts to quiet down as professor [Name] walks in. She walks until she is standing on the podium looking out towards the students with a blank expression—nothing new for the students, as she is like that everyday. 

“I have graded all the tests. I will pass them out. But before that, I would like to say that the results of this test met my expectations.” [Name] said nonchalantly. 

At this the students became happy and full of hope. Maybe the majority of them pass. Some even began to cheer. 

[Name] took the stack of tests and began to make her way down the list of students in alphabetical order, as she had instructed them prior to entering, with the few exceptions of Malleus, Silver, Yuu, and Grim (Silver, Yuu, and Grim being the obvious ones). 

The first three rows had gotten their tests back, much to their excitement. But from the noises of disappointment and failure reaching their classmates further up, they began to question if they had passed the test. 

“Aww man…and I studied really hard for this!” Kalim sulked in his seat. 

“If by studying, you mean cramming last minute, then yes, you studied really hard.” Jamil frowned at his Housewarden, shaking his head in a disapproving manner. “Next time, come to the library to study. I’ll teach you what you don’t know.” 

“Really!” Kalim’s round eyes sparkled to the point it made the people around him cover their eyes. “You really are the best Jamil!” 

“...Ah…of course I am.” he said, having his eyes closed. 

Going further up, [Name] began to speak after hearing more dissatisfied students. 

“It seems like my expectations were met. Only 10 percent of you passed this exam.” She said matter-of-factly, still passing out tests. 

“What?!” 

“But I studied for days for this!” 

“She’s lying…right?” 

“I want to get out of this class…” 

“How is that even possible...?!” 

“No way…” 

“Can’t believe it…even if I studied for a whole month, I wouldn't have passed this.” 

“She has to be joking.” 

“Kehehe.” A grimling laugh was heard throughout the chatter of students. It came from a young boy with black and pink strokes. He had pointed ears, a staple for the Valley of thorns citizens. 

“Finding this amusing, are you, Lilia?” A considerably tall young man with pale skin and the same pointed ears asked. 

“Oh, please, Malleus. You can’t deny the fact that you find this entertaining too.” Lilia retorted with a smile. 

“Hehe, I suppose it is. What’s more intriguing is the fact that she was expecting those results.” He turned to Lilia, “don't you have to be up there to get your test back?” 

The young lad’s eyes widened, “ah! You’re right!” He said before disappearing into thin air. 

There were only two rows left to hand out the test. Going up, [Name] came face to face with Leona. 

“Kingsholar.” 

“Professor.” 

There was a moment of silence as the two stared down at each other (although one was staring down, and the other up). Without more time [Name] gave him his test back and moved in shortly after. 

She was already three students down when Leona slammed the desk in front of him. This grabbed everyone's attention: all eyes were on him now. 

[Name] turned around, not amused by Leona’s behavior. She predicted he was going to act this way when he got his test back. 

“Is there something wrong for you to act in a way, Kingsholar?” 

“...you” 

“I’m sorry, I am unable to hear you. You’ll have to speak louder.” [Name] was preparing herself for the yelling of the century. 

“HOW COULD YOU GIVE ME AN A IF I GOT EVERYTHING WRONG?!” The students around him jumped, getting scared. No one had seen him that mad. Apart from the students that saved him from the blot, this was a new level of anger. 

“*sigh* isn’t it obvious why I would bypass the grading system and give you an A?” she asked, looking at Leona with a are-you-stupid face. 

“...” 

“No? I guess I must spell it out for you then.” [Name] got closer to him. Taking his test into her hands, she looked it over before averting her gaze at him. “Out of all the questions you got everything wrong.” 

“Exactly. So, how the hell did I get an A?” He demanded to know he passed the test, if he had no correct answers. It was preposterous in his opinion. Having every question wrong would mean an F, so having it be an A this time…felt wrong. 

“Do you not see what is wrong with this?” She asked. 

“No?” Leona was getting irritated. Can’t she just say what she needs to say? 

[Name] hummed. “Can someone tell me what is wrong with that? Anyone?” She turned to the rest of the class. 

A student in the front row had put his hand up to answer the question. 

“Āshengrotto. Can you tell me what is wrong with this statement?” 

“Yes, professor.” Azul put his hand down and fixed his glasses. “If this test was a written exam the chances of getting a zero are likely. But, because this test is a multiple-choice question, it would be impossible to get zero percent, as you have more chances of guessing the correct answer.” 

She smiled at the answer. “That was beautiful. Thank you, Mr. Āshengurotto. Point for Octavinelle.” Some Octavinelle students cheered for their Housewarden, the loudest being Floyd. 

“As you hear Āshengurotto say, it would be near impossible to get a zero percent on a multiple-choice test.” she said, turning to face Leona again. His face spelled mad.

“Yeah, so? I could have gotten lucky.” Leona said sarcastically. He wanted to get this over with.

“Mmmm…maybe. Or you simply wanted to fail.” [Name] said accusing him.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“I would have agreed with you that you could have gotten lucky enough to get a zero…if not for the fact that you are good with theory. In fact, you are one of the best students in this class with this subject.”

“The only option left…is that you wanted to fail.” [name] finished the final blow as she handed the test back to him, before continuing to disperse the papers.

“Oh and, Kingsholar?” She turned to see him standing there, looking down at the paper that had a good score in. “You violated Rule number four. I expect to see a written paper on it in my desk in the following days.”

Leaving the conversation at that, she finished giving out the test and went back to the podium.

“If there are no further questions, you are dismissed.”

(finished: 5/19/2024, at 6.25pm)

𝚃𝚊𝚐𝚜: @scarabiafriend, @sleep-ydragon, @d3sperate-enuf, @elaemae, @lucky-whispers, @kiwiimochi, @emmorphine, @azriel-sama, @amora-ledezma, @writerstrashbin, @marinahavik, @twstwondersforyou, @lunatheroyal, @ririsun, @dyedscarletletter, @kuureii, @otomega, @valacz29, @busy-dadzawa-fish, @sarah22447, @valacz29, @wondering-again. Re-blog or Comment if you want to get added into the Tag section for Twisted wonderland. Back to The Mind

Back to Master-List

[android-anathema]

i have gathered from my friends that boy is a different gender to man, and that you can stack two genders together such as with boygirl. following this logic here is a comprehensive list of genders

BoyMan

BoyWoman

GirlMan

WomanMan

ManWoman

ManMan

BoyBoy

GirlGirl

GirlWoman

GirlWomen, if they are a system. you can refer to this in the plural asGirlWomens or GirlWomenfolk

Manchild can be assumed to be the gender neutral version of ManBoy and ManGirl, giving us Girlchild, Boychild, Womanchild and ChildChild. also AdultChild. ChildMan. AdultGirl. etc.

Additionally, so called gender critical people say things such as their gender being Adult Human Female. This introduces species as a discrete gender category as well as the possibility not just of dual gender combination but triple gender combinations. this is far too many gender combinations for me to exhaustively list. at least not with an automated tool. i might get back to you all with a list eventually but for now just have some potential genders to consider:

DogDogDog

ChildNonhumanMale

MaleManBoy

BirdGirlAdult

Ape

Joe Biden

AdultAdultChild

GirlBoyChild

ApeApesApe (triple ape gender, only one ape is plural)

ive heard someone say their gender was "girlvictim" before, so i propose that victim and perpetrator be added to the gender list. survivor too by this logic i think is appropriate. Mansurvivor could now be a gender. Apesurvivor could also be a gender but i think i need to stop making so many ape jokes. someone else has described their gender as lobotomised housewife. i think that means medical procedures and occupations are genders now.

"They did surgery on a grape" is now unfortunately a gender. let me explain. my dad once asked what the hell kind of gender "they" is, so I'm counting it as a gender. did is a term for having done things, which you do in an occupation. surgery is a medical procedure. on is kind of hard to justify, onsolis is a brand name for fentanyl. solis is the name of a company. take the medical procedure of giving someone fentanyl, and subtract the gender of working for the company solis and you get the gender on. a. agender minus gender. simple. grape is a species, maybe. therefore the phrase "they did surgery on a grape" is a gender.

we can have six term genders now. buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo isn't just a valid sentence, its also a valid gender. i've decided that my gender from now on is puppy perpetrator.

[pasta-in-the-pudding]

can I req yandere Ben x reader moodboard and headcanons? I feel like he watches you through your computer camera

-🦇 anon

Summary: Yandere Ben drowned x reader hcs

Genre: Angsty-ish?? nothing too bad though

Warnings: Yandere themes, so stalking, murder, obsession, etc.

A/n: 🦇 is no longer here, so if you wanna take this anon name feel free to do so! Also AGH I LOVE WRITING YANDERE STUFF

Credits: Ben drowned- Creepypasta, Divider- benkeibear, Drawing of Ben- shatteredankles (instagram), Other pictures- Pinterest

Yandere Ben drowned hcs

The thing with Ben is, he's so nonchalant with everything he does, it takes a lot to get him to show any emotion

So when he gets obsessed, he gets OBSESSED

He has a knack for finding people, switching between random people's webcams trying to find a specific person for a mission

But as he mindlessly clicks through different lists of different people, pulling up any names that intrigue him, he finds you

Immediately he is drawn to you, he doesn't know why, but he is

And when he sees your face, so focused on the task at hand, he knows he needs you

He doesn't know how he needs you, or how he even thinks he's going to go about acquiring you, but something about you entrances him

After his death he's so used to feeling numb and disconnected from the world, both physically and emotionally

But seeing you there, it makes him feel things again, as if he were alive again

And he doesn't want to stop this feeling

So he stares and watches you through your webcam for hours, his prior mission being totally forgotten

That is, until you suddenly yawn, stretch, and turn your computer off

He jumps a little at the sudden blank screen, and quickly rushes to see if you have your phone on

Frantically typing and clicking, he breathes a sigh of relief he didn't even know he was holding when he finally finds your phone and looks through it's camera

Even though its screen isn't on, the phone itself is, so he can still see you

That is, until you plug it in and set it on the nightstand beside you

Then all he sees is the ceiling

He sighs and rubs his eyes before putting your phone's window on another monitor and going back to the task at hand

Once done, he begins to research you a little more (making sure to have windows open for any cameras you may have in your house)

He learns your home address, where you go to work, your full legal name, social security number, interests, hobbies, etc

By the time you wake up and begin getting ready for the day, he feels like he has known you for years instead of just a few hours

When he sees your phone camera start to move he gets so excited, hurrying to bring the window over to his main monitor and watch you as you go about your morning routine

He watches you nonstop for weeks straight, only stopping when you go to sleep and he can no longer see you, but even then, he fills that time with researching you or scrolling your socials

It is only when Jeff is in his room a week later that he even thinks of the possibility of being something with you

Jeff is annoyed by the fact that all Ben's been doing for a solid month now is obsessing over you, so with a big groan he says "If you like them so much, go get em! What're they gonna do, say no? You're a ghost man!"

Only then does Ben realize that he is actually dead, and can basically have you all he wants

He doesn't have to watch you through cameras, because he can make himself invisible and spy on you that way instead

If you got scared, it's not like you could hurt him in any way, because you'd phase right through him

And best of all, if anyone tries to interfere with you and him, he could easily scare them off

So with this new knowledge, he sets off in search of you

Which of course, isn't far considering he already knows exactly where you live

And every day for months, he follows you around everywhere you go, never more than a foot away from you

Your friends have picked up on something strange, and are very uncomfortable being around you now

Whenever they're around you, they get a weird feeling in their gut telling them that something isn't right, oftentimes your hair randomly just starts floating as if someone is playing with it, and your apartment is always just so cold....

This being said, you are now very isolated and lonely

Ben sees his chance in this, and begins leaving you little gifts, things he knows you'd like

Once you get accustomed to the gifts, he begins leaving letters, slowly revealing who he is, and his love for you

At first you are just happy to have someone that likes you despite how uncomfortable everyone seems to be around you

Then it evolves into curiosity over the identity of this strange person

And then, you begin to feel the beginnings of a romantic interest starting to bloom for this stranger

It is only once you are obsessed with figuring out who he is, sometimes coming home and just begging into the air for them to reveal themselves, because you know they're with you somewhere, does he dare reveal himself

You are on your hands and knees, begging and pleading for him to just give you a hint as to who he is "I won't tell anyone" you promise

It is then that you feel the familiar cold chill go up your spine, and you know he is near

You don't speak or move, scared you'll upset him into silence in some way

You then hear a voice by your ear whisper "Cross your heart and hope to die?"

You gasp at the new information you have: a voice

"Yes" You whisper back

A hand begins to fade into view, and it comes to cover your mouth to stop you from screaming

You then feel a body form behind you, his other hand coming to rest on your hip, pulling you into his body

He's as cold as death and slightly translucent, and as you turn to look into a reflective surface, hoping to catch a glimpse of his face, you are stopped when you feel him begin to nibble on your ear

"You'll get to see me soon, princess/prince. All you have to do is keep true to that promise"

And with that he fades away, as if he was never there

[justpentdraws]

the silly door creature needs therapy so i gave him a warm blankie and some hot choccy

[sysig]

Size difference.png (Patreon)

[skyeateyourdonuts]

theres smth so nice about simply saying hi to people when u make eye contact with them and seeing them smile and say it back!! i have Much anxiety about social encounters but thinking about just being acknowledged by others or acknowledging others and wishing them a good day and them to me eeeeee it just makes me feel fuzzy enough i dont have room in the brain for anxiety lmao

[cocklessboy]

The biggest male privilege I have so far encountered is going to the doctor.

I lived as a woman for 35 years. I have a lifetime of chronic health issues including chronic pain, chronic fatigue, respiratory issues, and neurodivergence (autistic + ADHD). There's so much wrong with my body and brain that I have never dared to make a single list of it to show a doctor because I was so sure I would be sent directly to a psychologist specializing in hypochondria (sorry, "anxiety") without getting a single test done.

And I was right. Anytime I ever tried to bring up even one of my health issues, every doctor's initial reaction was, at best, to look at me with doubt. A raised eyebrow. A seemingly casual, offhand question about whether I'd ever been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Even female doctors!

We're not talking about super rare symptoms here either. Joint pain. Chronic joint pain since I was about 19 years old. Back pain. Trouble breathing. Allergy-like reactions to things that aren't typically allergens. Headaches. Brain fog. Severe insomnia. Sensitivity to cold and heat.

There's a lot more going on than that, but those were the things I thought I might be able to at least get some acknowledgement of. Some tests, at least. But 90% of the time I was told to go home, rest, take a few days off work, take some benzos (which they'd throw at me without hesitation), just chill out a bit, you'll be fine. Anxiety can cause all kinds of odd symptoms.

Anyone female-presenting reading this is surely nodding along. Yup, that's just how doctors are.

Except...

I started transitioning about 2.5 years ago. At this point I have a beard, male pattern baldness, a deep voice, and a flat chest. All of my doctors know that I'm trans because I still haven't managed to get all the paperwork legally changed, but when they look at me, even if they knew me as female at first, they see a man.

I knew men didn't face the same hurdles when it came to health care, but I had no idea it was this different.

The last time I saw my GP (a man, fairly young, 30s or so), I mentioned chronic pain, and he was concerned to see that it wasn't represented in my file. Previous doctors hadn't even bothered to write it down. He pushed his next appointment back to spend nearly an hour with me going through my entire body while I described every type of chronic pain I had, how long I'd had it, what causes I was aware of. He asked me if I had any theories as to why I had so much pain and looked at me with concerned expectation, hoping I might have a starting point for him. He immediately drew up referrals for pain specialists (a profession I didn't even know existed till that moment) and physical therapy. He said depending on how it goes, he may need to help me get on some degree of disability assistance from the government, since I obviously shouldn't be trying to work full-time under these circumstances.

Never a glimmer of doubt in his eye. Never did he so much as mention the word "anxiety".

There's also my psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with ADHD last year (meeting me as a man from the start, though he knew I was trans). He never doubted my symptoms or medical history. He also took my pain and sleep issues seriously from the start and has been trying to help me find medications to help both those things while I go through the long process of seeing other specialists. I've had bad reactions to almost everything I've tried, because that's what always happens. Sometimes it seems like I'm allergic to the whole world.

And then, just a few days ago, the most shocking thing happened. I'd been wondering for a while if I might have a mast cell condition like MCAS, having read a lot of informative posts by @thebibliosphere which sounded a little too relatable. Another friend suggested it might explain some of my problems, so I decided to mention it to the psychiatrist, fully prepared to laugh it off. Yeah, a friend thinks I might have it, I'm not convinced though.

His response? That's an interesting theory. It would be difficult to test for especially in this country, but that's no reason not to try treatments and see if they are helpful. He adjusted his medication recommendations immediately based on this suggestion. He's researching an elimination diet to diagnose my food sensitivities.

I casually mentioned MCAS, something routinely dismissed by doctors with female patients, and he instantly took the possibility seriously.

That's it. I've reached peak male privilege. There is nothing else that could happen that could be more insane than that.

I literally keep having to hold myself back from apologizing or hedging or trying to frame my theories as someone else's idea lest I be dismissed as a hypochondriac. I told the doctor I'd like to make a big list of every health issue I have, diagnosed and undiagnosed, every theory I've been given or come up with myself, and every medication I've tried and my reactions to it - something I've never done because I knew for a fact no doctor would take me seriously if they saw such a list all at once. He said it was a good idea and could be very helpful.

Female-presenting people are of course not going to be surprised by any of this, but in my experience, male-presenting people often are. When you've never had a doctor scoff at you, laugh at you, literally say "I won't consider that possibility until you've been cleared by a psychologist" for the most mundane of health problems, it might be hard to imagine just how demoralizing it is. How scary it becomes going to the doctor. How you can internalize the idea that you're just imagining things, making a big deal out of nothing.

Now that I'm visibly a man, all of my doctors are suddenly very concerned about the fact that I've been simply living like this for nearly four decades with no help. And I know how many women will have to go their whole lives never getting that help simply because of sexism in the medical field.

If you know a doctor, show them this story. Even if they are female. Even if they consider themselves leftists and feminists and allies. Ask them to really, truly, deep down, consider whether they really treat their male and female patients the same. Suggest that the next time they hear a valid complaint from a male patient, imagine they were a woman and consider whether you'd take it seriously. The next time they hear a frivolous-sounding complaint from a female patient, imagine they were a man and consider whether it would sound more credible.

It's hard to unlearn these biases. But it simply has to be done. I've lived both sides of this issue. And every doctor insists they treat their male and female patients the same. But some of the doctors astonished that I didn't get better care in the past are the same doctors who dismissed me before.

I'm glad I'm getting the care I need, even if it is several decades late. And I'm angry that it took so long. And I'm furious that most female-presenting people will never have this chance.

[darkspace7]

Somehow, combining a few of my favourite tropes (throwing randos into situations way over their head and found family formation via feral vigilante youths and their reluctant but just as chaotic guardians) have somehow resulted in the following: the vicarious need for a phantom thief spiderman.

And who am I to ignore my gremlin-brain impulses?

Enter: Pitch Warker "The Glass Arachnia"

• So this spidey wasn't "bitten" in the traditional sense but was instead pricked by a cursed bejewled spider-broach thing. (Think something along the lines of that shitty mask from JoJo part 1.) Maybe this happens when they go on an errand to, idk, deliver lunch to their Uncle Mais -who works as a security guard at the "New Londattan Gallery of Art"- at the bequest of their Aunt Benita (who are local Aunt May/Uncle Ben variants but cisswaped/roleswaped for some reason?)

•Okay and so while on this normally easy errand somehow the two of them get caught up in a jewel heist with some mook trying to get at the "Glass Spider" (a polished silver & garnet broach with a diamond decal so clear that it looks like glass) and that's what gets this ball rolling.

•The spider jewel apperantly has some legendary curse associated with it. Something about how "the blood shed in the darkened night shall beholden to whims of the fanged court albeit at the cost of forever being ensnared upon their shadowy throne." And so during the scuffle our little wannabe hero tries wrestling back the jewel from the thief but gets scratched in the process. Getting blood on the diamond activates the curse (which for...plot reasons...can only have one bearer at a time?) In the confusion the crook tries takes aim at our hero only to be pulled back by Mais. The weapon misfires hitting the man in the process.

•As expected, Uncle Mais kicks it while the mook takes the opportunity to abscond with the now useless gem leaving a traumatized kid behind for the cops to (not) deal with. (Also because this is New Londhatten, where the only cure for bereavement to either lock yourself away in mourning clothes and drown yourself in absinthe & gin or find a sketchy religion) Aunt Benita kind of dips off for a while to (not) deal with being newly widowed, and so our newly cursed spiderling takes it upon themself to find out why this happened and (hopefully) avenge his relative's death. And what better way to catch a thief is to become a thief yourself and find a way lure out the other? Not the healthiest of coping methods but whatever, it's not like the police are gonna believe some kid coming up to them and spouting on about 'cursed gems' and magic abilities' right?

•I'm thinking of a fancy victorian gentleman thief/steampunk-themed "spider" suit. Something distictly regal and vaugely unearthly to fit with the more magical aspect of the origin as opposed to the usual techno-organic radioactive superhero sthick. Maybe a nice white suit with an gossimer capelett and attached hood. Coupled with an interwoven reddish-silver spiderlace design as the (bulletproof) vest. A spider-shaped broach (perhaps modeled after the "missing" Glass Spider?) Pinned to the neck, a dashing caravat matches sticky-palmed gloves (that somehow never manage to leave a smudge.) They compliment the ruby-tinted lenses of goggles set in that strange porciline mask. Oh and of course what gentleman is without his multi-purpose utility cane (now with retractable grappling hook!) Really, stark white clothes and clacky heels don't mean a thing when you can become the shadows themselves.~

•After not only attracting the attention of the New Londhatten police but managing to snag the attention of other interesting characters as well. Like: Lady Jamie Joan Jameson, a gossip reporter desperate for the next breaking scoop on that 'dastardly snitch-thief Glass Arachnia' with a fondness for that queer little bookbinder who always seem to have their head stuck in some little tinkering thing this or sewing project that. Or Mikelangleo "Mike" Jones, the lovestruck youth with a massive pining for the bespecticaled little bookbinder, whose dry (and often unintentional) sense of humour and keen intellect continuously sends his heart a-flutter. (Such a shame that said bookbinder is completly uninterested in Mike's advances & any and all attempts at disuading the other have -through a continuing comedy of errors only sought to bolster the himbo's impression of the other. A misunderstanding like this would probably easily be solved if there was just a moment of direct communication but when has a phantom thief been direct about anything?) Luckily Gunther Stetson, current owner of Bugel's Books, resident "guy-behind-the-curtain" (Pitch's words -not his-), and the only (self proclaimed) sane man, runs interference.

•And after a while of doing this thieving gig the cursed spiderling hits paydirt. It turns out the mook who stole the Glass Spider was actually part of a larger scheme by this shifty organization to steal away cursed gems and use their powers to do horrific and unspeakable things. Also, something about getting enough of them and it equal immortality. Somehow? I mean what kind of name is Sinistrum Orichalcium, anyway?

•Gunther: "So yeah, that's bad and someone reasonable and totally equiped for this should probably go stop them? Right? Right?? [Of course it has to be them, damn it all Pitch...This is only going to end poorly.] (He was right. Oh mercy, he was right. The youth watched as the body of his ((only)) friend slipped off the crystiline horn of the rhinocerous-beetle-that-was-once-a-man. A lunge forward, torn glove outstreched as the hand r e a c h e d o u t. Metalline claws dug in ((burning agony it hurt)) and rapidly drug his form up and away. He writhed against the restraint, razor blades that drew him back again and again as solid steel scales absorbed the blows. ((Let me go let me go please I can't reach!)) Cackling as groping fingers wriggled under the dirtied white of his mask and ripped it away ((his shield, his safety nonono!)) Recognition. "So this is what you really are little spider. Even now you try to bear your milkteeth." A derisive snort as a gnarled tendril cupped his face an mockery of care. "Poor little Pitch, who would've expected the simple bookboy to have such a storied life?" Everything he had worked for, all that he had sacrificed was now crumbling around him as the other went on, "Feh, you are as brittle as the pages of tomes you peddle and as fragile as the Glass you come from." A contemplative look and the porcaline shattered. "Now look at your ruins and weep.")

• When it rains it pours. Thanks to the combined efforts of the Sinisturm Orichalcum, the New Londhattan Task Force, and Lady Jameson, our hero is now not only wanted for numerous accounts of thievery, breaking & entry, and other assorted stuff related to his vigilantism but now Pitch Warker aka the Glass Arachnia is (erroneously but not that they'd take his word for it) on the list for no less than three counts of battery, assault, & murder. The Sinistrum and their allies basically have been given free access to all of the remaining gems that they need to complete their plan and the city itself. Oh and Mike hates him now. So he fine. He can totally handle this solo. Not like he's the reason his close loved ones are dead and a bunch of villains are going to become supervillains that he still somehow has to stop despite being public enemy number one. Yep. Totally.

•(Spoiler: He is not fine. The spiderling is very stressed and needs a break. Not his supposed villain origin story. Let our adhd boi rest.)

[astronicht]

Okay I'm almost done with Fellowship, here's an incomplete list of shit I noticed and thought was buck fucking wild on my first ever read-thru: medieval edition.

In literally the second line of the book, Tolkien implies that Bilbo Baggins wrote a story which was preserved alongside the in-universe version of the Mabinogion (aka the best-known collection of Welsh myths; I promise this is batshit). This is because The Hobbit has been preserved, in Tolkien's AU version of our world, in a "selection of the Red Book of Westmarch" (Prologue, Concerning Hobbits). If you're a medievalist and you see something called "The Red Book of" or "The Black Book of" etc it's a Thing. In this case, a cheeky reference to the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest). There are a few Red Books, but only Hergest has stories).

not a medieval thing but i did not expect one common theory among hobbits for the death of Frodo's parents to be A RUMORED MURDER-SUICIDE.

At the beginning of the book a few hobbits report seeing a moving elm tree up on the moors, heading west (thru or past the Shire). I mentioned this in another post, but another rule: if you see an elm tree, that's a Girl Tree. In Norse creation myth, the first people were carved from driftwood by the gods. Their names were Askr (Ash, as in the tree), the first man, and Embla (debated, but likely elm tree), the first woman. A lot of ppl have I think guessed that that was an ent-wife, but like. Literally that was a GIRL. TREE.

Medieval thing: I used to read the runes on the covers of The Hobbit and LOTR for fun when I worked in a bookshop. There's a mix of Old Norse (viking) and Old English runes in use, but all the ones I've noticed so far are real and readable if you know runes.

Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you once spent months of your life researching the early medieval art of galdor, which was the use of poems or songs to do a form of word-magic, often incorporating gibberish. If you think maybe Tolkien did not base the entirety of Fellowship so far around learning and using galdor and thus the power of words and stories, that is fine I cannot force you. He did personally translate "galdor" in Beowulf as "spell" (spell, amusingly, used to mean "story"). And also he named an elf Galdor. Like he very much did name an elf Galdor.

Tom Bombadil in fact does galdor from the moment we meet him. He arrives and fights the evil galdor (song) of the willow tree ("old gray willow-man, he's a mighty singer"), which is singing the hobbits to sleep and possibly eating them, with a galdor (song) of his own. Then he wanders off still singing, incorporating gibberish. I think it was at this point that I started clawing my face.

THEN Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you've read the description of the scop's songs in Beowulf (Beowulf again, but hey, Tolkien did famously a. translate it b. write a fanfiction about it called Sellic Spell where he gave Beowulf an arguably homoerotic Best Friend). The scop (pronounched shop) is a poet who sings about deeds on earth, but also by profession must know how to sing the song or tell the story of how the cosmos itself came to be. The wise-singer who knows the deep lore of the early universe is a standard trope in Old English literature, not just Beowulf! Anyway Tom Bombadil takes everyone home and tells them THE ENTIRE STORY OF ALL THE AGES OF THE EARTH BACKWARDS UNTIL JUST BEFORE THE MOMENT OF CREATION, THE BIG BANG ITSELF and then Frodo Baggins falls asleep.

Tom Bombadil knows about plate tectonics

This is sort of a lie, Tom Bombadil describes the oceans of old being in a different place, which works as a standard visual of Old English creation, which being Christian followed vaguely Genesis lines, and vaguely Christian Genesis involves a lot of water. TOLKIEN knew about plate tectonics though.

Actually I just checked whether Tolkien knew about plate tectonics because I know the advent of plate tectonics theory took forever bc people HATED it and Alfred Wegener suffered for like 50 years. So! actually while Tolkien was writing LOTR, the scientific community was literally still not sure plate tectonics existed. Tom Bombadil knew tho.

Remember that next time you (a geologist) are forced to look at the Middle Earth map.

I'm not even done with Tom Bombadil but I'm stopping here tonight. Plate tectonics got me. There's a great early (but almost high!) medieval treatise on cosmology and also volcanoes and i wonder if tolkien read it. oh my god. i'm going to bed.

edit: part II

[gaysindistress]

What if Simon didn’t listen when Price told him to apologize to his girl before she does go off and find herself a better man?

a/n: This is technically part two for this list. You could read them separately but I really think you should read them both so you can fully feel the angst.

non-mcu characters masterlist

Taglist: @going-to-ikea-for-the-fries this is one is for you girl

Price stalks over to him and grabs him by the front of his vest, not caring that everyone can see what’s going on. “You call and apologize to her right now, ya hear me? It’s unacceptable for you to lie to her like that and I should have your balls for it. You fix it before she does go off and find herself a better man.”

Now let’s say that when Simon got back, things were….different. You rarely fought but now you’re bickering about every little thing and having full on battles of the will that leave you crying in the bedroom while he’s storming out. The connection between you two feels strained and distant where’s before it was warm and comforting. You barely look at each other and sometimes you think he’s straight up ignoring you.

Even the dogs have started to notice that there’s something off about mom and dad. Most nights you’ll sleep alone with the dogs by your door while Simon is on the couch. It feels like they’re laying in wait, ready to spring into action if anything were to happen. They don’t go to him as much as they did before and your female dog, Echo, refuses to leave your side. She’s become glued to you while your other dog, Zade, keeps you within eyesight at all times. It really pisses Simon off because Zade is supposed to be his dog and the mutt won’t even look at him (Simon’s words, not yours).

It all comes to a head though one night when Simon is trying to get Zade to come with him on a walk and the dog just stares at him. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. He just stares into Simon’s soul and judges him for how he’s been treating you.

“Zade! Come here now!” Simon grumbles in a half shout but the dog doesn’t move a muscle. You’re in the bedroom with Echo at your feet and she glances over at you with a look that says ‘let’s go’.

What happened next is a blur. Echo barely makes it into the living room before she’s growling and placing herself between you and Simon. Zade is up and stalking closer to his sister’s side while Simon is growing more and more angry. You don’t think you even had the time to say anything before Echo and Zade tackle Simon to the ground. You know they wouldn’t hurt him but it’s still a terrifying sight and you’re doing everything you can to get the dogs off of him. You manage to get them off but they refuse to go to their kennels and keep tucked behind you, still ready to protect you if needed.

“Simon, oh my god are you okay?” You ask him in a panicked and high pitched voice as you try to help him up. He shoves your hands off of him and accidentally uses too much force which sends you to stumbling into the dogs.

Everything is absolute chaos with his anger, the dogs trying to protect you, and now you’re crying while trying not to tell him off. At this point you grab the dogs by their collars and pull them away as tears are streaming down your face. When they hear your sniffles, they immediately give into you and let you pull them to the bedroom. You don’t hear Simon as you start to pack as much as you can. The weeks of being on edge have finally gotten to you and you’re done.

You refuse to be in a relationship with a man who isn’t willing to communicate with you.

You refuse to be in a relationship with a man who used to be the most loving and devoted man you’ve ever met but now he can’t acknowledge your presence.

You refuse to be in a relationship with a man who’s come so far and has forgiven himself for the things he’s done but now he’s slipping back into his old self destructive ways.

You refuse to be in a relationship with a man who can’t be honest with himself and admit that he’s wrong.

You refuse to be in a relationship with a man who’s become Ghost.

You’ve tried having faith in him after he broke up with you but it’s rotting you from the inside out. It’s eating away at your heart, gnawing at your ribs with your flesh stuck in its teeth. This faith is liquifying the kindness and patience you once had. It’s changing you into an anxious shell of a coward who can’t stand up for yourself. Change is alright but this is not. This change is making you cruel and hopeless while it waits for you to become a faithless savage who devours whatever light touches you.

It’s only when you come back into the living room with your bags packed and the dogs ready to go that Simon says something to you.

He questions what you’re doing.

He doesn’t apologize.

“I’m leaving. We’ll figure out everything tomorrow,” you tell him as you find your keys.

“What do you mean?”

You stop. You stare at the front door with completely blank eyes. They flicker to him over your shoulder.

“I’m leaving you. I’ll call you tomorrow and we can figure out how to make it a clean break then.”

He doesn’t say a word. Neither do you after that.

He lets you walk out the door. You don’t ask him to fight for you either.

He lets you leave him. You don’t turn back either.

You meant to drive to your friend’s place but somewhere on the way there you pull over and cry until you feel like you’re going to pass out. Zade and Echo watch from the backseat of your car with their heads on your center console. They want to comfort you but there’s not exactly room for two 100 pound dogs in the front seat so they stay put. Your friend calls you frantically because she’s not home but tells you that you should come meet her wherever she’s at. As nice as it might be to get away, it’s not appealing to you at the moment so you call the only other person you know you’d be comfortable with right now.

A part of you knows it’s a mistake to call him and if Simon finds out, he might very well almost kill his captain a third time. The other part of you knows that John would be understanding and the calm presence that you want right now. He already checks on you regularly so would it be a huge surprise if you showed up on his doorstep?

As if he’s been waiting for this moment, John already has a guest room for you and has the back door open for the dogs to run around outside. They’ve met him before so they feel more secure with leaving your side although they both give him a warning look.

Now it’s important to remember that the entire time you’ve known John, you’ve been with Simon. John thinks himself a gentleman, albeit a bit gruff, but a gentleman no less so you’ve been off limits. Obviously he can’t ignore the initial attraction he felt towards you because you are an utterly breathtaking person and it would be impossible to not notice that. He’s tried to lock away the yearning that tugs at the marrow in his bones when he sees you but it’s difficult. It’s like asking a dog to stop begging; they might listen for a moment but they go back to it within seconds. Also during the course of your friendship, he’s come to know the absolute amazing person that you are and seen that you have the kindness soul he’s ever known. It didn’t used to hurt when he saw you but after that night you texted him to keep Simon safe after he broke up with you, it’s damn near unbearable. Simon told you to find yourself a better man and John knows he could be that man. He wants to be that man but only if you come to him. He won’t approach you or even hint at it with you. It needs to be you who seeks him out. It needs to be you who wants him. It needs to be you who asks him to be that man otherwise John would never be able to forgive himself if it all went wrong.

Nothing happens that night or at all for that matter during your stay with John. It was meant to only be a few days but with losing your house so suddenly and trying to navigate a world Post Simon, it ends up being a few weeks. You feel awful about it and promise that you’ll be gone as soon as you can. John always laughs it off and tells you to stay as long as you need. Secretly he’s growing accustomed to your calming presence and gentle ways. He adores how thoughtful you are when you have to work early and barely make a sound. He appreciates how you make him a plate and leave it in the fridge if he comes home late. He’s thankful that you’re comfortable enough with him to tell him about everything that’s going on.

John made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t bring up anything unless you said something first. Even when he wants desperately to know why you’re crying when you came back from Simon’s tonight, he won’t. Instead he offers you a cup of tea, a warm blanket, and some space while he busies himself in his shop outside. It absolutely destroys him to even think about leaving you alone in the living room but it’s the right thing to do.

Just as he’s getting ready to leave, your small voice stops him.

“Can…can you stay?” It’s unusual for you to not be confident in your words. It causes him to freeze to hear the uncertainty. “If..if you want.”

He smiles at the ground before turning to look at you and nod. You’re curled into a ball on the couch with your dogs at your feet but there’s space for him next to you. You lean away from the arm of the couch and he takes the hint. Settling into the space between you and couch, he tosses his arm over the back and lets you decide how to proceed. Against your logical head, you tuck yourself into his side with yours pulled around yourself and your head on his shoulder. His fingers itch to play with the ends of your hair but they stay tightly closed around the couch cushion.

“Thank you…for everything.”

“No need for that.” He murmurs with bated breath. He knows you can feel the tension, how could you not when you’re practically laying on his chest?

“One day you’re going to accept my thanks. It might not be tomorrow or the day after, but you will,” you say with a snort. He says that every single time and you reply with the same phrase every time as well.

John’s hand betrays him and starts to play with the very ends of your hair. You feel it just like you felt his strained breathing. It’s strange to feel affection from anyone else but from him, it’s…. welcomed. You don’t acknowledge it and he knows that you’re doing that for his own sake.

“Maybe,” he tosses back and his breath catches when you move closer to him. Your arm moves to wrap around his waist and stills when he tenses. It’s your silent way of asking for consent to hold him. “Love,” he starts and moves his hand away from your hair.

You move to look at him, resting your chin on his shoulder. He’s looking at you with such tenderness and warmth it makes your stomach flip.

“Do you have feelings for me?” You ask him directly, unwilling to be tossed around again. It’s abrasive and you know there’s a better way to have asked but it gets straight to the point.

John looks sick and a tight lipped smile pulls across his face as he tries to come up with an answer. “I…love I think you need to rest. There’s been a…”

“No. Answer the question.”

He glances down at your lips and that’s telling enough.

“Now isn’t the right time,” he whispers more to himself than to you. “You’ve just gone through…”

Cutting him off, you say firmly, “and that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want.”

He can only stare at you with half lidded eyes and pray that he doesn’t break in front of you. His resolve is crumbling and it’s only thanks to his military service that he’s not throwing himself at you.

“I told him it’s over.”

John tries to interrupt you but you silence him with a pointed look. “I told him that I will always love him but that doesn’t mean I want to be with him anymore. I won’t wait around for him to figure his life out. I don’t deserve that. I deserve a man who knows what he wants and will communicate with me.”

Honestly it feels like his world is crumbling around him. You’re here snuggled into his chest and saying all these things which he knows what they mean but he can’t believe that you know what they mean. He can’t trust his own understanding of you and believe that you’d mean that.

“I need you to tell me what you want…now.”

You.

He wants you. More than anything in the world, John Price wants you and you’re asking him to confess that secret.

[yoonia]

A Christmas Fix — 01 (m) | kth

⟶ Summary | One-night stands are supposed to be nothing more than just. It shouldn’t have involved seeing those two red lines looking back at you weeks later without a name or a contact number linking you back to your mystery man. Nothing more but his face. The unforgettable face that would sometimes appear in your dreams at night. So unforgettable that you immediately recognise him the moment he walks into your family home at Christmas, hand-in-hand with your older stepsister.

With special collab prompt: "the holidays aren't so bad with you around."

⟶ Title | A Christmas Fix

⟶ Pairings | Taehyung x female reader

⟶ Genre | Secret Baby!au, Second Chance!au, Strangers to Lovers!au

⟶ Ratings & Warnings | +18 / M for Mature; including: alcohol consumption, mentions of pregnancy, vomiting/morning sickness, surprise babies, miscommunication, profanities/swearing, minor body insecurities (implied), some family drama; involves multiple explicit sex scenes, including: sexual tension, one night stand, drunk sex (with clear consent), minor dom/sub dynamic, brat!reader, size kink, rough sex, light choking, restraint, hair pulling (M, F), protected & unprotected sex, fingering (F), oral sex (F), clit play, breast play, stripping, biting, minor hand job/groping, grinding, masturbation (M, F), dirty talk, implied pain kink, praise kink, body worship, marking, multiple orgasms (M, F), overstimulation.

⟶ Word count | 25,363 words (of 54,773 words)

⟶ Story Notes | Part of the Jingle All the Way collaboration with @leahsfavefics, @kithtaehyung, @kpopfanfictrash, @cybrsan, and @sugaurora | Written in 2nd person POV (in case you’re new to my writing, I don’t use ‘y/n’ coding as all of my lead characters are considered as OCs) | Moodboard was done by me | Posted in: January 31st, 2024 by @yoonia

⟶ Author Notes | I know that this is so late, but December has always been a rough month for me and this time it continued until January. I hope you can still enjoy this story regardless. Happy belated holidays and happy new year, my loves!

⟶ Jingle All the Way collab masterlist | A Christmas Fix: next chapter ⇢

⟶ Main Masterlist | Taglist | Feedback | Mailbox | Ko-fi

⟶ Read on AO3

One month ago…

You already had everything perfectly planned out when you first thought of this trip some long months ago. 

Everything. 

From your personal bucket list full of wonderful things that you wanted to experience during your time away and the places that you wanted to see, down to the smallest details that you could possibly think of to be able to enjoy every single moment of your secret getaway.

Just like the red dress that you had chosen to wear tonight. The dress you had meticulously picked and bought to wear on the trip as you went to celebrate your newfound freedom. 

In your well-thought-out plan, you were supposed to have landed on the tropical island you were headed to by sundown. The warm tropical breeze should have been embracing you at the start of your trip instead of the cold, chilly wind flowing right outside these walls. 

By this evening, you should have already settled in nicely in the comfort of your hotel room right by the beachside. The calming sound of the rushing waves outside your window was the sound that you should have been listening to while resting from your long flight. 

You had pictured yourself embracing your freedom in a foreign land. To feel the soft sand slipping between your toes as you were playing chase with the rushing waves, and to find calmness that you could only get far away from the treacherous city where you came from. 

The trip was meant to help you mend your soul. Perfectly planned out as an escape from reality and leave all of your past hurt behind before starting a new chapter of your life. 

And yet, no matter how thoroughly you had it all planned out, somehow life simply found a way to mess it all up. Just like how it had always been. So perhaps you shouldn’t have been so surprised when it happened to you again, just when you thought that you had everything under control. 

You should have seen the signs long before everything started crumbling down.

The sky that kept growing darker ever since you left the city. The constant turbulences happening during your first flight that made the trip feel intense. The unsettling feeling you met the moment you landed in this place for your transit. The constant announcements echoing through the airport about flights that were getting delayed and cancelled while you were getting no news about your transit flight’s departure. 

You should have been prepared to face reality, keeping in mind that life hadn’t been so nice to you lately to let you slip away that easily. Yet your stubbornness prevailed. And after your most recent predicament, you needed this trip to happen. You needed to be right. 

After all, you have made it all the way here. It would have been impossible for you to return home, wouldn’t it?

So you remained in denial and were so stubbornly holding onto hope that you would soon be taken away from this place towards your dream destination. Even when the world around you seemed to be falling apart. 

But after long hours of waiting, you were finally forced to accept your fate, letting go of any hope you had left to escape this place when they officially cancelled the rest of today’s flights due to unresolved weather issues. Including yours.

“I’m sorry, but we really can’t promise you anything at this moment. There will be no flights until the storm passes and our pilots are cleared to fly again. Until then, we have nothing to tell you.” 

The staff’s swift response to your inquiries about getting on the first flight available to take you to your destination only left you with a dead end. Even flying back home was no longer an option, only because that would only mean that you were admitting defeat. 

And that was how you ended up here tonight, stranded right between the daunting city that you called home and the paradise that you wished to be in until an unforeseeable future. Your dream of enjoying the night in the comfort of the beachside hotel room overlooking the wide, clear ocean, had been replaced with the reality where you had to spend overnight at the airport’s transit hotel that the airline staff helped book for you. 

You released a sigh as you leaned back against the elevator wall. Recounting the events again only brought back all the terrible mood you were having. And it didn’t help that the last message that your roommate sent you only reminded you of your setback. 

From Skye: Just checking on you on your secret getaway. I hope you’re having a blast right now. I wish you’d tell me where you’re heading so I can have a good reason to be jealous. Be safe!

Another sigh came from your lips as you wondered—

Now how am I supposed to answer her text? 

Before you could find an answer, the elevator doors opened as it reached the lobby downstairs. You put away your phone as you stepped out, and immediately got lost in your thoughts. Your mind once again getting too loud as it keeps you company. 

At first, you had no intention of hiding this trip from her. Yet all the circumstances leading to this weekend had made it hard for you to share anything to anyone.

You were planning to wait until you were finally there so you could surprise her with pictures from the beautiful beach or your comfortable hotel room. Showing her the pretty nighttime scene from the tropical island would have been a nice way to flaunt your secret getaway rather than boasting it when your fate had been filled with uncertainty. 

But instead of having an evening walk down the beach, you were trudging across the lobby inside an airport hotel, accompanied by the sound of your heels clicking on the marble floors instead of having sand soiling your feet. 

And the view outside the window that you got to see earlier had been nowhere close to the pretty beach with its white sand and rolling waves. Instead, you had a clear view of the dark night sky, painted with the raging storm and its blaring thunders so strong they almost caused the entire bedroom to shake. Neither showed any sign of calming down any time soon, leaving you with no other choice but to do what you could to enjoy your temporary stay.

And you were going to start doing so by having a quick drink to help you unwind for the night. 

The red dress that you were wearing might seem a bit excessive for a nightcap, but for a short while, it helped you forget where you were. It felt almost as if you were walking in a dream as you strolled down the lower lobby in search of the hotel bar. 

Entering the hotel bar, however, became another wake-up call. 

The bar was quite large for a transit hotel, accommodating the patrons filling the place tonight. You had hoped that you could have a dance or two with a friendly stranger before retreating to your hotel room to rest, yet the closed-off lounge area had more space filled with box seats than the open dance floor. The seating area was the only place in the bar which was dimly lit, allowing the guests some privacy while they settled in with their drinks. 

The small chandeliers glittering from the ceiling were far from the hanging lights that you pictured hanging in a beachside bar. Just like the one place you had seen pictures of while planning for your trip. The lights you were seeing here made the entire space beneath seem luxurious, spreading a soft golden glow over the wary faces trying to enjoy the night. 

The pulsing bass that came out of the speakers was enough to drown the sound of the violent storm happening on the other side of these walls, further helping to create an illusion that you were in another place. That you were somewhere else instead of being stranded inside an airport hotel, together with all the strangers who seemed to be facing the same fate as you did. 

You made your way towards the main bar, suddenly feeling hyperaware of your surroundings. Even without looking, you could feel people’s eyes following your movements. Yet you paid no heed to them. You were only here to quiet down the raging storm happening inside your head, after all. 

A strong scent of old wood took over the bar area. Mixed in with the excessive scent of air fresheners and cleaners, it was enough to remind you that you were miles and miles away from the beautiful island where you had been so desperate to be. 

Smoothing your palms down your red dress, you took one empty seat at the bar. You caught the bartender’s eyes as he walked past, and within moments, a glass of strawberry daiquiri ended up in your hand. 

This feels nice, you wondered to yourself as you sat back and tried to relax.

One sip of the sweet alcoholic drink was all that it took to refresh your mind. As the warmth from your drink ran smoothly through your body, any doubt and wariness you felt began to fade. 

The next sip of the drink managed to ease your thoughts down a bit more. It helped push away the reminders of your troubles to the back of your mind. Finding calmness, you took another quick look at your surroundings.

The seating lounge seemed to be filled with guests more than the main bar was. Stranded travellers like yourself. At first glance, the nicely dressed men in suits made it seem like you were in a bar downtown. As if they were nothing more than a group of businessmen seeking leisure on a Friday night with drinks. 

It only took you looking a few seats away from them for the illusion to shatter. Your eyes fell on a group of men and women wearing their summer clothing who were making a toast, acting as if they were at the peak of their vacation. 

Looking at the scene made you realise that you weren’t the only one feeling miserable tonight. You wondered just how badly these people here needed to forget. How many of them here might be similar to you, stranded in an unexpected situation while trying to escape reality? 

You raised your glass to hide your bitter smile. The smooth liquid continued to flow through your body and you slowly began to find some peace of mind. Before you knew it, you had finished your drink, though you weren’t exactly ready to return to your cold bedroom. 

“Can I order you another glass of drink?” 

A deep voice invaded your senses after a long period of silence, and it was coming from your side. You had been far too deep in your reverie that you didn’t even realise that someone had taken the empty seat right beside you at the bar. 

Curious to see this friendly stranger, you slowly turned around to look at him. And what you saw in him nearly took your breath away. 

A tall, lean man was sitting there. His slick hair had a few curls at the end of each strands, and he had combed them back, leaving nothing more than a few stands framing his handsome face that looked almost as if it had been sculpted by the fine hands of masters in art. His sharp nose and jawline drew your attention, while his deep and soulful eyes that appeared like pools of rich mahogany drew you in, as if he was hiding a story behind his intense gaze. But it was his plump lips that formed into a smile which caught your eyes the most.

At your silence that stretched out while you were busy being captivated by him, he raised his eyebrows. It made you realise that he was waiting for your answer. An answer to a question that you had so obviously missed. 

“I’m sorry?” 

He tilted his chin to point at your now empty glass. “You look like you could use another glass, and I’d love to get one for you,” he said with an amused tone of voice. 

Once again, his deep, velvety voice hit you deeply. It resonated through your body, and a shudder ran down your spine. You refused to believe that he was able to cause this effect on you solely through his voice or his pretty smile. 

But how else would you explain the reaction that was drawn from your body? 

I don’t think I’m that drunk already, you wondered.

It was probably the way he spoke to you which affected you so much. The way he was asking a question with pure confidence. As if he already knew your answer, and that it would be impossible for you to refuse his offer. 

And he wasn’t completely wrong about it. 

What remained from your sullen mood immediately shifted in his presence. And while you have no intention of turning him down, you decided that you were not going to make things easy for him. 

“An interesting offer that seems like such a waste for me to refuse,” you sweetly said to him, smiling as your eyes fell on his empty hands. “But how would a woman feel at ease to accept such an offer from a man who isn’t even holding a glass in his hand?” 

He squinted his eyes at you, which only made his gaze feel more intense. “Are you afraid that I might be planning to get you drunk?” 

You softly laughed. “Not sure if I should be so worried about that. Getting drunk tonight has always been my initial plan all along,” you coyly said, hiding the fact that it was never your intention to get wild tonight. But his appearance intrigued you enough to change your mind about ending the night so soon.  

The mysterious man remained oblivious to this as he laughed with you. His wide, almost boxy grin mesmerised you in an instant and you were once again left speechless. 

He waved his hand to grab the bartender’s attention. It was nothing more but a simple gesture, yet you were somewhat drawn to it. To him.  

While he greeted the bartender, you took the chance to have a better look at this man. You noticed that he was a bit different compared to the other men that you saw around you earlier. 

Dressed in a black jacket over his plain white shirt, he didn’t seem as sophisticated as the stranded businessmen in their flashy suits sitting together at the bar’s lounge. Yet he had a different level of confidence which was enough to make your cheeks feel warm. 

In your eyes, he was alluring, almost as intensely as the dark storm happening outside. And you couldn’t resist being pulled towards him. 

“Another glass of the same drink for the lady and a glass of grasshopper for me,” he smoothly spoke as he ordered the drinks for you.

The bartender nodded and went to work, while you slid closer to him. His fresh-scented cologne immediately hit you, and your confidence nearly wavered that you almost slid back. But then he caught you with his gaze as he turned back to you, giving you the kind of attention which boosted every bit of ego you had. 

“So you also prefer something light and sweet. How intriguing,” you teased him, bringing back his alluring grin. 

“Why do you think I came here to join you? It was obviously for the fruity drinks and to have someone to drink it together with,” he joked.

You rolled your eyes at him and smiled. Before you got to say something in return, the bartender came back with his order. The man took a sip of his drink first before you took yours. Once again, the sweetness from your drink swirled through your body, chipping away at the tension that had been weighing you down ever since the day’s saga began. 

“To be honest, I also thought that you were looking a bit rough.” His remark brought your attention back to him. The tease was gone from his voice. All that was left was a gentle concern that seemed genuine. “And you looked like you needed a friend. That’s why I invited myself to join you.” 

It makes you feel uneasy to think that you were being so transparent. So much so that a complete stranger like himself was able to see right through you. 

“You think so? Wait until you hear how rough I’m feeling inside as well,” you bitterly said to him, drawing a soft smile to his face. 

“That makes the two of us then,” he said to you gently with his eyes on his glass of drink. There was a forlorn look in his eyes as he slowly twirled the glass, causing the liquid to swish around before he took another sip from it. 

“Care to share?” you questioned him before you could stop yourself, only to pull yourself back. “Sorry, that sounds creepy. We just met and here I am, prying into someone else’s business,” you nervously laughed.  

His gaze softened when he looked at you. Furthermore, he also seemed intrigued. 

“No, not at all.” His voice was calm, and it somehow helped to calm your nerves. “I was just about to lend an ear in case you needed someone to vent to. I never expected that you would be a step ahead of me before I could make the offer.” 

The comment he gave you made you feel warm inside. 

“Mine’s a long story,” you bitterly said to him as you raised your glass, almost giving in to the urge to take a hefty drink and finish it off when everything started coming back to you again.

The reason behind this trip, why you were stranded here on your own, while being far, far away from home, and all the drama that had gotten in the way when you had been so desperate to get away from everything. 

Unsurprisingly, the man merely shrugged. “I’ve got time to spare. My flight won’t leave until tomorrow. And that is if they’re allowed to fly out of here at all.” 

You smiled at him. “Same here. I guess we’re both stranded here all night, huh?” 

He leaned in just then, invading your personal space and filling it with his presence. And you didn’t even mind it as you leaned into him, meeting him halfway to welcome him into your little safety bubble. 

“And I was worried that I might get stuck feeling lonely while being stranded in this place,” he gently murmured, drawing a smile to your face.  

“I doubt that you would end up alone tonight,” you teased him, simply because there was no possible way that someone as attractive as he was would be returning to his hotel bedroom alone. 

His smile grew, yet the deep, dark look in his eyes shifted into something else. Something naughty and sinful. It made you feel a new sensation brewing inside even without him ever having to touch you. 

“Is that an invitation?” he asked with his deep voice that came grazing at your skin. 

Normally, you wouldn’t know what to say in return. It had been so long since you played this kind of game with someone. With anyone. But his presence and his words were drawing something out of you. A part of you that you never thought existed. And you surprised yourself when you played along, taunting danger head-on as you challenged this handsome stranger before you— 

“Would you like it to be?” 

Something flashed in his eyes. It was dark and intense, and it was sucking you in. It brought a myriad of sensations that unexpectedly went straight down to your core. 

In the deep silence that fell right after, the world around you faded. Even before you got to know his name, before you had the chance to share your story, you already knew the answer that he was about to give you as a response to your question. 

And you also knew right then, that the sparks that came rising around you were something that you would never be able to easily forget, even if every bit of memory you had about him would fade over time. 

Present…

Why do I keep thinking about that night all over again?

You can only wonder, as you keep being reminded of that eventful night. 

Weeks, nearly a month have gone by ever since, yet the memories seem to have been engraved deeply in your thoughts. And today, even though you haven’t really been thinking about it since, you suddenly find yourself having no trouble recounting everything that happened then. 

Well, almost everything. 

Some parts may seem blurry now. All due to the passing of time and the fact that you were partly inebriated at the time. But you can still recall some parts of the night that had clearly left a strong impression on you—the first encounter and the conversation you shared before alcohol took over, the instant attraction that you felt, but most of all, his entire presence. 

And they all have been coming into your thoughts while you are sitting here in the corner of your bathroom. Alone. With your arms wrapped around your folded knees and your eyes closed. As if you are waiting for a miracle to happen. 

You scoff at the thought. 

Right. Miracles. 

Years have long passed since you stopped believing that miracles do exist. Life always has its way of blindsiding you with its twists and turns that miracles no longer seem to matter anymore. 

Not for you, at least. 

Your past experiences have only caused you to look at it with sceptical eyes, sometimes even with bitterness, knowing that life has never been on your side. 

But here you are now, wishing, praying, holding onto hope that there would be a miracle to stop you from getting into a messy situation. One that you know you wouldn’t be able to handle on your own. 

After all, the perfect season of miracles is right around the corner. So it wouldn’t be so wrong for you to have some faith in them again now, would it? 

Your phone starts blaring with the sound of the alarm, snapping you out of it. Slowly, you rise on your wobbly feet. It feels as if your entire body has grown numb even before you get to face reality as it comes glaring back at you. 

Clutching onto the edges of your bathroom counter, you try to hold yourself together, and immediately failing, as you look at the two thin white strips lying on the cold counter and feel your entire world tilting off of its axis. 

All because of the two red lines that are clearly visible on each strip.

“Oh, fuck,” you softly groan. Deep down, you had already predicted this. Yet you kept denying it, hoping that you would be wrong.

“No, no, no—” you continue murmuring to yourself while wishing that you could somehow turn back time and change everything before things started going the wrong way. 

Back to this morning, when your roommate caught you—once again—throwing up last night’s dinner before handing you the unopened pregnancy test packs that she has been keeping safe in her room with the premise, “Just in case.” 

Or maybe you could return to last night when she pointed out your odd cravings—like dipping apples into peanut butter and eating leftover mac and cheese straight from the fridge without warming it in the microwave first—and joked about how you have been acting like a pregnant woman with your mood swings. 

Better yet, you wish you could go back to that night, back to that many weeks ago, when you allowed yourself to fall for a stranger’s charm which led you to spend the night with him. 

You close your eyes, once again murmuring to yourself, “This has got to be a dream.” 

But the moment you open your eyes again, nothing has changed. You are still standing there with your hands holding tightly onto the edges of the bathroom counter. And the two pregnancy test kits that you used are still lying on top of the counter for your eyes to see. 

A rapid sound of knocking on the bathroom door sends you jumping back. 

“Hey, ______? Is everything okay?” you hear your roommate, Skye, calling out for you. Her voice seems calm, yet when you recall hearing the sound of her footsteps moving back and forth outside of the door while you were taking the test, you know that she has been waiting just as anxiously as you were. “So—? What does it say?” 

Still in shock, and quite stuck in denial, you open your mouth only to have no words coming out of you. Your brain feels a bit hazy as you walk up to the door and open it for her. 

Skye takes one look at your face and her gaze softens. “What did it—” She shakes her head. “Oh, never mind, I’m dying to know. Let me see it,” she says as she brushes past you before you can say anything. 

Hoping that there is a chance that reality can change within the next few seconds, you refuse to turn around and once again close your eyes while she suddenly grows quiet.

Maybe you were just imagining things. Maybe you weren’t even looking at the test properly. Maybe—

“So, uhm—” you can hear Skye’s voice trembling a little as she hesitantly asks you, “Two lines mean it’s positive, is that right?” 

And just like that, every bit of hope you have in you flies out the window. “I wish I could say that it’s the other way around,” you softly murmur, feeling defeated. 

And the feeling grows stronger when you hear her cursing under her breath,

“Well, fuck.”

“What are you doing?” you ask Skye as you gingerly take a seat on the sofa. 

Once you both stepped away from the bathroom, she guided you to the living room while she sauntered away to the kitchen without a word. You can hear the noises she makes as she is busy rummaging through the counters. Yet you are too far away to see what she is up to. 

“Hang on a minute. Stay there,” she calls out without even looking. 

“Okay.” 

It’s not like you have any energy to go anywhere, after all. Your head is still spinning and you can barely feel your legs. It feels as if you are stuck in a bad dream and you just can’t get out of it. 

It doesn’t take long before Skye returns to your side, carrying with her two clean tall glasses in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. It was the same bottle that you opened when you celebrated your promotion a couple of weeks ago after coming back from the trip. 

Holy shit, you inwardly cry out. Your heartbeat rises as your hands find their way to your stomach. 

“Okay, let’s try to calm down,” Skye says to you as she places both glasses on the table before you, although it seems to you more as if she is talking to herself instead of reassuring you while you are panicking inside.

A couple of weeks ago? Wouldn’t I have been already pregnant then? 

These thoughts keep running through your head as you watch your roommate pouring wine into both glasses, just like the night she did the same when you first opened that same bottle. 

Dear God, how much did I drink that night? You ask yourself with a grimace as you try to remember. 

Wait, no. I didn’t drink anything, you remind yourself. Relief washes over you look back at the celebration night where you barely took a sip before Skye took the glass away from your hands. 

Because you were already feeling sick that day. 

You had been feeling nauseous for days, throwing up once in a while and mostly on the days when you were lacking sleep because of the workload you had to handle for the upcoming promotion. All you ever did was wet your lips with the wine after the celebratory toast. That was the only contact you made with the drink before Skye replaced it with a tall glass of alcohol-free smoothie that she made especially for your ‘upset stomach’.

Of course, how did I not see the signs? You wonder again as you remember the sickly feeling you had after vomiting each morning and feeling powerless for the rest of the day. It even got so bad that you had to skip work for a couple of days at the beginning of your ‘sickness’. 

If only you knew then. 

Your eyes are still on the wine glasses as Skye places them side by side and puts away the bottle. 

“Uh—I believe we both just saw the two lines appearing on the test packs.” 

She lets out a light scoff and waves her hand at you. “They're both for me. I’m going to need them while I process this,” she says, shaking her head as she sits down to join you on the sofa. “You get to keep that smoothie.” 

You follow her gaze and look down at the glass of smoothie that you left on the table during the whole fiasco with the pregnancy test. While you pick up your drink, Skye takes a hefty drink from one of the glasses of wine and sits back. 

“So—you’re pregnant,” she murmurs to herself. Her gaze flickers to your face for a brief moment and nods to herself before taking another drink. 

Why does it seem like she is the one panicking? 

She releases a sigh. Neither of you says anything for a moment. But you can tell when she grows more anxious by the minute. You don’t understand why, until she carefully asks you, “Are you going to tell Han?” 

Confused, you look at her with your brows furrowed and ask, “Why would I tell Han that I’m pregnant?” 

Skye looks genuinely confused, almost as much as you are, and you only realise the reason why when she asks you, “Isn’t Hansol the father? You guys have been dating for a long time and I can’t remember ever seeing you with anyone else while you’re on a break.” 

You wince, realising too late that you have yet to tell her the truth.

“Actually—we’re not on a break,” you slowly admit with a low voice. Months have gone by, and even though it no longer hurts whenever you start thinking about your failed relationship or to mention your ex’s name, you cannot help but still feel bitter about how it ended and you hate talking about it. 

That is the reason why you haven’t said anything about it to anyone. Maybe you were just too embarrassed. After all, it isn’t so easy to admit that you may have been the reason why the four-year relationship fell into pieces. 

“I lied,” you say with a burst of deep sigh, “It was over, done, finished—”

“So you already broke up?” she cuts you off with a calm voice. 

You bite your bottom lip as you slowly nod your head. “Yeah,” you whisper, suddenly feeling like your throat is tightening up. Not because you feel the sudden urge to cry. But only because this is all becoming too much to take at once.  

“And the baby?” she carefully asks you. “It wasn’t Han—” 

“The baby isn’t his,” you quickly answer before she even gets to question about it. 

It’s hard enough to hear his name being mentioned after a while. It feels harder to think that you might be carrying his baby. 

But the moment those words come out of your lips, reality finally sinks in. Grabbing the glass of your drink, you take a hefty drink out of it. You wish there was some alcohol in this thing. Maybe it would have helped you think more clearly. 

That’s right. It couldn’t have been his.

Sighing to yourself, you begin to do the math. “We’ve been broken up for months, so if the baby is his, I’m sure I would be showing already by this time around,” you say this while gently rubbing your palm over your stomach. 

Now that your suspicions have been confirmed, the gesture feels almost natural to you that your hand simply moves before you realise it, though it helps confirm that nothing much has changed with your body.

It feels odd to think that there is a life existing inside you, yet you cannot really see it with just one look. This convinces you further that the baby couldn’t have been conceived while you were still dating your ex. Looking back to it now, once you remember when exactly the sickness and craving started, it would only make sense that the baby was conceived on that specific night. 

“So—if Hansol isn’t the Dad, then who was it?” 

Biting your lip, you turn to look at Skye. Of course, if there is anyone in this world that you can talk to about this, it would only be her. Just like how she would come to you first whenever she is in a bind, whether it’s about her relationships, about work, or even the smallest things like having a bad day where you end up sharing a tub of ice cream to feel better. 

After all, she isn’t just a roommate, but also someone you have known the longest compared to the other friends you’ve made since moving into this city. You have known each other since college, since back in freshman year when both of you were nothing more but young kids from small towns being thrust into the big city. 

Being put together in the same dorm room led you to become fast friends. After years of enduring the same hardship in college, the two of you remained so close that you even moved to this city together and continued to live in the same place to keep each other company. 

You have gone through everything with her, and you have always been honest with each other. It should have been easy to tell her everything. If only you could find the right words to begin sharing your story. 

“I have no idea where to start.” 

“Well,” Skye patiently says while twirling the glass of wine she’s holding. You squint your eyes at her when you find it almost empty. So unfair. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” 

“Right. From the beginning,” you say this with a nod. “Do you remember when I went away last month?” 

She nods. “Your secret getaway. Still jealous of that, by the way.” 

You give her a small smile. “Yeah, well—there’s a reason why I insisted on going alone on that trip. I actually planned it as a surprise vacation for me and Hansol. The original idea was for us to have a romantic getaway for our fourth anniversary.” 

Skye raises her eyebrows. “Well, damn,” she mutters. “Let me guess. You broke up before it happened?” 

You grimace as you recall what happened. “Close enough,” you answer with a bitter smile. “It was because of the trip that we got a huge fight in the first place.” 

Skye tilts her head. “I’m not following.” 

Sighing, you drink your smoothie to cool down and swallow the bitter feeling you are suddenly getting. Recounting the break-up isn’t so much fun to do. Not even after this long. 

“I planned the entire thing on my own. Booked the flight and the hotel, and rearranged our schedules to fit each other so we could go on that exact date. But I never shared anything with him, except to confirm that it was a place that he also dreamt of going so we could both enjoy it together.” You let out a defeated sigh. “I wanted it to be a surprise. He used to love those in the past, so I figured it could be fun to celebrate our anniversary this way and get away from all the stress both of us had been getting.” 

You stop talking for a moment to remember those days. Both you and Hansol had been so busy back then that you could barely spend time with each other. 

It was the exact routine every day. Having long hours in the office and since you weren’t living together, you could only keep in contact with each other through texts and calls. By the time the two of you were able to see each other, all the stress had been piling up that you were almost always arguing and fighting instead of making up for all the time you missed while being apart. 

“We were talking about moving in together but all of a sudden, we stopped discussing it and I could feel us growing further apart. I thought going away from all the stress for a while would help us get along and make up for all the fighting. Maybe we could have had a chance to talk things out and figure out what to fix.” 

You stop with a soft sigh. “We were getting bored. With work, with life, and maybe we did get bored with each other but neither of us could open up about it, much less admit it. Not even to ourselves.” 

Skye lets out a groan. “This is why I don’t do relationships,” she mutters before finishing her drink. The first glass. With the second one waiting on the table.

You give her a scoff, but smile at her comment before continuing, “He found out about the trip by chance. I was still logged in on his laptop after I borrowed it to check on my work email while I was staying over on the weekend. He accidentally opened the booking details when he was checking his email, thinking it was his account. He suspected me of planning to go with someone else, but even after I told him that the trip was for both of us, he wasn’t having it.” 

Skye leans forward when she hears this. “Wait, he’s pissed about a secret vacation?” she asks, looking unhappy and confused at the same time. You can’t really blame her. Because that is exactly how you feel about your ex’s reaction. “Why would he be? If it had been me, I would’ve been ecstatic about going.” 

“I wish I knew,” you groan, feeling just as frustrated as you had been then. “But he wasn’t just refusing to go. He started blaming me. Saying something about me holding him back or something. He said he had no time for a trip when he needed to be there and work for his promotion.” 

Thinking back to that day, remembering about the fight and the things you said to each other, you are reminded of the moment the fight left your body. Because you knew then that there was nothing left to fight over. 

“He never even brought up the fact that it was the date of our anniversary. I don’t think he even knew or remembered it,” you say with a bitter chuckle. “He broke it off, saying that he wanted to focus on his career and I would be keeping him behind. And I agreed because I knew that we’d wound up hurting each other if we’d stayed.” 

“I can understand that,” Skye gently says. The two of you share a sad smile when your eyes meet. “And you still went on that trip,” she guesses, sounding proud. She lifts her glass to you and says, “Good girl.” 

You merely shrug. “When I went to cancel the tickets for the trip, I thought it would be such a waste to throw everything away. So I decided that going solo would be a good idea and kept mine. Besides, I needed a moment to heal myself and get away from the city for a short while.” 

She laughs, agreeing with you. Then, just as she is about to say something, she suddenly stops. A knowing look comes across her gaze and she slowly gasps. “Don’t tell me—” she says, “You met someone while you were there.” 

You nod your head slowly and press your lips together. “Once again, you’re close. But that’s not exactly what happened.” Blowing out a deep breath, you slowly ask her, “Remember when I told you that I got held up for a day in transit?” 

“Yeah, I was so jealous of you that I still remember everything you told me about that trip,” she lets out a dreamy sigh, then her gaze snaps back at you. “But, it seems to me that you haven’t told me everything about the trip.” 

“No, I didn’t.” You grimace. “Anyway, that’s when I met him—” 

The memories return to you again as you share with your roommate about your encounter with the beautiful stranger. You remember vividly the way he spoke, the deep and gentle voice that he spoke to you with, and his captivating smile that made you swoon. Everything about him that made it hard for you to leave and say goodbye to him. 

You recount the way you enjoyed each other’s company that even after your terrible mood gradually became much better, and after you finished yet another drink, you simply couldn’t walk away and end the night with him so soon. You stayed longer, losing count of the time you spent with him and the drinks you had. 

“And then, one thing led to another, it just happened.” 

Skye’s eyes have grown so wide at this point, and her jaw has dropped in her surprise that she looks almost comical. “You hooked up with a stranger during your transit?” she asks you. The moment you nod your head, she switches her empty glass with the other. “I would drink to that.” 

You laugh just as she takes a hefty drink as if celebrating on your behalf. “Why do you sound so proud of me?” 

“Well,” she slowly starts, “We’ve known each other for so long. You have always been so put together, always followed the rules, and you are always so good at what you do. From school, to work, even the little things you have been doing on the side. But not when it comes to your sex life.” 

You know that she is right about everything. But it doesn’t stop you from picking up a cushion and hitting her with it. 

“Hey, you know I’m right,” she says while laughing and protecting the precious glass of wine. “Come on, you’ve never had any casual relationships or random hookups, and every chance I could have gotten to hook you up with my guy friends was gone when Hansol came into the picture.” 

Pouting, you pull the cushion back and hold it tightly in your arms. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” you admit with a sigh. “How do you get to know me so well?” 

“That’s because I love you enough to pay attention,” she smugly says while waving her glass around, sloshing the wine everywhere. “Why do you think I’ve been so protective of you over the years?” 

You roll your eyes and hit her with the cushion one last time, making her laugh, even though she is right. For as long as you have been friends with her, she has always been like an older sister to you. Not only for coming hard like a shield against the guys you ever introduced her to but also for the trivial things that not many people would pay much attention to. 

Like reminding you to eat properly when you are stressed out or too busy with work and school. 

You feel bad for relying on her so much over the years. But you also feel grateful about it. Just like how you’re feeling right now once you notice that you’re no longer feeling as stressed as you had earlier once you’re done dumping everything to her. 

Skye’s eyes turn back to you, landing on your covered belly as she curiously asks, “Are you positively sure that Hansol wasn’t the father?” 

You slowly nod your head. As much as you wish that you were wrong, you couldn’t have been mistaken about this.

“What are the odds that it was a false positive?” you suddenly question her, while she shrugs. 

“It’s possible,” she says. “But we can get some more test kits and redo the test. Just in case. Or you could make an appointment with the doctor straight away to make sure.” 

“Right, the doctor—” You let out a soft sigh and close your eyes briefly. It has been a while since you’ve seen your physician. The last time was before—

Oh, shit. 

Your eyes snap open right then. How long ago has it been since you’ve gone to see your physician? The last time was when you went to your regular appointment for your birth control. But that felt so long ago. 

Long before the trip. 

After that appointment, and once the break-up happened, you simply threw yourself into work so much you completely forgot about everything else. And since you were newly single, getting your birth control was the last thing you had in mind at the time. 

Fuck me, you inwardly groan without saying a thing to your roommate who is busy chattering about the doctor, making appointments, and offering to take you there herself. You know that she would lecture you about safe sex like a mother hen if you ever share this with her.

But wait…he wore a condom, right? Yes, you are quite sure he did. The details are blurry when you try to remember, but you do remember protection being involved. 

Groaning to yourself, you fall back on the sofa. Your head starts spinning again when you start worrying about other things. Once you start thinking of a problem that you may have to face, another one comes to mind. 

“What am I supposed to do with this baby?”  

Skye once again raises her eyebrows at you. “I think the right question should be what do you want to do?” she asks, while you can only shake your head.

“I don’t know,” you answer with a small voice. The only thing you can think of right now is how you are going to get through this holiday while being pregnant. You are supposed to be home for Christmas in two weeks, and knowing just how crazy your family truly is, you cannot imagine how they would react if they found out you are with a child. 

You close your eyes and let out a sigh. “And my family still have no idea that I broke up with Han.” 

“For once, I’m not jealous of your life,” Skye says as she sips her wine. But she is ready for it when you fling the cushion back at her and avoid it without spilling her drink. “Don’t worry. I think they’ll catch on about your failed relationship as soon as you walk into your family home without that hunk by your side.” 

Huffing, you hug the cushion in your arms and lean back. “I guess if they’re going to find out either way, I might as well just tell them the moment I got home.” 

Besides, it might be even harder to hide the fact that you are pregnant. You might not be showing yet, but there is no possible way you could avoid the questions that may come if you are still feeling so sick right in front of your family, or if your cravings suddenly get out of hand. 

Especially if Honey is there. Despite the early signs of dementia showing on her lately, your grandmother has always been so perceptive. And there is no telling what random things she may blurt out once she has some rum in her system. 

With so many different things to think about, you almost forget one important matter that you should be thinking about when it comes to the baby. And just like always, Skye is there to remind you of it. 

“Do you remember his name?” 

You turn to Skye with wide eyes, suddenly panicking inside. You can tell that she can see it on your face and is now sharing the same feeling when she suddenly knocks back the rest of her wine and groans, “Fuck, I’m gonna need more.” 

You watch her pour more wine into her glass, hastily drinking it right after, before turning to you again. “You didn’t get his name? At least tell me that you got his number before you went separate ways.”

You bite your lips. “It’s Tae.” 

“Tae—what?” 

You shake your head. “That’s it,” you let out a frustrated sigh. “That was the only name he ever gave me.” 

“Seriously?” 

Skye is freaking out, you can tell. But you close your eyes and rest your head back, shutting everything down as she starts ranting about how she was supposed to teach you better about hooking up with strangers and keeping yourself safe. 

With her voice turning into white noise at the back of your mind, your memories return to you, taking you back to the eventful night. 

You can almost feel yourself being back there again—back in the cold hotel bar with the scent of old wood and liquor lingering in the air; the murmuring sounds of people chatting and laughing, accompanied by the sound of glasses clinking together resonating through the space around you; back to his presence that felt so strong and intense you could barely feel anything else other than him as long as you had your attention fully on him.

“What’s your name?” You remember him asking you with his voice that grew more gentle and deeper the more he drank. 

You leaned into him and giggled in response as if he just said something funny to you. “Does it really matter?” 

His soft chuckle rumbled around you. The voice was so soft, yet you could hear it clearly because of how close you were leaning into him. “I’m sure I remember being taught not to talk to strangers.” 

“Are you telling me that you’ve been a good boy for listening to what your Mom taught you?” you teased him. It was obvious how tipsy you were at this point, which may have been the reason why you were growing more confident. 

“Oh, I’ve always been a good boy,” he answered you while looking amused. He went silent right after. His gaze seemed far away just for a fleeting moment before he finally said, “My name is Tae.” 

“Tae? That’s it?” you asked, “Is that a codename or something?” You feigned a surprise gasp before you leaned into him further to whisper, “Are you secretly a spy?” 

You felt his chest rumbling when he softly laughed. “Something like that, yeah,” he said, as he played along with your joke. 

But the moment you leaned away from him, you were surprised when you got to see something in him that you couldn’t see before. His guard was down, allowing you to see the vulnerability that was buried deep under his suave and smooth talking. 

For a brief moment, he looked broken. Just like you did. 

And from the way he was hiding himself, not only under the short nickname but also from the way he was masking his emotions, you could tell that he was looking for an escape from reality. The same way you did that night. 

So you simply smiled at him, choosing not to pry further to see beyond the mask and play along. Because at the same time, you wanted to hide your broken heart and become someone else to be able to forget everything. Just for one night. 

“Then you can call me Red. It’s my special codename for tonight.” 

His grin widened. You could almost see the relief washing over him through his warm gaze when he looked at you.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you tonight,” he said, still with his gentle voice that almost felt like sin licking on your skin when he called you, “Red.” 

Two weeks later…

“Here you go,” your mother’s voice snaps you from whatever stupor you have been stuck in. When you open your eyes, a glass of ginger tea has manifested right before you. 

“Drink this,” your Mom says as she points at the drink. “It should be good for your stomach.” 

Your breath gets caught in your throat. Furrowing your brows, you keep your eyes on the drink instead of reaching for it. Thoughts of those past mornings when you and Skye spent searching through the internet to find a way to get rid of your morning sickness come through your mind. 

Does she know? Did she figure it out already? Is it really that obvious? 

You clench your hands and resist the urge to rub against your stomach. It has become a habit of yours to rub around your belly as if trying to feel the baby that is hiding inside whenever you feel agitated.

After getting the positive results through the home test kits, you had gone straight to the doctor only days before you left the city to have it checked, confirming that a baby is growing inside you. It still feels unbelievable to think about it, even after you saw it yourself with your own eyes. 

“It’s still really early, and we might not be seeing much yet, but that’s your baby,” the doctor’s voice echoes through your mind as you tighten your clenched hands, thinking back to the day you went to have an ultrasound and saw for the first time the growing fetus that was said to be viable to grow fully as a baby. 

Just like how the baby inside you has been nothing more than a blob of mass floating inside your stomach in your mind, your belly itself has yet to change shape. Even if your full awareness of the baby’s presence has only been causing you to find small changes in your body that nobody else might be able to see. 

But Mom has been pregnant before, so wouldn’t she be able to see it? Will that be possible?

“Ginger tea is good for nausea and will give you some energy boost. Your grandma always made it for me whenever I had a stomach ache. I’m sure it’ll help get rid of your nausea and your upset stomach will turn better in no time.” Your Mom stops talking and sighs. “You should’ve told me that you were sick. I wouldn’t have let you drive all the way home if I had known.” 

Ah. 

You breathe a sigh of relief. You should be thankful that she believed you when you told her about having an upset stomach from the long drive home from the city. It was the only thing that you could think of as an excuse when your Mom wondered why you hadn’t been eating well since you got back home and why you were feeling sick.

It makes you wonder why you have been feeling unwell since you got home. Just when you had purposely waited until you were well enough and had stopped throwing up when you planned for the drive. 

It’s almost as if the baby is deliberately making you sick to let everyone know about your secret.

“Thanks, Mom,” you say to your Mom as you reach for the tea, hiding your relieved sigh as you gingerly drink in small sips. 

You have lost count of how many times Skye has made you this drink specifically to stop you from vomiting in the morning before going to work. It has been helping a lot to ease your ‘sickness’, and you are feeling it calming your stomach already as the drink warms your body. 

You can feel your mother’s eyes on you, making you feel uneasy to be under her watchful gaze. “I think it might be better if you get some rest and take things easy. But are you sure you’re okay?” your Mom asks again, still worrying about you. 

You continue drinking the ginger tea slowly while pressing down your guilt. You hate lying to your Mom the most, and now you are starting to regret driving home on your own. If the baby hadn’t been the one responsible for your current sickness, then perhaps driving the long distance has been the reason why your nausea is now coming back with a vengeance.

So much for trying to not draw any suspicions. 

“I’m fine, Mom. Really,” you sigh as you place the glass down. “The tea is helping me already. I’ll feel better soon, I promise.” 

Your Mom says nothing for a moment, but the crease you see forming on her forehead says differently. “I’m not just talking about you being sick. Maybe there’s another reason why you’re feeling faint?” 

You look up at her just then. The moment you catch the pitiful look she is giving you, you finally understand what she is trying to say. 

Just as Skye predicted, it didn’t take long for your family to take notice of your solo arrival. In the past, Hansol would have joined you to visit your family for a day or two during the holidays before he would return to his family on Christmas day. So his absence was quite obvious from the get-go. 

And with the big lie that you have to hide from everyone at home, you had to at least give them one honest truth the moment they started asking. 

“We ended things a few months ago,” you admitted to your family during the first dinner you had since you got home. By that time, you had already tried to avoid the questions for long enough. Nobody has brought up about it again since then. 

Until now. 

“If you’re talking about the breakup, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m okay, Mom. It’s been months since it happened. I’ve been trying to move on.” 

In fact, you haven’t been thinking about your ex at all for a long time. Not until you brought it up to Skye and then again when your family started questioning. The only thing you have been worrying about lately is the baby growing inside you and finding a way to search for the father of the baby. 

It was the one thing that you talked about with Skye before you left. While you are capable enough to raise the baby on your own, you decided it would be the best course of action to contact the father and let him know.

In Skye’s own words, “Just in case.” 

Just in case the father would care enough to know that he has a son or a daughter coming into this world and wants to be in their life. 

“But if we fail to find him or he wants nothing to do with the baby, then we’ll deal with it on our own. You just got your promotion, I got my good pay. We can raise the baby together. You and me, just like old times.”

Skye’s words put a smile on your face. She always knows how to lift your spirit up whenever you feel like giving up, and those exact words have helped boost your confidence and made you believe that you could get through this. 

But first, you just need to get through spending this holiday with your family. 

“I know you said that. But as your Mom, I can’t help but worry. I thought you were serious and we’ll be hearing some good news about you getting married this year.” 

You resist the urge to roll your eyes. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Sorry, Mom,” you tease her with a bitter chuckle. You don’t bother to mention that the two of you had never once talked about marriage throughout your relationship.

Yet another sign that you overlooked. At least you never got to waste anymore time with him.

“Things just didn’t work out between us. It happens when a couple grow into two different people in the course of their relationship. Which was exactly what happened to us. Hansol wanted to focus on his career, in return, I also got the chance to focus on mine.” 

Just as you said the words, you realise that this is true for your case. 

Hansol has always been career-driven, and it has been growing stronger lately for him with the constant rise he was experiencing in his current company. And breaking up with your long-time boyfriend has allowed you to turn your focus on your job. The recent promotion you gained was a testament to your hard work to show you that there might be a silver lining to everything that has happened. 

“I suppose you’re right,” your Mom says with a smile. You are beginning to feel a bit relieved that she seems to understand. You are hoping that she would start talking about something else when she adds, “I just feel sad that it didn’t work out for you. And we were all expecting to have Hansol joining us again this year. I guess it’s too late now to let your sister know about this since she’s supposed to arrive today.” 

Stepsister. 

You lift your glass and slowly drink your tea to stop yourself from correcting her. For some reason, you feel a bit bitter having your mother mention her all so suddenly. 

It isn’t that you hate your stepsister. It’s hard to feel something so extreme when you barely had any relationship with her at all. Back when you were younger, your mother did try to get you two to get along and be friends. 

To make her happy, you tried your best to act friendly, or at least to be cordial whenever she was around, even when the only thing she showed you over the years had been nothing but contempt. 

But things changed after a drunken fit that she had last holiday season, when she got drunk and tried to make a move and openly flirted with your then-boyfriend. Even if nothing ever came out of it except for her own embarrassment, as Hansol openly rejected her and stayed away from her for the remaining time he was here, the incident still left a bad taste that made you feel bitter. 

That was when you finally decided that you would stop trying to be nice.

You put down the glass and try to remain calm. What’s done is done. All you have to do is focus on getting through this holiday before going back to the city and start with your mission to search for the baby’s father.

“What does Alia have to do with my break up?” you ask your mother, hoping that she wouldn’t bring up the drama from last year. 

“Oh, it’s nothing serious, really,” your Mom answers with a soft chuckle, “It’s just that Alia called home sometime last week, asking if she could bring someone over this Christmas. She said that she’s been seeing someone new and since she was bringing him to meet her mother, she wondered if it would be okay if she could bring him along to meet us too.” 

Your Mom sighs, looking a bit guilty when she adds, “We figured since you might bring Hansol with you, it would be okay if she has her new boyfriend along. Maybe the guys could get along and spend time together while you and Alia catch up.” 

You try to imagine you and Alia catching up like old friends or—just like what your Mom has been wishing you to be—as sisters, and you almost shake your head. 

Yeah, that seems unlikely, you bitterly wonder to yourself, yet you don’t have the heart to tell your mother that there is not much hope for you and Alia to be good friends. 

“I guess it’s a shame that Hansol isn’t here,” you simply say to your mother while you inwardly wonder just what your stepsister is really up to this year. 

“Yeah, it’s unfortunate,” your mother says with a sigh. “But I’m glad that at least both of you girls can make it home this year.” 

“Me too, Mom,” you force a smile, silently hoping that you can start talking about something else. Something that doesn’t concern your bitter stepsister coming home or bringing up any dark thoughts about your ex. “So, what are we having for dinner? Want my help in the kitchen?” 

Your question immediately puts everything into motion, drifting her attention away from your sappy story and the false hope of sisterhood that may never happen between you and your stepsister. Your Mom tries to stop you from helping out in the kitchen at first but finally gives in when you keep insisting. 

At least, this way, you can keep your mind busy enough to stop it from thinking about unnecessary thoughts the way it often does when you are alone. 

Things seem to be going on well enough at first, until your sickness returns and you have to give up trying. 

”See, I told you that you should be resting until you feel better,” your mother complains as she watches you bending over, keeping away from the stove and what is currently cooking on top of it which seems to be making you feel dizzy and sick. 

After garlic, lemon-scented air freshener, and coconut milk, seems you are going to have to add raw chicken to the list of things that may trigger your nausea.

“But then I’ll be bored like hell,” you argue, “I’m fine, Mom. Just let me take a quick break for a minute.” 

Your mother looks as if she wants to say something, but the sound of a car coming into the driveway interrupts her. Both of you turn to look out towards the living room, just in time to see your stepfather, Cliff, turning in the corner of the hall and rushing towards the front door. 

“Honey, they’re here!” he calls out, and you urge your mother to join him. 

“Go, Mom. I’ll finish things up and make sure nothing gets burned before I join you guys.”

Once your mother is out of the kitchen, you can no longer resist pressing your palm on your stomach. 

“Seriously, baby,” you whisper to the non-existent bump under your sweater, “Please take it easy, will you? I’m really struggling here, and you’re not making things easy for me. Trust me, it would be too soon for everyone to find out about you. At least wait until we can find a clue about your Dad, okay?” 

As if the baby inside you is listening, even if it is still barely full-grown at this point, your body grows calmer and the nausea slowly wanes. 

“Thank you, baby,” you whisper to your stomach once again before finally focusing on the stove and the oven, deliberately taking your time with what you do just so you can have a reason not to join the dramatic reunion happening right this minute. 

From this side of the kitchen, the front door isn’t completely visible. But you can hear everything as the door opens and your stepfather joyfully welcomes his daughter. 

Hearing his voice makes you smile. You may have had a tumultuous relationship with your stepsister, but the same cannot be said with your stepfather. Cliff has always been a great role model, and your relationship with him has always been great from the start. 

It makes you feel guilty when you think about the previous encounters where you and your stepsister simply gave each other cold shoulders or when you were met with altercations just because of how different the two of you are. But there is no helping it. Nothing has changed over the years no matter how hard you tried. Not even once you have become adults. 

You can’t even remember how it first started. And frankly, you no longer care. Last year’s incident was already enough to let you know that the sisterhood that your parents have been forcing you into was beyond saving. 

The voices coming from the front door continue for a moment longer. This time, you get to hear your mother’s voice joining in the conversation and Alia’s soft voice answering her questions. You make no effort to listen to what they are saying and tune out their voices, until your mother’s voice calls out to you. 

“______, your sister is here. Come and say hi.” 

Your mother’s words make you stop. Slowly, you turn down the heat on the stove and turn to make your way towards the front door to join the family reunion. 

“It’s stepsister,” you mutter under your breath as you drag your feet, taking your sweet time while you try to compose yourself before having to face the unwanted guests. 

As you turn around the corner, merely moments before the front door finally comes into view, you get to hear another voice speaking. The voice that you couldn’t clearly hear from the kitchen while you were tuning their conversation out. 

“I’m sorry for intruding. But thank you for having me here.” 

That voice. 

You immediately come to a halt. An uneasy feeling runs through your body when you realise that you recognise this voice and have grown to know it quite well. 

There is no mistaking it. You may not have gotten his full name on the night you met, and his face has somewhat become a faint mirage in your dreams at night whenever you are taken back to the night of your hookup.

But you cannot say the same about his voice. 

That deep and gentle voice will always be engraved in your memory. Even now, the only thing you would need to do is close your eyes and listen, and allow the voice to take you back to that specific night once more, where he used this voice to say sinful words that you could feel caressing your fragile heart while he was bringing you to the peak of pleasure.

And now you are hearing that voice here, at your home, idly chatting with your mother by the front door. 

“_______, are you coming?” your mother calls again, and you know that there is no avoiding it. You have to face reality, even if that means you must come face to face with the man who is responsible for placing you in this situation.

Tamping down the rush of nerves going through your body, you slowly march ahead. Bracing yourself as you turn around the corner and enter the living room where everyone is currently gathering in.

Your eyes fall on your stepsister first. 

Alia has always looked so vibrant and beautiful, drawing all kinds of attention from everyone in the room whenever she is present. Yet when you look at her now, there seems to be a new kind of light emerging from her. Even her smile seems brighter as she chats along with your stepfather.  

And you soon realise the reason why she is shining brightly today as you turn your gaze to look at the person standing beside her. To finally see him. 

He looks just like how you remember him. Tall and lean, with his arms and chest filling up his sweater. He has his hair falling over a part of his face, just enough of a mess that seems as if he has been running his fingers through the wavy strands. As he converses with your mother, he shows his boxy grin that seems familiar to your eyes. 

Too familiar. 

Because it looks just the same as the wide grin that was teasing and flirting with you on one eventful night at the transit hotel weeks ago. 

No. That can’t be.

The baby’s daddy is here. The man who you were planning to look for once you return to the city. 

He is here, today, appearing at the front door of your parents’ home together with your stepsister. His long fingers that had once entangled between the strands of your hair are now entwined with your stepsister’s dainty fingers. And there is no mistaking the matching couple rings that are glowing under the sunlight coming from their entwined hands. 

Before you get the chance to process what is happening, you hear him introducing himself to your stepfather, “It’s good to see you, Sir. My name is Taehyung.” 

No. 

You stifle a gasp. It feels like you have been sucker-punched right in the chest that you can barely breathe. 

Taehyung, you wonder. Tae? 

All of a sudden, you feel as if the ground beneath your feet is tilting over, slowly taking you down with it. And since you seem to have lost the ability to move your feet, the only thing you can do to stop yourself from falling is to clench your hands tightly by your side. Tight enough to feel pain as your nails are sinking into your palms, convincing you that this is not a dream. 

Yet you are still in denial as you watch the interaction happening right before your eyes. Because there is no way this is happening. There is no possible way that it is truly him. 

Please. Please don’t let it be him. 

It must have been your mind playing tricks on you. Because there is no way that he is here. Not as your stepsister’s new boyfriend. 

This must be a mistake. Yes, you are probably confused and all the thoughts of finding your baby daddy are messing up with your head, forcing you to believe that your stepsister’s new boyfriend is your mysterious baby daddy. The fact that they have the same name must have been pure coincidence. 

For once in your life, you don’t want to be right. You have to be wrong. 

Please tell me that it’s not him. 

Just then, as if life was listening to your prayers, as if life has yet to have enough of its games to play around with your heart, the man turns his gaze away from your parents. And those pretty eyes land on you. 

As if there is a switch turned, the brightness in his gaze fades. His beautiful eyes are filled with recognition. It is so subtle that you are quite sure that nobody else around you notices it, but it is enough to let you know that your memories have been right all along. 

Because those are the same eyes that you saw looking back at you with pure lust and sin while he was bringing you wanton pleasure, when you made love as if both of you had been under a spell, right on the very night that may have changed your fate forever. 

Fuck. 

Me.

At one glance, this moment would seem like any other pre-holiday family dinner. It may seem picture perfect, even—if you had been a stranger looking in. 

There are still a couple of days left until Christmas Day, yet the festive mood has already filled the room. From the living room, all the way to the dining room, Christmas decorations are already plastered across the walls and hung from the ceiling. On the dining table, the delectable meal that your mother worked hard to prepare—with your poor assistance—had been perfectly laid out. 

With Alia’s arrival today, the immediate family is now complete. Ever the charming daughter, Alia takes up the attention of everyone around her as she shares her story—about how she has been travelling between different states and some neighbouring countries, changing jobs, finding new hobbies, and even planning to adopt a new pet. 

Sitting at the head of the table, your stepfather is soaking it all in, enjoying the time he has with his daughter whom he rarely gets to see throughout the year. Your mother sits on his right, getting the front seat of their merry reunion. She would sometimes chime in, never failing to try to get you into joining their idle chat even when you are not feeling up to it. 

Other times, you would have been able to easily play along. From making cordial comments and joining with all the light jokes shared by your family, or feigning interest in anything that Alia might be sharing at the table—even when she rarely would share the same courtesy when you did the same. 

Tonight, however, it feels like a struggle for you to focus on the conversation shared at the table, let alone pretend to be interested. Not when you are busy trying your best to calm your nerves. 

You can't even embrace the same warm atmosphere that everyone seems to be sharing. 

For you, the air around feels stifling and tense. It has been this way ever since you sat down right next to your mother for dinner. Because due to the seating arrangement, the special guest of the night is now sitting right across from you at the table. 

Taehyung. 

The last person that you had ever expected to see. Not here. Certainly not at your home or sharing the same space with your parents. 

It seems surreal to meet him here like this. Even more so when he was introduced to your family as Alia’s new boyfriend.

Judging from the way he reacted when he first saw you, you can tell that he never expected something like this could ever happen. You know that he has questions, perhaps just as much as you do, yet the situation that you found yourself in right now isn’t allowing you to even show any sign that the two of you know each other or to have met before today. 

But there is something in the way he is looking at you that doesn’t sit right with you. Aside from the lingering shock you see each time your eyes accidentally meet each other, there is a look that shows a semblance of guilt, despair, and at the same time, filled with wonder. 

Was it because he never expected to see you again after that night, much less to find out that you are somehow related to the woman that he is dating? Or was there something else going through his mind? 

“This is Alia’s sister, ______,” was what your mother said when she first introduced you to him. At that point, you and Taehyung were stunned to silence, and for a brief moment, neither of you reacted. 

Thinking about it now, you can’t even remember how you managed to join your family in the living room. The moment you saw Taehyung standing there, your legs nearly gave out. It was a wonder how you managed to stop yourself from falling or tripping as you walked over to them in a state of distraught. 

“Hi, it’s good to see you,” was all that you managed to croak out of once you snapped out of it. You didn’t even give him a chance to respond when you suddenly turned your attention to your stepsister, forcing a smile on your face when you greeted her, “Hey, Alia. It’s good to see you. You seem well.” 

You can’t even remember the expression that Alia gave you when she responded to you, “Uh yeah, thanks. You too.” 

“Right. Well, I’ll let you guys settle in. I left the stove on, so—” 

That was the last thing you said before you turned away and quickly left the room, practically running away from him to hide back in the kitchen. The last thing you heard as you walked away was your mother’s voice saying something about you being her assistant of the day in the kitchen while you were feeling unwell, as if excusing you for your unmannerly attitude. 

By the time you got back in the kitchen, your hands were shaking, your heartbeat was racing so fast you could barely breathe. It took a long time for the shock to wane, and you had spent the rest of the day staying away from both of them, avoiding him entirely until you were finally called to join dinner. 

And you are still avoiding him even now, keeping your head down as much as you can and resisting the urge to look his way. As if it isn’t hard enough for you to have him sitting right in front of you, you can feel the heat of his gaze constantly following you whenever you are not looking.

He doesn’t make it so obvious, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else has noticed it yet. Perhaps you are just too hyperaware of his presence that you caught on to it so easily.

You sneak a glance at your stepsister, wondering if Alia has taken notice of her boyfriend’s wandering gaze or where he has been directing his eyes. It takes you watching the conversation between her and your parents more closely to see it. 

Because it turns out that she also has her own gaze wandering to questionable places at the same time that she isn’t paying much attention to her boyfriend. 

Each time Alia turns to regard your mother or speak to her, her gaze flickers away briefly, ever so subtly landing on the seat to your right. At the seat that Hansol would usually occupy whenever he joined you during these holiday visits. 

It is easy to catch it when you are seeing it from your angle. And it is easy to guess what is going through her head when she keeps doing it with a curious look written all over her face. An unspoken question seems to linger, while the incident from last year keeps flashing through your head when you picture Hansol being present beside you. 

Even if nobody notices her intention, you doubt that anyone would question her about it, seeing that the seat that was supposed to be left empty has been taken by someone else. 

While you are busy trying to make sense out of everything, your grandmother makes a disapproval noise with her tongue, grabbing your attention. “Are you still feeling under the weather? You’ve been drinking that boring thing the whole day,” she says, referring to the glass of iced tea that you have just put down after taking a drink from it to cool down. 

You turn to look at your dear grandmother, Honey, and smile at her. She probably hasn’t realised what a saving grace she has been for taking the unoccupied seat to your right the minute she came in for dinner. 

And she is now helping you again by drawing your attention away from the source of your dismay. Immediately, you feel better the moment you are met with Honey’s smile. 

“I’m feeling much better, actually. I’m just being careful not to drink anything that might get me sick,” you answer carefully, hoping to sound reasonable enough without making anyone question your ‘sickness’ any further. 

The more you lie to your family about it, the more guilty you feel. You don’t have much choice at the moment but to hide it just a bit longer. 

At first, you couldn’t share the news with your parents simply because you were still clueless about how you were going to find the father of the baby with only limited information you had of him. But then things only got even more complicated for you to ever come clean when he walked through the front door of your parents’ home. 

What are the odds that the man you hooked up with turns out to be the man your stepsister is currently dating? And here you are now, stuck in the same room with them while hiding a secret which may change the course of everyone’s entire life.

Yeah, miracles don’t exist. Not for me, at least.

Honey taps at your hand on the table as you grow silent, oblivious to the thoughts running through your head. “You know what you need?” she asks, whispering in a conspiring tone that she barely keeps down so that everyone at the table can still hear her voice. 

And she does it while looking at you with her wide, expecting eyes, with the barely concealed mischief written all over her face. It makes you smile, knowing where this is going. So you simply play along. 

"No, Honey. What would that be?” 

Her mischievous smile widens as she leans closer. “A hint of rum. With a few drops into that boring tea of yours, you’ll feel better in no time,” she says, lifting her hand and showing you a pinching gesture with her thumb and forefinger nearly touching each other, “Just a pinch. Or better yet, just trade your whole glass—” 

The sound of your Mom’s frustrated sigh cuts her off. “Mom, I already told you, giving her alcohol isn’t going to make her feel better. I’ve already given her some herbal tea, that should be enough until she can get a proper rest.”

“Oh, posh,” Honey says, waving her hand at your mother. “Ignore your Mom,” Honey says just as you are about to respond. “I’m telling you. Alcohol is best to cure your heartbreak,” she adds, and you certainly have no arguments against that. Alcohol might be able to help you forget. 

But, alas…

But, wait a minute. You stop and look closely at Honey. What is she talking about? 

“What do you mean?” you question her while tilting your head, wondering deep down if she had noticed something. Surely, she wouldn’t be able to tell the high tension rolling between you and Taehyung through dinner. 

Nobody else could. But you also know that if there is anyone in your family who might be able to catch on with the tension rolling between the two of you, it would be Honey. 

Once again, Honey reaches out and taps her dainty fingers on the back of your hand. “Isn’t that why you’re feeling down, peaches? I know you’re still thinking about that good for nothing—” 

Honey stops herself and bites down her smile before you can figure out what she is about to say. But you have heard enough to understand who she is referring to. 

Relief washes over you when you realise that she was talking about your ex, Hansol. She must have thought that you have been stressing over the breakup and you have been feeling unwell because of it.

Honey leans in, this time lowering her voice just enough only for you to hear. “You must’ve taken it from me. I also get a stomach bug when I’m stressed out. Just like last summer when I lost a go-stop game against the ladies from the block,” she says, before she continues blabbering about how she had made bets during the game and went all-in only to lose everything. 

“You might think that they’re nothing but small pennies used for gambling coins, but I spent a whole week collecting them. How am I supposed to replace all of them before the next game?” she continues to complain, while you laugh at her. 

Her story takes away the tension on your shoulders for a brief moment before she adds, “And then you had to come here and watch these two being all lovey-dovey with each other.” 

As Honey mentions the pair sitting across the table, waving her hand at them to make a point, your eyes are drawn towards them once more. And your gaze lands right on Alia’s hand which is now resting on top of Taehyung’s. 

Seeing this makes you feel tight in the chest. Bitterness fills your mouth which you can barely hide with a tight smile. Honey may not have been entirely correct with her assumptions, yet her comment still hits the mark somehow. 

Not about Hansol, obviously, as he is the one to occupy your mind the least. Yet she wasn’t too far off when she talked about the new pair of lovers before you. Seeing them does make you uncomfortable, miserable even, but for entirely different reasons. 

Looking away from their joined hands, your gaze meets Alia’s. She is wearing an unreadable expression on her face as she listens in to Honey’s words. And the strange look that she is giving you now is making you feel uneasy.

Just as you start wondering if Alia has noticed something, she instead asks you, “You guys broke up?” 

She throws a quick glance at Honey’s seat with a frown. For others, she might seem concerned, yet there is a look in her eyes which tells you that there is something more. “I was wondering why I haven’t seen him around. He was with us last holiday.” 

Her comment rubs you in the wrong way. You have no idea why she would care when your relationship has nothing to do with her. But you try to not let it bother you. “Yes, it’s been months now since we broke up. I only told Mom and Dad yesterday when I first got home.” 

“I see,” she says. Her voice comes out so softly that it almost comes out as a murmur. She pulls her hand back and places it on her lap. “That’s too bad. I’m sorry,” she adds while offering a small smile. And for some reason, she also seems guilty. 

Does she think it has something to do with what happened last year? 

Her words remind you of something that she said to you last year, back on the morning you confronted her after her drunken blunder which happened the night before. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t mean anything, I swear. It’s just drunk talking.” 

That incident shouldn’t be bothering you today. Yet it still makes you feel bitter when you think about it. The feeling only grows worse when you glance at Taehyung who is showing a sudden interest in this whole thing. 

“It’s fine. Sometimes things just don’t work out,” you simply repeat the same thing you said to your mother earlier while biting back the real question that is hanging right at the tip of your tongue. 

But what’s in it to you? 

No matter how curious you are to know what kind of scheme that is going through her pretty little head, you know it’s not worth all the drama that it might cause. You cannot even possibly imagine the drama that would unfold once this whole baby thing comes out.

God, just thinking about it is already making your stomach churn. Your lower abdomen suddenly feels hard and heavy. As if you have a full-size lead inside instead of a small, growing blob that is about to form into an actual living baby within a few weeks from now. 

Thinking about the baby, your eyes find the man who is behind all of this. He has grown oddly quiet while you were conversing with your stepsister and is now staring at his food with a frown on his face.

“So tell me,” you ask calmly while clenching your hands, doing your best to hide the trembles, “How did you two meet?”

This question immediately draws Taehyung’s attention. His eyes snap up, but the moment he looks at you, his face seems to grow pale and he becomes awfully nervous.

“We, uh—we used to work at the same company before Alia left to venture into other things,” he says, almost stuttering. He also keeps stealing glances at Alia, as if begging her to help him out. 

Huh, strange.

What is it about answering your simple question which makes him so nervous? 

Or perhaps…

Have they been seeing each other when the two of you hooked up? 

Fuck. 

The moment this thought crosses your mind, you suddenly feel sick. Your stomach grows heavier with anxiety. Meanwhile, Alia’s smile seems to beam brighter. 

“We didn’t work in the same division back then, but we would frequently meet during breaks and company hours. Had it been, what, a year after we last met?” Alia turns to Taehyung, who stiffly nods his head. She grabs his hand once again and looks at him lovingly as she continues, “We met again last summer by chance while I was travelling and started talking since then.” 

Last summer? But that was before—

Your head starts spinning. You grab your glass and take a couple of small sips of your tea to regain composure, yet the drink suddenly tastes bitter on your tongue. 

Honey’s voice barely registers in your brain when she responds with a hum. “Travelling in the summer? That sounds like a charming way to meet a new lover,” she says, lifting her mug to her lips as she continues marvelling at your stepsister’s story. “You must have felt some sparks when you two met. I bet you’re still feeling it now, aren’t you?”

You have no idea what she has inside that ceramic mug, as she had been nursing the same drink since even before dinner started. You can bet money that she had more than a pinch of rum dropped inside that drink of hers, seeing how talkative she is becoming. 

Oh, how you wish you could have a taste of it. Just a sip would have been good enough. Maybe it can also help to stop your hands from trembling. 

“And the ring?” Honey asks again with a teasing tone as she points at their entwined hands. “I noticed that you two are wearing matching rings. You can’t possibly be engaged already, can you?” 

Almost choking on your drink, you slowly set your glass back down and pull your hands onto your lap, hiding them from prying eyes just in time as they begin to shake.

“But it wasn’t that different back in the day,” Honey continues, “I remember that Russ—that’s my dear late husband,” she explains to Taehyung, “he bought me a cheap ring at the beginning of our relationship to show me and my parents that he was serious about courting me.” 

On any other times that Honey would speak about your late grandfather, you would always enjoy listening to every word, admiring how she would always share her story with pure love in her voice and wonder glowing in her eyes. 

But not this time. 

Ever since she pointed out the ring and started talking about your grandfather’s old promises, you start having trouble breathing. The more she speaks, the worse it gets, and now there is a ringing sound echoing in your ear that seems to be coming from different directions. 

“I still keep the ring with me, side by side with the wedding ring that doesn’t fit anymore on these wrinkly fingers of mine,” Honey keeps gushing. She raises her hands and starts wiggling her fingers to show them off, while your whole body grows tense. 

Alia shares a nervous laugh with Taehyung and waves her hand at Honey. “Oh, no…it’s actually a part of a joke that we—” 

You try to tune out the voices, the words that are being said, while clasping your hands tighter together on your lap, but the shaking doesn’t stop. Alia’s voice fades in and out beyond the loud ringing in your head as she continues to tell her story about how they started dating and the ring came to be. With everything that is going on, added with your awareness over Taehyung’s intense gaze that doesn’t seem to waver, it becomes too overwhelming that you feel as if you are slowly being swallowed into the ground beneath you. 

With a sharp gasp, you slowly push yourself out of your seat. “Excuse me, I have to—” your voice cracks as you speak. As you stand, you notice that everyone has their eyes on you, all curious to know what is happening with you. 

“_______?” you hear your mother calling you.

You can feel the blood draining from your face under all the unwanted attention, making you wish that you could just fade away right at that moment. But then your hand find its way to your stomach, and it almost feels like there is a touch of warmth forming under your palm. It helps you force a smile and gather yourself just enough to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling well, so I’m going to step out early. I hope that’s alright. You guys enjoy the rest of dinner.” 

You don’t wait for anyone’s response as you turn away, finding your escape merely moments before you get into a full-blown meltdown right in front of everyone. 

Your legs are wobbly as you walk down the hall, yet you still manage to slip into the guest bathroom downstairs. With trembling hands, you lock the door behind you, shutting yourself from the world outside. 

And that is when you fall apart, turning into a heaving mess as everything that you have been bottling up inside comes flooding out of you. 

“Breathe,” you command yourself while you fight back against your nausea. Holding onto the bathroom counter, you keep yourself and try your best to focus on controlling your breath. 

Take a slow, deep breath. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. 

Little by little, all the tension, the trembling, and the tightness in your chest begin to wane. But once everything is gone, once you begin to find calmness, your emotions seize control of you.

The next thing you know, an unstoppable flow of tears comes running down your face and you start sobbing, crying in defeat. 

“Shit. Fuck. What a mess,” you curse between each sob, feeling absolutely helpless and alone. You close your eyes, hoping that you can clear your head by doing so. Yet your mind keeps going to dark places. Constantly wondering and questioning about all of this. 

About him. 

“Did he ever mention anything that was related to his personal life that night?” you cannot help but wonder out loud. 

Only silence answers. Because you hold little to no recollection of the details from the conversation you shared with him that night. Whenever you try to remember, it always feels like there was a part of your memory that had gone missing. 

You haven’t had the slightest clue of the things you shared with him at the bar once the drinks started coming more frequently. Which is a wonder, because you are completely sure that neither of you had gotten drunk enough to experience a blackout, much less lose a memory.

At least for you, the alcohol was just enough to burn through your nerves and help build your confidence to take the lead and openly show the attraction you had for him. Even if he did end up taking back control the moment the two of you finally gave in to temptation. 

Your head starts pounding, aching the more you try to remember the missing details. Meanwhile, all the questions won’t stop coming, making it harder for you to regain a peaceful mind.

Did he ever mention having a girlfriend, or at least give any hint that he was taken? 

Was he wearing that ring on his finger when he was touching your skin under the dim light of his bedroom suite? 

You shake your head and close your eyes again when you still remember nothing. The only thing that remains in your memory is the look you saw in his gaze that night. The pitiful look that seemed to mirror yours, making you believe that he was looking for the same thing you did that night. 

An escape. A way to forget even if for a moment. 

But what if that was all just another lie? 

Your stomach churns. A sharp pain comes shooting through your body. It starts from your lower abdomen, causing you to almost double over. 

Fuck. Now what? 

Your hand instantly comes down to your stomach, pressing and rubbing gently against it until the uncomfortable ache ebbs under your touch. 

Right, I’m supposed to avoid any form of stress, you remind yourself as you recall what your doctor told you the last time you went to see her. Something about getting your blood tension rising when you are stressed, and that it wouldn’t be good for both you and the baby in the long run. Closing your eyes, you try to think of happy thoughts, all while keeping your palm pressed on your stomach.

To your surprise, rubbing your palm against the barely-there baby bump on your belly isn’t just helping you to soothe the pain away, but also to calm yourself down. 

With a sigh, you gently wipe your tears and look down. “I’m sorry for swearing so much, baby. I promise to stop doing it once you’ve grown big enough to start hearing things so you won’t learn any of it too soon. But fuck, this is too much.” 

It feels odd to speak like this to the living being growing inside you that is barely more than a piece of flesh. Yet speaking to your growing baby seems to help ease your anxiety a little. 

Better yet, it helps make you feel less alone. 

“Let’s not think any bad thoughts. Let’s not assume that your Dad is an asshole, okay? Not until we get to hear the full story,” you whisper to the tiny human growing inside you. The more you speak to it, the more it seems to be helping you to find some ease of mind. 

But even if it turns out that he was…

“Then I can deal with it later with my head held high,” you murmur to yourself in a soft, yet reassuring tone of voice. And you repeat it again, and again, almost as if you are chanting a spell which would be able to give you a boost of confidence. 

It may not immediately change the way you look at things, yet you can feel it slowly rising within you. It feels like a ray of light, the first spark of hope that you get to feel amid all the uncertainty which surrounds you.

Soon enough, the strong urge to cry no longer overcomes you. Even your hands have stopped shaking. All that you have left is exhaustion. It rolls through your body with a vengeance, and there is nothing that you want more right now other than to curl up like a ball on your bed and sleep it off. 

You raise your head to look at yourself in the mirror, and instantly a bitter laugh escapes you at what you are seeing.

Because you look like a complete mess. Your life is slowly turning into shambles, and it seems to be mocking you through your own reflection that is now staring back at you. 

“Just exactly what I need,” you whisper with a sigh.

I need to be stronger, if only for the sake of this little one in me, you tell yourself as you splash cold water at your face to wash away all the mess—the drying tears, your swollen eyes, and the skin on your face which has yet to regain its normal colours. 

It feels therapeutic to be washing everything off, leaving nothing more but your swollen eyes which you can explain as a part of your sickness. You may not be strong enough to take on the world, but at least now, you are prepared to face the reality that is waiting for you right outside of this door. 

No matter how fucking messy it is. 

Having this new revelation should be giving you a newfound credence that could push you forward. And yet there is none of that here. The only thing you are feeling now is the new bout of anxiety rolling up through your body, starting from your stomach as it churns painfully.

“Yeah, now I feel sick,” you groan as you rush to the toilet bowl, seconds away before you start dumping the small amount of food you had during dinner into waste. 

It takes a bit longer than expected before you finally find the courage to step out of the bathroom. 

Soft murmurs filter into the bathroom the moment you open the door. You can tell that the voices are coming from the living room, which means that the family has gathered there after dinner. It allows you to breathe a sigh of relief. At least this way you wouldn’t have to hide or make excuses if you have to bump into someone on your way to your bedroom.

Stepping out of the bathroom, you are relieved that nobody is around. Everyone should be in the living room, so you make haste, hoping to be able to escape before anyone notices. 

But as you turn to the next hallway, someone is standing in your way. The light is dim, yet you can easily recognise him before you get any closer. Standing with his back leaning against the wall, he has his hands tucked into his pockets and his eyes looking absently into the distance. 

As though he has been waiting for you. 

Taehyung turns when he notices you coming. Before you can start to wonder what he is doing here, a smile grows on his face.

“Hey, is everything okay? Everyone was worried,” he asks you, sounding genuinely concerned. 

The calm tone of his voice might be a bit deceiving if only you are not looking into his eyes. His gaze keeps wavering as he speaks, as if he is unable to look at you for too long. The same guilt you saw earlier is still present in his eyes. And you hate seeing it there. 

It only tells you that he has a secret that he is keeping from you. You have no idea how to feel about it. But if it has to do with his relationship with Alia, then—

“I’m fine, it’s just—” 

Your cheeks grow warm the moment you speak, feeling embarrassed at how dry your voice sounds. “It’s nothing. You heard my Mom, I’ll be better in no time.” 

You have so many things to say to him. So many questions that you would like to give him. But you are too tired to do anything. Much less to talk. As much as you can convince yourself that you are ready to face anything, now is not the right time to do it. 

So you keep your mouth shut and try to walk past him instead. Only that he isn’t letting you go that easily. 

“You know, it really is nice to see you again, Red.” 

His voice sounds so subdued that you almost miss it. You come to a halt. Your heartbeat starts picking up again. If you ever needed confirmation that the sinful night you shared with him truly happened, and that he remembered any part of it, then this is it. 

His comment which instantly brings you back to that fateful night. The nickname that he used to call you then.

You close your eyes, refusing to remember the way he managed to draw out a myriad of sensations with his voice alone. You refuse to be brought back there again. Not now, when your mind isn’t clear enough to be dealing with this. Taking a deep breath, you compose yourself just enough to face him.

Only to be met with his amused smile as he looks at you. 

“I was surprised to see you. I never would have thought that you could somehow be related to Alia.” He lets out a chuckle. It sounds empty and a bit bitter, mirroring exactly how you are feeling right now. 

Your chest feels tight, hating the way he is saying her name. Nor do you enjoy seeing the way his gaze changes when he does it. Annoyance fills your chest that you can barely speak, while he remains in his blissful ignorance as he continues talking, 

“Funny how life works, doesn’t it? I kept thinking about you after we met and wondered if we would ever see each other again. I regretted that I didn’t ask for your number before we parted ways. I didn’t even get to ask for your real name.” 

The tightness in your chest grows tenfold. 

You never admitted it before—not to yourself, and not even to Skye, when you first talked about him—yet there was some point between that night and the day you found out about the pregnancy that you spent your nights wondering if you would ever see him again. 

If there had been one thing that you regretted about that night, it would be the decision you made to leave the next morning without asking for his real name or leaving any means of contact. 

A night to escape from reality. 

That was all it meant for you at the time. So when the morning came, it was time for you to return to reality. Your reality. Your real life. And you were too busy preparing yourself to face all the hurt, the bad memories, and the stressful life that had nothing to do with the desirable woman that he brought into his bed the night before to even consider exchanging contacts with him. 

It didn’t matter if you were still riding the high of that night’s self-gratification and wanton pleasure through the rest of your trip. The moment everything ended, you simply moved on from it. Putting everything about that night to the back of your mind as you returned to your normal life and quickly fell back into your normal routine. 

Until weeks later, when life decided to fuck you over and you ended up with a baby growing inside you, and you had no way to find or contact him to inform him about it. 

“I guess it can’t be helped, given the circumstances.” Your conviction quickly melts into dread once you are reminded of the current circumstances. “It’s kinda too late now to talk about it and regret what didn’t happen, don’t you think? Seeing that you’re now dating my stepsister.” 

Taehyung winces. For a brief moment, you almost believe you can see a glimpse of hurt flickering through his gaze. And for some reason, it only pisses you off. 

So he doesn’t like being reminded of the fact that he is here for someone else? 

“Look, about Alia. I was hoping that we could talk. Maybe when all of this is done, or maybe after the holidays we can—” 

He continues talking, but you aren’t hearing anything. The questions that flooded your brain earlier come flashing back. The ringing that pained you returns. Everything lasts for a few more seconds before your mind clears out, and only one question remains. 

“Were the two of you already dating when we slept together?” 

He falls silent, taken aback. 

“No!” he immediately says, almost shouting. But he quickly reins himself before his voice would reach where everyone is and draw their attention. “Fuck, no. Is that why you’ve been sulking all through dinner?” he asks you with a hiss. He seems offended and hurt at the same time. “I’m not that kind of guy. Trust me.” 

“Sulking?” you let out an incredulous laugh. Is that how he saw it? When you were coming close to breaking apart right in front of everyone because of him? 

“How am I supposed to trust you when I barely know you? How am I supposed to know that you’re telling the truth?” you snap back at him with a hiss. “Just because we fucked it doesn’t mean that I’d magically know everything about you.” 

Again, he winces at your question. As if your words come to him like a slap on his face. He takes a deep breath and speaks more calmly in response, “Look, we should talk. Soon. I can explain everything. But not now, okay?” 

As much as you hate to admit it, or to agree with him, you decide that he is right. There are a lot of things that you need to discuss with him, and now is not the right time to do it. Not when your emotions are all over the place and when he has his girlfriend keeping him in close sight most of the time. 

“I agree. We do need to talk,” you finally agree, even though you know that both of you have different things in mind. 

You have no idea what he intends to discuss with you. The only thing that matters to you is to talk about the baby that you conceived together. And hopefully, decide what will happen next. 

“I should go,” you sigh, feeling exhausted and drained. “I need to lie down. This is too much for me to process.” 

You try to walk around him so you can continue on your way. Your head is pounding, and you have the dire need to rest in your comfortable bed, where you would be able to feel safe and hide away from all of this. 

“Wait,” Taehyung stops you before you can go too far. 

“What?” you ask him, feeling exasperated—both from the stress and from the way your body still tingles each time you hear his voice. You really need to get away from him. 

“Nothing, it’s just…” he starts, suddenly looking nervous with what he is about to say. The sound of laughter echoes from the living room, making him glance over his shoulder briefly before speaking to you with a lowered voice, “Can you do me a favour?” 

You frown at him. “What is it?” 

He looks wary, and it makes you feel uneasy in the stomach as you wait for him to speak. 

But what he says next makes you feel even worse. “Please don’t tell Alia that we’ve met before, more importantly that we hooked up that night.” 

You say nothing at first. Even if you are well aware of the situation and where Alia’s position in all of this, it still doesn’t stop the sharp pain you feel in your chest as he mentions her name, or to express his request. 

Taehyung steps closer when you remain quiet. His voice comes as a desperate whisper when he pleads with you, “Please? Can you do this for me?” 

You grit your teeth. “Fine, I won’t,” you finally say to him. But you refuse to give in that easily.

Taking a step closer to him, you point at him and demand him, “But you need to tell her.” 

He clenches his jaw as he listens to your demands, but you ignore it and continue to talk. “She needs to know—” your voice nearly wavers, because you know what would happen once everything is revealed. 

Telling your stepsister that you had slept with her boyfriend would not only be hard, but it would be ugly. 

But it would be better than keeping it a secret for much longer. Because secrets don’t always remain hidden, no matter how hard you try to keep them in the shadows. And things would even get messier once the baby comes while she is still being kept in the dark. 

It’s better to bite the bullet as soon as possible, rather than waiting and living your life in uncertainty until the day comes. 

“If you don’t, and we keep this a secret much longer, things might get messier if she somehow finds out on her own. The last thing I’d ever want is to get into any drama. Not with her,” you try to convince Taehyung, despite him looking like he would rather bolt and have nothing to do with any of this. 

After all the drama that happened last year, the last thing you need is to get involved in another. 

“I’ll tell her myself if necessary.” There is a bite in your voice when you are telling him all of this. To his credit, Taehyung—despite looking shell-shocked and cornered—seems to respect and understand your request. 

He lowers his head and nods. “Give me time. I’ll—” 

You are surprised to see him looking defeated. It makes you wonder if there is something more about their relationship that you need to know before going further. 

As Taehyung raises his head again, he seems more resolved. He looks straight into your eyes as he promises, “I’ll tell her myself once I get the chance to. I promise. But we’re going to have that talk first, and soon.” 

“It’s a promise.” You bite back the ache that suddenly pierces through your heart, seeing how he is so adamant about protecting his relationship with your stepsister. Trying not to look too deep into it and get yourself hurt further, you avoid looking into his gaze and start walking away from him. 

“Goodnight then—” you whisper to him as you turn away from him, biting back the sound of your defeat when you call his name, “Tae.” 

The moment you are within the safety of your bedroom, your knees buckle. Thankfully, you still manage to close the door and lock it behind you, once again shutting yourself from everyone to give you some moment of peace.

Although it doesn’t stop him from entering your mind in the silence that follows. 

As you lie down in your bed, curled up in a fetal position with your arms wrapped around yourself, your mind wanders back to the conversation you just had with Taehyung in the hallway. 

You can’t help it. His words keep coming back to you, and you keep finding yourself dissecting everything he said. You close your eyes, and keep telling yourself to stop. The situation that you are dealing with right now already seems absurd enough for you to waste your energy trying to understand him. 

You begin to wonder if things would have been better if you hadn’t come across each other again. Things would probably turn out differently. You may have to keep the baby’s existence a secret from him, and the truth about the father a secret from your family. 

You may have to deal with everything yourself. 

The possibility seems petrifying, but it still sounds a lot better than having to go against your stepsister. Better than causing your frail relationship to become even worse. This time, you know that this would be big enough to ruin any chance for you and your stepsister to have any kind of relationship at all. 

He was right. It’s funny how life works. If only it doesn’t have to be this hard to laugh it off. 

Stop it. 

Keeping your eyes closed, you let out a deep sigh and force yourself to think about something else. Anything. As long as you are not thinking about him. His face, his voice, the scent of his cologne, everything that belongs to him. 

Your head starts swimming. No, everything about him now belongs to someone else. 

Once again, you force yourself to start thinking of less stressful things. Like Skye’s text message from this afternoon suggesting that you could run away with her to a secluded place somewhere in Europe so that the two of you could raise the baby together. Or the little stories that Honey shared about the cute new gardener now working at her apartment complex—the complex specifically built for elders like herself—that she wanted to introduce to you the next time you come by to visit.

You regret forgetting to pick up the smoothie that your mother made for you while you were throwing up in the bathroom, all due to Taehyung’s distraction. You wonder if having the smoothie would be able to help you feel better. Picturing the drink being left attended in the kitchen, you can picture your grandmother—the sweet little mischievous angel that she is—sneaking in a few drops of rum into the smoothie when your mother isn’t looking. 

This thought makes you smile. It replaces every ugly thoughts that keep circling inside your mind and calms you down. 

Your heartbeat is no longer beating like crazy. The more you fill your head with wonderful thoughts, the sooner the uneasy feeling in your stomach begins to wane. 

And soon enough, you start drifting away to a restless sleep. 

But just like how he invaded your home with his sudden appearance, Taehyung invades your sleep once your mind is left unguarded. 

Speaking to him, albeit briefly, brings you back to that night. The moment you close your eyes, you start seeing everything from back then that you couldn’t remember in your waking hours. Even the smallest details that your conscious mind has forgotten. Everything comes crashing down on you as you toss and turn in your bed, unable to give in completely to a peaceful slumber as memories continue to flood your dreams. 

Six weeks ago…

You opened your eyes and squinted. 

The overhead lamp above your head was bright, and it was hurting your eyes. You could barely see a thing through your bleary eyes, until your gaze drifted further, looking into the dimly lit bedroom far across the foyer. 

The room looked more spacious than yours, albeit a bit messy. The massive bed looked comfortable, and there were two lounge seats set up near the windows that looked more luxurious than the ones you had in your room. 

“Your bedroom seems a lot more cozy than mine.” 

The words came out of your lips with a moan. The sound seemed foreign. Barely recognisable through your hazy mind. But there was a familiar sensation slowly rising in your body that hadn’t at all come from the alcoholic drinks you were having tonight. 

“Hmmm…You think so?”

A deep, sultry voice spoke as a pair of hot lips made their way down the side of your neck, tracing your skin with delicate kisses that made it even harder for you to think straight. 

Shivers ran down your body. Heat rolled through your chest. And it almost seemed to you that your skin was becoming even more sensitive to the touch when even the most subtle caress of his fingers was able to light up your senses. 

Right after the voice spoke to you, he suddenly switched and started kissing his way up. You blinked, and his face came into view just as he looked down at you. The beautiful face that captivated you when you first met him at the bar was presented right before your eyes. 

So close. So tempting. And his eyes were so intense that you nearly lost your breath. He smiled and leaned down, capturing your lips with a kiss. 

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he murmured against your lips, drawing another moan out of you which snapped you from your daze. 

You sighed as you gave in to the chaste kiss he was giving you. “It’s kind of hard to look around and see anything when you have me pinned to the door.” 

He let out a soft chuckle and once again pressed his lips on yours. As if he was both pleased and amused that he got to put you in this position. When he pulled back, the look in his eyes softened. 

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. It’s all your fault for teasing me all the way here while I couldn’t allow myself to touch you with so many eyes paying attention,” he said without any hint of regret in his voice. 

“Well, forgive me because I wasn’t aware,” you taunted him back, knowing fully well what you had done to tease him until he was on the verge of breaking apart even before you reached his hotel suite. 

As much as you wanted to hold back, you were quite sure that you hadn’t gotten things wrong. You couldn’t have possibly mistaken the chemistry that kept sparking between you. And the way he kept openly staring at your body was enough to make his intention clear, as his eyes seemed more honest than the words he gave you. 

But back at the bar, you had let him be the first one to make the move. 

With his sturdy hands, he was the one who pulled your seat closer. By placing his arm on your backrest, it may have seemed as if he was marking his territory for anyone else at the hotel bar to see. Normally, something like this would’ve put you off. But there was something in the way he did it that made you feel otherwise, allowing you to give in and lean more into his warmth instead of pushing him away. 

That was when you reciprocated his actions with your own. The light and subtle touches of your fingers on his arm drew soft shudders through his body. The accidental brushes that happened when you moved against his body pushed him into wrapping his arm around you, keeping you close before he finally pulled you out of the bar. 

When you leaned close enough to whisper softly against his ear, you could feel goosebumps rising on his skin, his heartbeat escalating under your palm, and he could barely hold himself back from devouring your lips right there at the hotel lobby. Right where everyone could see you falling into pieces under your sinful desire.

By the time you were alone with him in the elevator, the tension between you just kept escalating until he finally snapped. 

He nearly dragged you across the hallway leading to his bedroom suite in his rush to get you alone. The moment he pulled you in through the door, every bit of his composure simply left him. He barely gave you a chance to catch a single glance of the suite, as he immediately pushed your body against the door and kept you there. 

Until this moment. 

His eyes grew dark after listening to your answer. His breath is still ragged after the hot kiss that he gave you once he got you pinned between his hard body and the locked door behind you. 

With his broad chest locking you in place, his hips pressing against your lower body, he left you with nowhere else to go. But this didn’t seem to be enough for him. Looking into his eyes, you could tell that he needed to see you become even more vulnerable. Almost as if he wanted to punish you for putting him on the edge. 

And he did exactly that as he slipped one hand around your neck and pulled your hair, tilting your head back so that he could continue exploring the column of your throat with his sinful lips. Instead of resisting it, you simply gave in. Arching your back to him further as he trailed kisses on your skin, your hands clutching on his jacket to hold on. 

He used his other hand to explore the rest of your body. Starting from your waist, he continued to move further down to your hips. Tracing every curve, every dent along your body with his firm fingers pressing through your thin dress. 

Just as he was about to reach the hem of your dress, he suddenly stopped and pulled back. 

“Tell me again. Are you sure this is what you want?” His voice was quiet when he asked you this. It sounded as though he was caught between convincing himself that this was happening while giving you an out for one last time before getting too deep. 

But you had gone deep. 

And you knew then that the moment you let everything happen, there was no going back from it. Everything about this was new to you; hooking up with a complete stranger while you were in the middle of nowhere, and knowing that once the night was over, both of you were going to move on with your lives. 

It felt thrilling to think about it, and the liquid courage should help you in letting go of your inhibitions. Yet you couldn’t deny the fact that you are feeling slightly nervous about jumping fully into this. 

When you failed to answer him, Tae leaned down, pressing a chaste kiss right below your ear and whispered, “Well? Talk to me. Because there is no going back from this once we begin, and I won’t let you go until you tell me what you want.” 

The way his breath tickled your ear and caressed your skin broke you out of the walls you put up. Every flicker of doubt you felt immediately melted. You brushed against him, allowing him to feel every bit of heat coursing through your body before you answered with a whisper, “Yes. I’ve never been so sure in my whole life.” 

You could feel the way his breath was caught as you pressed your palm on his chest. Pressing against him, you raised yourself up and nipped his chin with your teeth. 

“This is what I want.” 

You weren’t completely sure if you ever got to finish your sentence when all of a sudden, his lips came crashing into yours, pressing firmly as he kissed you, barely concealing his desire for more. 

The kiss unleashed your own desire. You opened your mouth for him in return, allowing him to devour you, to have a taste of your demands as he thoroughly kissed you until you were left breathless in his arms. 

His hand began to move again just then. Tracing down your hips, he pressed the tips of his fingers harder into your flesh. He made it seem as if your dress had melted into your skin with the heat of his touch that you felt completely exposed to him. And he didn’t stop until he finally found the exposed skin of your thigh. 

Your body quivered upon contact, and you could tell that he felt it too. He began stroking your skin, moving at a slow, agonising pace just to put you on the edge. 

And he easily succeeded. Already, you could barely breathe, even when he was still far from touching any part of your body that needed him the most. 

Overcame with need, your body started moving on instinct. As if his touches were controlling you as you lifted your thigh for him. His grip on your thigh tightened, helping you to keep your leg up and open yourself to him while his kiss became sloppy yet gentle as he released his hold on your hair. 

He moved his other hand down, brushing against your covered breast with a brief contact and continued trailing down. You felt him pressing at your hips, before pulling the hem of your dress upward until your lower region was completely exposed. His hand continued its travel as it climbed up your inner thigh. So you opened your legs to give him better access. A move which he appreciated with a deep hum, before you felt his thumb brushing up just an inch away from your throbbing core. 

“Should we move this someplace else? Somewhere that would be more comfortable for us?” he asked you with his lips hovering close to yours. 

It took a moment for his words to sink in. Too lost in the sensation that you were made to feel, you felt as if you were drunk and high, not from the alcohol that was no longer running wildly through your veins, but from his entire presence alone. 

All thoughts faded further as his thumb grazed across the front of your panties, finding your folds through the fabric before he pressed down, enough to give pressure on your covered clit. Sparks flew through your half-lidded eyes as pleasure came rushing through you in waves. You couldn’t stop the moan slipping out of your lips, nor the way your hips rocked into his touch to feel more. 

“So responsive,” he murmured against your neck before he planted a light kiss on your skin. “I would have loved to watch and enjoy every reaction that you would give me, every sound you make, while I have you lie down on my bed and fuck you senseless.” 

Your breath hitched and caught in your chest. Not only because of his words, but also from the way his thumb continued to rub against your covered clit. It felt sinful, yet so delectable the way he kept drawing more and more sparks and shuddering pleasure through your body.

After being deprived of such attention for quite some time, your body became more sensitive to every friction, every treatment he was giving you, and you simply wanted more. 

“Then take me there. Take me to your bed.” 

As if you had flicked a switch in his brain, his expression changed. His gaze darkened as he captured your lips with unrestrained need, yet he was careful when he picked you up, pressing you against his chest when he turned and moved to take you away from the door.

You wrapped your arms and legs around him for balance, while your lips remained locked in a deep kiss. You could feel his long stride as he began carrying you across the room. His kiss and his firm hold on your bottom cheeks were enough to draw your attention away from his clumsy footsteps, but not enough to deny you from sensing the changes happening around you.

The scent of his cologne grew thicker as he went deeper into the room, and you were getting more and more lost in him. Drowned in his heat, his kiss, and the traces that he had left behind all over his bedroom, you felt him everywhere all at once that you felt like you were being put under a spell. 

All so suddenly, you were pulled out of it when he broke away from the kiss. He laid you gently over the cold white sheets of his partly-made bed. Instead of joining you right away, he chose to pull back. His eyes seemed to glint in the dimly lit room as he took this moment to take you in. 

“Beautiful,” he murmured softly, drawing heat back to your face. 

He kept his eyes on you as he shrugged off his jacket and began peeling his shirt from his chest. Desire pulsed through your body as you watched every move he was making without ever drawing his attention away from you. 

The more you watched him, the stronger the pull that you felt towards him. Once the need to touch him took over, you reached up and tugged on his pants, hoping that you could quickly shred them off of his body. 

You barely grazed against his covered hard-on when he stopped you by catching your wrists. Like a disappointed teacher, he made a disapproval sound with his tongue. 

“Patience, Red,” he teasingly said to you as he grabbed the hem of your dress and pulled it off of you with one swift move. You fell back to the bed with a gasp, shocked to see how easy it was for him to take over until you were left with nothing more but your lacy underthings. 

The intensity you felt from his gaze made you want to wrap your arms around yourself and hide. But being half inebriated was making you slow in thoughts and movement that you couldn’t do anything but lay still. At the same time, you enjoyed the way he was looking at you, loving how he was losing himself to you the same way you did to him. 

But it was the words that he said next that further brought out your wanton needs.

“Be a good girl and stay still. I want you to stay just like this,” he said with a murmur while his eyes ran down your body, “I want you to lie on your back while you are screaming out my name.” 

If only you hadn’t been so lost for words, perhaps you would have challenged him in return. Instead, by the time every piece of his clothing was gone, you felt like you had melted further into the sheets. The raw passion you saw in his gaze and the way he was tracing his fingertips on your skin had locked you completely in place, leaving you with no other option but to surrender as he took control.

He bent down, his lips came down to your neck. Planting his kisses on your skin, he kept your attention away from his hands as he snapped off your bra and went down to pull your panties down your hips. As he dragged your panties down your bare legs, he continued his kisses further down, not stopping until he reached your heaving chest. 

You couldn’t even remember what happened to that flimsy piece of fabric that he took from you. Everything else faded as his tongue grazed across your chest, drawing a gasp out of your lips. His firm hands returned to your hips right then, holding you down while he captured your taut nipple between his teeth. 

The feeling that coursed through you was heavenly. A shooting pain came with a flare as he bit down, yet it was quickly replaced with an overwhelming feeling of pleasure when he lapped the pain away with his sinful tongue. 

“Tae—”

His body quivered against yours at the sound of your voice. He pulled away with a grin, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he watched you arching your chest as if you were chasing him. 

He ran his gaze down your body. Perusing you while silently admiring what he was seeing while he licked his lips. As if he was picturing the way you would taste. 

“Tell me how badly you want this, Red,” he taunted you with his hand reaching out to the nightstand. You vaguely saw him grabbing a condom while you were struggling to breathe. Your eyes fell on his exposed, throbbing cock, and words simply left you. 

Seeing its impressive size and girth, your entire body erupted with a pulse. It started from deep inside your core, right where you wanted to feel him the most. Astonished, you failed to remember that he was still waiting for your answer with his eyes locked on your face. 

And he made you struggle further to find words when he reached down, wrapping his long fingers around his cock and started giving himself slow, lazy strokes. You could see the bead of his pre-cum glistening under the dim lighting. It took everything in you to stop yourself from leaning forward and lapping him dry. To have a taste, before you let him devour every drop of your essence. 

“Red? Talk to me,” he spoke to you again with a curious tone in his voice. 

He knew that he wasn’t getting any attention, as your eyes were locked only at one place that was not his face, and he seemed to be curious to know what was making you so lost in thoughts. 

Instead of answering him, you continued to watch, completely transfixed by his actions, as he slowly spread his pre-cum along the length of his cock. You licked your lips, almost as if you could taste him. A barely concealed whimper slipped out of your lips when you watched him slowly roll the condom to cover himself from the tip of his cock and down to the base. 

Seeing him covered with protection seemed to snap you back to the present. Even if your pulsing need still refused to tame down. 

Resting back against the pillows, you dragged your eyes away from his impressive cock to his beautiful face. 

“I want you here. Inside me,” you finally responded to his question. Placing your palms on the underside of your thighs, you parted your legs open, making him see the mess that had been building up right between your legs while you were enjoying the show he was giving you. 

Now it was your turn to give him a show. 

Reaching between your legs, you moved your fingers to find your folds. You bit back a gasp once the tips of your fingers were met with your wet arousal. It felt slick as you moved your fingers around, parting your nether lips so he could see your swollen clit, before you moved your fingers in circles, pressing at yourself the exact same way you wished he would. 

“Please, fuck me, Tae. Fuck me good.” 

His pupils dilated at the sound of your voice, at the pleading words you were giving him. You loved the way he was reacting to you just as much as he did with you, yet you decided to push his buttons further by adding, “And then I want to hear you scream my name while you cum inside me.” 

He raised his eyebrows. “What a little brat,” he said, chuckling. “So you like to play games, hmmm?” 

You bit your bottom lip, holding back a moan that was threatening to come out when your touch inadvertently pushed against the source of your heat. “Oh, I do. Games are always fun.” 

While he continued stroking his cock at a lazy pace, he used the other hand to grab your neck. His palm fit perfectly as he wrapped it around the column of your throat, putting pressure that was not enough to choke you, yet enough to show you who was in control. 

“Then let’s play,” he groaned while he pressed you back down on the bed. “But this time, I make the rules.” 

You felt the electrifying pleasure surging through your body as he brushed your hand away and lined himself against your entrance, shutting down the circuits inside your brain for a moment and stopping you from wiggling too much beneath him just to feel more friction. 

A sharp moan was drawn from your lips as Tae slammed his full length deep inside you. The sensation that you felt from being filled by his width was so feral and explosive that you were sure you immediately experienced your orgasm right then and there. 

Your body must have been shaking, which was a response that you failed to notice as you had your senses filled with the steady pulse of pleasure pressing across the girth of his cock. He must have noticed it when he came to a halt, giving you a chance to process everything and adjust to his presence inside you.

Nothing made sense to you beyond the pulsing pleasure that you felt from your hot pussy. Your senses were filled with the sound of your racing heartbeat, the soothing touch of his fingers on your skin, and the whispers of his voice calling you back to him. 

He only managed to bring you back to the present by pressing gentle kisses on your lips, nose, and then on the rest of your face, stopping only after he kissed your lips again to draw your attention back to him. 

Your legs were quivering when you opened your eyes to see him, yet you could already tell from the way the pulses that came right where you were joined started to settle, that your body had adjusted perfectly to his size. 

But it didn’t mean that you would simply take it without sharing your thoughts. 

“You’re—big,” you complained with a soft moan when you felt him growing harder inside you. It didn’t stop you from rocking your hips, trying to feel more friction, while he merely chuckled at your words. 

“And it’s perfect for your tight pussy.” 

His words drew a gasp from you. But he didn’t pay much attention to it, as he slowly began to move. He started with a slow pace, which was torturous and agonising, forcing you to feel the delectable way his girth was brushing against your pulsing walls. 

Back and forth he went, going so deep you could almost feel him pressing up your stomach before pulling out until only the tip was buried inside you. He kept moving at the same pace, until you began to feel more desperate. Even your body was shaking with the need to feel more. 

“More—!” you whispered with a strangled moan, “go faster.” 

Hearing this, instead of doing what you were begging him to, Tae denied your plea by doing the opposite. With a wicked grin on his face, the fucker slowed down, bringing the pleasure that had been rising back down a notch. 

You opened your mouth to protest against it, and he moved his hands down your hips, stopping at your thighs where he gave you a tight grip. 

“You want more?” he asked you, his voice almost seemed to grow deeper, and you could feel a tinge of danger when he spoke. The same danger you saw coming through his gaze as he slowly brought your legs up. 

You expected him to stop once he got your legs up his shoulders. But he just kept going. And going. Until you were nearly folded with your legs almost pressed to your chest.

“Tae—!” 

It made you feel vulnerable, with nothing but your hands to use to hold on while he had full control of your body. He was still buried inside you, and this position allowed you to feel him more. As though you had grown tighter around him and he was growing bigger. His entire length and width made you feel full, as his cock was pressing tightly against your hot walls. 

“You wanted more,” he murmured as he began moving, rocking his hips slowly back and forth, going in and out of you, drawing more and more of that shuddering pleasure out of your body as he continued fucking you gently. “I’m giving you more.” 

He began increasing his pace. Going faster the more he heard you moaning in pleasure. “Lift your arms, Red. Bring them up and hold the pillows.” 

It took a moment for his words to register in your head. Your hands had been clutching tightly on his forearms and it was a struggle to let go. And he waited, tormenting you by keeping his pace much too slow to your liking until you followed his command. 

Your hands trembled as you unlatched them from his skin. You could barely feel your fingers as you dragged your hands up, as every part of your body grew more sensitive the more you opened your entire self to him. Keeping your eyes on him, you got lost in his intense gaze. 

It was then when you finally came in contact with the soft pillows above your head, and your fingers easily sank into them, latching onto them as you did when you were holding onto his arms.

“That’s it. Good girl,” he murmured gently, and you were pleasantly surprised to realise how much you loved hearing his praise. Warmth bloomed in your chest, and it easily made its way down right to your core. “Now hold on tightly and don’t let go.” 

And you did just that. Holding on tightly the way he wanted you to. 

Only once he gained complete control of your body, once you fully submitted to him, he finally fulfilled your wish. He held firmly on your thighs to keep them folded and open for him, and he began ramming his cock deep inside you. 

He was doing it faster. Harder. Sending you high in pleasure while all you could do was take his constant pounding. The only leverage you had to hold on was the tight hold you had on the pillows and the weight of his body that was pressing you down each time he pushed deeply inside you. 

The anomalous sounds coming out of both of your lips kept bouncing off the walls. Followed by the sound of flesh clashing against flesh, the slick sounds that came from right where you were joined, and the creaking sound of the bed beneath you. 

He kept going, relentless in his rough thrusts and his need to push you over the edge, until you could feel the rise of your orgasm coming in waves. The wanton pleasure that was hot and intense came rising inside you, growing rapidly with his deep thrusts until you finally succumbed to it, coming into your climax with a scream. 

“Tae, I’m coming,” you cried out to him as you fell over the edge, though you weren’t completely sure if the words coming out of your lips were as coherent as you thought they would have been. 

The sound of your pounding heartbeat seemed to drown everything away. Except that you could still hear the sound of his breathless grunts as they grew clearer, and the strangled moan that came out of him when he shouted, “That’s it, Red. Fuck, I’m coming!”

With a sharp intake of breath, he came to his climax. You felt every pulse of his release as he came inside you, and the tremble in his chest that surged through him with his deep groan as he relished the pleasure. Even after his release, he kept moving, rocking slowly and steadily until the spasms of your orgasm slowly began to wane down. 

He remained buried inside you when he gently released you from his hold. You could barely feel his lips pressing on your quivering thighs before he lowered them back on the mattress, yet his gentle fingers remained hot on your skin when he brushed up against you. 

He reached up and gently pried your fingers away from the pillows before slipping his fingers between yours. The way your fingers were entwined together felt so intimate. So unlike anything that you had ever thought about what a one-night stand would entail. 

Your body felt hot, and your muscles were lax, but there was a series of small spasms still going strong from deep inside you, coaxed by his incessant rocking. You should have been pushing him off of you, instead of embracing his weight as he lowered himself, covering your body with his own. 

“Tae—” you whimpered against his lips as he kissed you. Holding your hands in his, he continued to rock his hips. 

How he managed to remain so hard and stiff even after his climax was beyond you. He still felt thick as he moved. His cock brushed against your pulsing walls as he went in and out, awakening all sparks of pleasure that were supposed to have dwindled. 

And with how sensitive your body was, it rose and peaked so quickly and you had no power to stop it. 

“Too…much…” you cried between the strangled moans coming out of your lips, right before he swallowed them with another kiss. 

“One more,” he groaned as he picked up his pace. “Just do it one more time for me, Red.” 

You were so sensitive it was beginning to hurt, but the pleasure was also maddening that you didn’t want to stop. This time, he wasn’t holding you down so strongly, allowing you to move beneath him. So you rocked back against him, pushing up each time he was thrusting into you. It only took a couple of more strokes before the coil in your core snapped, and you were sent to another climax. 

And he joined you in your release, falling into a smaller climax of his own as you clenched tightly around him. 

He came with a deep groan. His whole body quaked against you before he finally fell on top of you. While you were trying to control your breath, his lips came brushing your neck, kissing you gently to help soothe down the shudders running through your body.

“Fuck…so perfect,” he sighed between his kisses, his voice came in and out through your senses, and the sparks you felt rushing through your body started waning as you were slowly drifting away into the night, with his words echoing in your dreams,

“You are perfect.” 

Author’s Note 2.0 | Thank you for reading so far. Any likes, kudos, comments, and feedbacks will be appreciated. The story continues in part 2.

⟶ Jingle All the Way collab masterlist | A Christmas Fix: next chapter ⇢

© All rights reserved. 2024 Yoonia — Unauthorized use and/or duplication of these works, including reposting, translating and modification in any form, is strictly prohibited. 

[tobifuyu]

New hair, who dis?

Ran Haitani x f!reader

After years of friendship, Ran is growing and maturing right in front of your eyes but you cannot bring yourself to accept what change brings about.

cw: nsfw, mdni, basically porn with plot, friends to lovers, reader is oblivious, ran is a simp, rindou is so done, masturbation, mirror sex, use of sex toys, hair kink ig, lots of pet names.

wc: 9,7k

a/n: gosh this is way too long I’m so sorry I just have too many ideas and once I start writing I cannot stop myself. many more fics to come, I have a long list of fantasies to satisfy. also, we stan simp ran in this house.

One thing you were not expecting when opening the door of your apartment that evening was for Ran to walk in looking like a completely different person.

You wouldn’t even have recognized him if it weren’t for his purple eyes staring down at you with their ever-present mischievous glint.

Lately, his lanky body has been filling out the new suits he’s wearing in a delicious way, and the time he’s been putting in at the gym, even if reluctantly, is visibly paying off.

You notice he has removed the transparent plaster from the fresh tattoo on his neck, black ink a stark contrast against his pale skin.

There’s something else missing, and the sight is so unsettling that for a moment you think about closing the door on his face.

Who is this man staring back at you? If this is Ran, why are his infamous braids gone?

“Ran, what the fuck?”

“I can explain!” He puts his hands up, gesturing at you to let him come in, and you move out of his way automatically as you take him in from different angles.

The door gets closed behind your back and Ran wraps your wrist in one of his big hands to steer you to your couch in the center of the living room. You’re both silent as you sit down, your eyes fixed on the damage.

“I cut my hair.”

“I can fucking see that!” The smug grin that was stretching his pretty lips slowly fades at the agitation in your voice. The thing is that you don’t understand why you feel so distraught.

It shouldn’t matter, right? It’s not like he went and cut your own hair behind your back. Yeah, he could’ve let you know about such an important decision in his life as he does with pretty much everything else. He could’ve maybe even asked for your opinion. But he didn’t have to.

You and Ran have been friends for years, more than a decade, and you have seen him cut and style his hair multiple times in the past. Just because you are particularly infatuated with the way his two-toned braids swung around while fighting, or how he would twirl them with his baton and long fingers, and how it looked untied, forming a messily shaped halo behind his head while resting on the pillow during one of your many cuddling sessions… doesn’t mean he had to ask for your permission.

It’s not like he knows how much you love to brush his soft locks before twisting them back into the braids that come hunting you on your dream-filled nights. Because you’ve never told him. So it’s not his fault if all these things don’t matter to him.

“You don’t like ‘em?” He coughs to hide the embarrassment he feels after asking such a vulnerable question. Ran has never really cared about what other people think of him, except for maybe Rindou, sometimes. But you’re an exception.

He knows he’s far from ugly and he thought he looked real good with the new haircut. He was excited to match with his little brother once again, and he thought you would also, considering how well you reacted a couple of weeks ago when Rin showed you the light purple color he got done at the saloon.

Maybe, just maybe, you like Rin a bit better? No, he thinks, it can’t be possible. He would’ve noticed something like that.

Then why are you acting so… mad? Or is it hurt he sees painted across your pretty face?

You let out a sigh, “No, it looks good. I overreacted, I’m sorry. I just– I wasn’t expecting you to cut your hair, that’s all.”

He scoffs, as if he doesn’t believe your words, and pulls one of your hands up to his hair. He wants to convince you that not much has changed, and you’ll still get to play with it while watching movies, he thinks it’s soft enough with the treatment he has done, “See, it’s still pretty long, just pushed back. Maybe you can braid it sometimes.”

You laugh at that and Ran smiles at you. You meet his soft gaze before daring another glimpse at his new haircut. It’s styled in such a way that accentuates his sharp facial structure, jawline visible in all its glory.

“You look…” Hot. Fuck. You shake your head, trying to reign yourself in as you stroke the soft hair, “It looks good, more mature. It’s fluffier than I thought, Rannie.”

The more you look at him the more you realize that this new look of his is toying with your already decaying sanity.

Pull yourself together, for fuck’s sake.

Ran lets it go after that, props you to get settled on the couch, and removes his suit jacket before grabbing some drinks and snacks to watch a movie.

An hour in, he lays his head on your chest. It’s routine, he’s always been clingy with you, in private. And you’ve always enjoyed the closeness, no matter how confusing it might be, so you never question him.

Your hands subconsciously bury themselves between his lilac locks. You can hear him let out a deep sigh as you scratch his scalp, relaxing into your hold.

“Looks good, Ran. I like it a lot,” You whisper as if to reassure him, whilst you’re only stopping yourself from confessing that you would like him even if he were bald. Your gentle motions make him fall asleep with his lips curled in a smile.

My sleepy boy, you think.

That night you wake up in a cold sweat. The blond tresses that you constantly dream of softly stroking have been subsided by messy lilac locks. The short length is being gripped by your hands as its owner's head peaks from between your thighs. Unfortunately, it’s not very the first time you dream of Ran in such a compromising position. But the matching lavender gaze staring at you with purpose is now fresh in your memory, and makes his haircut seem even more attractive, the perfect length to shove him back against your heat.

Your cheeks redden as you try to shake the feeling away, you get rid of the covers and turn on your side ready for sleep to take over once again, but his new and improved look keeps hunting you at every toss and turn.

You reach into your bedside table for the only thing that can bring you peace of mind: your trusty vibrator. It’s a small bullet one, but it does its job just fine when you press it against your clit to release the pent-up stress of the day. You think nothing of it when the face that appears behind your closed eyelids as you come is that of your bestfriend.

The next couple of weeks, it doesn’t escape Ran the fact that you’re looking at him a little weird. At first, he thinks you might still be trying to get used to his new look. It was definitely a drastic change, and for you who have known him for such a long time, to be faced with it without him even giving you any heads up must’ve been weird. So he hopes that the gift he has planned to give you, will be enough to make it up to his bestfriend, to show how much he cares about your friendship and your opinions, even if he didn’t ask for it this time.

Then he starts panicking because you stop picking up his phone calls. You don’t make plans to hang out with him anymore, just shoot a text from time to time to let him know that you’re okay but busy. He’d like to believe you, but you’ve always made time for him before. You’re avoiding him.

He doesn’t know that you cannot bring yourself to face him anymore. You had managed to suppress the feelings you harbor for him for years, but seeing him in another light, with his childish braids replaced by a more mature and undoubtedly attractive look, has been the hardest challenge for you.

You feel ashamed by the number of times his face has been appearing in your mind at the most inconvenient times. You feel too dirty to look him in the eyes and pretend like you don’t dream of them at night.

Ran has reached a level of desperation where he has to involve his brother before he loses his cool over something that, he thinks rationally, shouldn’t even bother him that much. The two of you are just friends, you don’t owe him your time.

Luckily, you pick up Rindou’s call on his first try, you haven’t heard from him in a while, so it only makes sense that you do, might be something important. What if something has happened to Ran?

Rin doesn’t want anything to do with this mess, but he can’t bear to stress over the safety of his brother anymore as he comes to their meetings looking tired and miserable as hell. Bonten is just starting out, and they’re dealing with some heavy shit now, his brother needs to fucking focus.

So he invites you over for some drinks. Explains how it’s just a small get-together they’re throwing to celebrate a new deal, only some of the guys will attend. And when you ask about Ran, he rolls his eyes but replies that his brother is not gonna be there. Which is a lie, a big fat lie that is gonna turn into a headache for him soon enough. He knows that already.

You show up just because you’ve been holed up in your apartment for the past week. Work has been… well, work. And your friend group is pretty much the same as Ran’s, so you couldn’t risk him getting word of you being out and about after you’ve turned down all his invitations. You’re joining tonight because Ran hasn’t tried to contact you in a few days, and Rin has promised his brother is gonna be held back at work. Getting a few drinks with your old friends is the perfect way to destress.

You don’t make it that far, though, because the moment you walk in Ran is already there. Mingling about and walking like he owns the place, which he does. You turn to Rindou, who’s conveniently opened the door for you and is now planning to make a run for it, and you look at him as if you’re ready to tear his head off. He must’ve known what’s going on, there’s no other way for him to be so sneaky about this. He sends an apologetic look your way before scrambling away to Sanzu, who’s waiting for him in the dark of the corridor leading to the rooms.

Ran stutters over to you the moment his eyes lay on your fidgeting figure. He’s wearing a pair of dress pants and a shirt that look like they’ve been tailored to fit his lanky body in such a way that makes it hard for you to breathe. His short hair is parted and gelled back, a few pieces falling off the hairstyle and resting effortlessly on his forehead.

“Hey pretty, you’ve made it.”

“Looks like it,” you shrug your shoulders, looking around awkwardly as he ushers you into the middle of the living room. You should’ve known the brothers would’ve stuck together. Fuck you, Rindou.

“D’you want something to drink?” He sits beside you, and the scene reminds you so much of when he last came over to your apartment, except this time you’re surrounded by a handful of people. Gotta make sure you’re on your best behavior, so you turn down the drink.

“C’mon, work has been stealing you from me for weeks now, y’need to let go a little.” He can sense you’re tense, and maybe alcohol isn’t the best choice in this situation, but he doesn’t know how else to let you at least look at him. He feels a pang in his chest. Why won’t you even look at him?

“I’m okay, thanks.” You’re acting so cold and distant. He’s starting to wonder if all of this really has happened over him simply cutting his hair, or if there’s something deeper beneath it. Did you feel betrayed by him not telling you?

“I think I’m just gonna go home, I’m pretty beat actually,” you start to say, and Ran doesn’t want to force you, but he doesn’t want you to go either. “Please, just some more time to catch up. Rin wanted to see you as well,” as he says this he looks around the room and curses his brother for leaving with Sanzu.

Ran’s ass gets saved by Kakucho tapping on your shoulder before he wraps an arm around both of them as you turn to greet him. You’re smiling again, just how Ran likes to see you, but the pit of his stomach is burning with something akin to jealousy.

He’s relieved that Kakucho stopped you from upping and leaving, but he doesn’t like how you get up and join him at the counter to get him another round. Seems like you’re not drinking still, means you don’t plan on sticking around.

Ran is bummed out, he stops staring at you and Kakucho after some others join in on the conversation. He doesn’t want you to mingle with these people too much (most of them have something to do with Bonten, after all), but he’s the one who strategized all of this in the first place, so he lets you enjoy yourself. He’d rather stop pushing you before he makes it worse.

In the meantime, you’re watching a pouting Ran sit on the couch from the corner of your eye. Kakucho snickers as he notices, and you swat him away when he suggests you go sit back down with “your Ran”.

“He’s been a mess these past few weeks, I think he misses you. A lot,” Kakucho has never been anything but kind and truthful to you, that’s why you enjoy his presence so much. He’s a breath of fresh air around the much violence this friend group has experienced growing up. He’s one of those who has suffered the most but he always has a nice word to spare. Such a pure heart, his.

Your eyes wander back to where your heart is, but what you see makes your face turn into a grimace. A pretty girl you’ve known for a while, someone’s girlfriend you recall, has sat down in your spot and is now talking to Ran. They seem to be sharing a laugh as she reaches over to stroke Ran’s hair out of his face, before gesturing at it as if complimenting the new hairstyle.

The interaction is short-lived and friendly, you know her for being nothing but nice, but you feel like shit now.

You don’t like the feeling of jealousy, especially when it’s not even excused. You just don’t like when people touch Ran’s hair, and you do even less now that it has become such a touchy subject for you. He let her, that’s the problem.

“Yeah, I bet he missed me alright,” you mumble bitterly as you excuse yourself from Kakucho.

It doesn’t take you long to stand in front of Ran and stare down at him with cold eyes, “‘m leaving. Have a goodnight,” You direct the last bit to the girl, hoping she doesn’t think you’re remotely even mad at her. Then, you leave the apartment in such a rush that you don’t hear Ran calling for you. You feel like you’re underwater and the first real breath of air you take is back at your flat.

All you had time to do, before hearing the furious knocks banging on your door, is take off your makeup and wear your pajamas. Maybe, just maybe, if they had started shaking the wood just ten minutes later, you would’ve been sleeping already and not giving enough fucks to get up from your bed.

You open the door, no need to check from the peephole as you already know who it could be at this ludicrous hour.

“We need to talk.”

“No, we don’t, I have work early in the morning,” you try arguing as you go to close the door. He blocks it with his shoe, pushing it open with his right hand as he stares at you with a look he usually reserves for Rindou when he gets pissed off about something important. It’s completely different from the one he has while fighting, he’s not being snarky or overconfident, he looks serious and undeniably mad.

“You’ve been avoiding me. For weeks. ‘Cause I cut my fucking hair.” He slams the door as he steps inside the apartment and you jump from the sudden sound, walking towards you as you slowly back away and fidget with your raised hands. You’re not scared of him, you know he’d never do anything to hurt you. You’re just scared of the confrontation that is about to go down, the fact that you’re gonna have to tell the truth, for once and for all, cause you can’t possibly hold it from him anymore. And just like that, you’re gonna lose Ran.

Ran takes in your panicked state and slows down to approach you carefully, his face softens and he clasps your hands in his bigger ones. With the grip he has on them, he drags you closer to his body. The two of you are standing in the center of the room as silence overtakes it. You can feel his stare burning your skin but you keep your own cast down.

“You know I’d never hurt you, right?” His thumbs are stroking your skin in a calming pattern, “I don’t know what I’ve done, but I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry.”

You don’t understand what he’s talking about. The one apologizing here should be you! “You did nothing wrong, Ra–“

“Please look at me,” you cast him a glance from under your lashes, but the way he’s staring back is so intimidating that you can’t help but feel your face heat up and you have to divert your eyes elsewhere, “You can’t even look at me.”

“Ran, I swear this has nothing to do with you cutting off your piss-colored hair.”

He knows you well enough not to get offended, your self-defensive mechanism has always been that of getting mean.

Two fingers find their way to your chin to grip it and raise it enough so that your eyes meet once again. You can’t escape him this time.

“Tell me how to fix it, how to fix us.”

His voice is almost a whisper, he sounds so distraught, blaming himself for your stupidity. You can’t take it anymore. You love Ran, the last thing you want is for him to be hurting.

“I’m not mad at you Ran, I’m mad at myself,” His purple eyes widen with surprise, but he remains silent as he lets you explain yourself, “This is gonna sound, real bad but… I couldn’t bring myself to face you these past few weeks. Cause I had a wet dream about you. After you cut your hair…” You’re not telling the whole truth as of yet – there have been multiple dreams – but you need to test the waters first.

“Oh,” Well fuck, you’ve said it now. “Oh, wow.” His hands drop his hold on one of yours and fall from your chin, for a moment you think he’s gonna step back and run away far from you, but then you feel his touch on your waist, moving you even closer than before.

His lips settle on your forehead, stamping a kiss on the skin while you feel his mouth vibrate against it as he shakes with laughter.

This is Ran we’re talking about, ‘course he’s not gonna run away, he’s gonna embarrass you to the ground. In a week's time, everyone in your friend group will probably know about this. Not only is your friendship officially ruined, but you’ll never get to step outside of your flat without feeling like a walking joke ever again, “Are you laughing at me?”

“You got embarrassed?” He places another smooch over the same spot, “So what if I made you wet in a dream? It was my haircut, wasn’t it?”

Ran giggles. The motherfucker thinks he’s funny.

“Is that why you reacted that way back at my place? You got mad someone else was gripping my hair?” His mocking voice makes you flush red, but you know better than to give in to his teasing.

“She barely touched you, please. Like I give a damn,” You roll your eyes, finally getting the courage to stare at his smirking face as you fall back into your comfortable routine of making fun of each other. “I can always grip it myself and show you the difference,” You bark back, watching how the side of his curved lips slightly twitches.

“Go at it, babygirl.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Gosh, you seem to be pretty mad still,” he’s pouting, and you swear you wanna bite his lips so badly right now.

Get a fucking grip, oh my goodness. You haven’t even told him the worst part yet. He doesn’t know you’ve masturbated to him. He doesn’t know you like him way more than a simple friend should.

“Should I find some way to make it up to you?” His words snap you back to reality, but he’s been observing you, lavender hues taking in your scrunched-up face as you think hard over something that is still concealed from him. He wants to kiss your cute cheeks, wants to hear you giggle. You’re his precious girl, he feels this visceral need to let you know just how much he cares.

Ran’s mouth presses against the apple of your cheeks once, twice, trice. He’s leaving kisses all over the bare skin, switching from one side to the other, kissing the top of your nose endearingly.

One of the hands he has gripping your waist slides to the center of your back, over the sleep shirt you’re wearing, trying to stop you from running away from his kiss attack – as if you would – and to keep you comfortably pressed against his embrace.

He can feel you melt against his body. Rosy lips parted to take in deep breaths. Your eyelids are now closed and he doesn’t waste time kissing over them as well. He can feel your skin heating up against his mouth, feverish-like, but he can’t stop himself from dragging his lips lower to peck at your jawline.

The kisses he’s giving you are all kinds of kisses, from short and sweet pecks to loud and cute smooches, to more sensual and wet ones, especially when he reaches the skin of your neck. At this point, you can’t help but raise your hands to his hair and grip the short length of it just like you promised to show him. He lets out what sounds like a moan in the croak of your neck, but you think you must’ve imagined it as you can’t really hear much over the sound of your beating heart, the blood furiously pumping in your ears.

You know you’re enjoying this way too much, and for a moment you start to feel dirty again. He’s showering you with love because you’re his best friend, and your head is turning something so pure into nasty thoughts.

It’s not the first time he has smothered your face in kisses, maybe not to this extent, but you guys haven’t seen each other in weeks, so it only makes sense why he’s reacting to your closeness in such a way.

That’s until he sucks on the soft spot behind your ear and takes the lobe between his teeth to pull the skin. The way his name comes out from your mouth, breathless and whiny, makes him weak in the knees.

He’s gonna turn all your wet dreams into reality. You just need to say the word and he’s gonna give you what you deserve and more.

His nose is now bumping against yours, mouth pressing between the space above your cupid’s bow, the corner of your mouth, the bottom of it. Your lips graze each other every time he moves along. At this point, he has kissed every inch of your face except for the mouth. You know that would be taking it a step too far. The already thin lines of friendship between the two of you would blur to a point of no return.

At least on your part; you know Ran doesn’t shy away from human touch as you do, so it might not carry the same weight for him, you’re nearly sure of it.

You can’t possibly know how wrong you are, because as you’re thinking that, Ran is holding himself back from closing the space between you.

He has been dying to kiss you for years, since the first time you offered to braid his hair for him.

“What did you dream of?” he whispers, gruff voice scratching a part of your brain that you didn’t think existed as his hot breath washes over you, only inches away.

“Uhm, I… I don’t really remember.”

“You’re not a good liar, princess,” his mouth moves closer to your ear, trailing on the soft skin on his way there, as one of his hands grasps the fat of your left thigh and hooks it over his hipbone. “What was I doing that made you wet? Did you touch yourself because of me? Tell me.”

You know that if you could see yourself from the outside right now you’d laugh at how red your face probably is, but there’s nothing to laugh about how firm Ran’s voice is when giving orders. It might’ve sounded like he was teasing you before, but he’s being completely serious now. And you’d never dare disobey Ran when he gets like this.

“I- You were eating me out,” you gulp, your throat lets you heave the words out with difficulty. “It was either that or… some other nights, you’d do more.”

So it’s multiple dreams, different nights. Ran’s grip on you tightens, “Did you touch yourself?” He repeats the question, eyes dark and attentive, as if he’s dying to know. As if he can’t picture it in his head without you guiding him through it. Fuck it, you think.

“I did, used my vibrator-“You can’t even finish your sentence because Ran is grasping your other leg and lifting you up in the air. You circle his neck with your arms and hold on tight in fear of him dropping you, but his strength makes it seem like he’s barely breaking a sweat.

“Fuck, can I kiss you? I’m dying to taste you.”

It takes you some time to elaborate on his desperate plea, but once you do, you consent enthusiastically, “Yeah? Yes!“

The moment your lips meet, it’s like nothing else matters in the world. Ran is kissing you, his lips are moving over yours with expertise. He starts slow and deepens it to the point you have to push him away slightly to regain your breath.

Sometime during the kisses that come after, Ran has you up against the wall. He runs the tip of his tongue over the seam of your mouth, but you don’t open it straight away to pay him back for all his usual teasing. That’s until he presses his hips against yours, and you feel his hardness rubbing on you.

“Oh my god, fuck, Ran.” He takes your surprise as an opportunity to tangle his tongue with yours. You moan in his mouth, and he groans back, parting just enough to let you know what he needs, “I want you so bad, pretty girl.”

You buck into him as if asking for more and bite his lip before letting it go, watching as it falls back into place.

Ran laughs at that, starting a trail of kisses from your puffy lips all the way to your exposed collarbones. He knows you’re not wearing a bra, you don’t sleep in them. The first thing he noticed when he stepped foot inside your apartment tonight is how your nipples were perked up against the cotton of the shirt. He also knows the only thing covering your bottom is a pair of panties. Keeping this in mind, he sends you a look while reaching for the hem of your sleep shirt, as if asking for permission.

You nod and he frees you of it, chunking it somewhere behind his frame. He’s holding you up with his hips alone, navel pressed tightly against yours. That’s so fucking hot.

His hands make a b-line to your breasts, squeezing them to get a feel, and the motion is as pleasurable to you as it is for him, making his cock jump in his pants. You can feel his length twitching and it’s driving you crazy.

“Please-“ Your voice breaks the moment Ran puts you back down, you struggle to keep yourself on your feet and watch as he bends to bite at one of your nipples.

“Oh my god, yes,” he’s twisting the other with his fingers, and regretfully leaves them behind as he moves in a downward path over your body. He’s so close to your heat that he can smell your arousal, and when he casts his eyes toward your mound, he sees the wet patch staining your panties.

“Is this because of me?” a slap on your covered cunt follows his question. He knows already, you’ve made it clear, but he wants to hear you say it.

“Yes, yeah, Ran, baby. It’s all because of you.”

He thinks you must be already pretty out of it, because you’re not usually this straightforward when it comes to sex, in front of him at least. He heard how dirty you can get when talking about it with other friends, so he’s happy he’s found the key to open you up to him, literally.

It’s after your nth confirmation that Ran decides to grasp the side of your cotton panties and slowly drag them down your quivering legs. Both of you still can’t believe this is happening. You’re about to satisfy his every craving, and he’ll make sure to do the same for you.

Ran is on his knees, staring up at your body as if it’s a piece of art that has moved something inside of him. His admiring gaze is pushing all of your shyness and insecurities to leave you. His making you feel comfortable while being so exposed and vulnerable is exactly why you fell in love with him in the first place.

The weight of a peck being stamped on the inner skin of your thigh is what you feel before your body starts being covered in kisses. He’s raising to his full height while doing so, and the last one he gives you is on your forehead, just like the first of the night.

“I need you, Ran.”

Everything is still around the two of you, in the silence of the night you can hear the deep breath he takes. You lean forward to kiss the tattoo peeking from the collar of his dress shirt.

The hanafuda is a bright reminder of the life he has selfishly involved you in, and for a second he rethinks his next move, but you quickly realize he’s getting into his head and raise on your tippy toes to kiss his pink lips.

“Take me to bed, Ran. Don’t make me beg.”

You’ve told him multiple times that you can take care of yourself, and you know that where you can’t on your own he’s gonna be there to save you. You believe him, and he has to do the same when you tell him that he’s not gonna get rid of you that easily.

“You’re gonna beg either way,” he promises with a sneaky smile as he grabs your ass in his hands, making you straddle his hips as he carries you to your bedroom.

More kisses are being shared between the two of you during the short way, and he can barely tear himself from you as he lays you on your mattress.

You think he’s reaching into your bedside table for condoms but what he finds is even better: your pink vibrator. He looks at it as if he’s discovered gold. When he orders you to take it and use it on yourself, you realize he wants to watch. He wants to recreate what you’ve so cutely told him you’ve been doing for the past few weeks while thinking about him. Ran wants to see for himself.

He stands at the foot of the bed while you tease your entrance with the bullet vibrator, collecting your wetness to make it glide more easily over your clit. You keep your legs spread to give him a show, watching as he pays you back by removing piece by piece of clothing.

His full-body tattoo reveals itself to your greedy eyes. You’ve seen it multiple times, but have never gotten to take it in all together.

You’re panting, reaching your slit with one of your fingers as your opening clenches around nothing under his lust-filled gaze. “Hold it,” his deep voice tells you, and you follow his instruction, regretfully so.

“Keep it spread fo’ me.” You spread yourself open with two fingers, bucking up to chase the sensation of your vibrator. “Fuck, such a good girl fo’ me. Doing anything I tell her.” He grasps his hardness over the cloth of the boxers, the grey fabric sticking to his skin and forming a wet patch where his precome is leaking.

He strokes himself a couple of times before removing the last piece of clothing on his body, finally letting you see the place where his tattoo connects, but most importantly his cock.

It’s so pretty, lengthy, and a girth that would scare you if it weren’t for how long you’ve been dreaming of this moment. It bobs between his legs as he crawls over the bed to you and the pink on its head is glistening, you wish you could clean it up with your tongue right now.

You think he must also have an oral fixation because the moment he reaches you and settles between your open legs he chunks the vibrator to the side of the bed to cover your wetness with his mouth.

Curious tongue running over the mess you made, the sounds he’s making giving away how much he’s enjoying getting a taste.

“Can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this. You taste like heaven, princess.” He’s raising as he mutters the words. He takes one look at your withering figure from above, before letting a glob of spit fall on your cunt.

Ran bends and goes right back in, the muscles on his shoulders moving along as his hands come up to hold your thighs open before you can crush his head, you can already feel the bruises from the tight grip forming on the skin.

It’s like the wet dreams that have been plaguing your mind ever since he cut his hair have finally turned into reality. His shorts locks are peeking from between your thighs and you’re gripping them for dear life as he feasts on you, mouth sucking around your clit and lilac eyes peeking from below your mound with a stare so intense that you can feel your legs trembling from that alone.

When his fingers join in the fun you feel yourself getting closer, he’s moving them in a come hither motion and hitting your spot just right. He’s not building up momentum or taking his time in opening you up, that’s how desperate he is. Two of them are fucking into you quickly and with precision, while his dexterous tongue flicks your bundle of nerves.

“Ran, fuck, you look so good between my legs,” You can feel him smirking against you, the boost of ego you know he needs to get him right where you want him.

“I’m gonna cum, plea– please, don’t stop.” The problem is that Ran doesn’t exactly like being told what to do, and he’s being greedy now. He has waited too long to have you, he can’t possibly wait anymore.

He stops his movements, triggering a cry on your part. You nearly kick him with one of your feet but he’s fast enough to move to the edge of the bed, sitting in front of the full-length mirror that covers your wardrobe and conveniently faces the mattress.

You stare at him, spread legs and hard length resting on his lower abdomen as he settles reclined on the palm of his hands. “Come sit on my cock.”

You’re facing his back, laying down on the bed still, and from your position you get to admire the tattoo on his back, and how his muscles flex beneath the skin every time he moves. His body is as sinful as it can be, he drips sex and makes you want to mold yourself to him and never let go. It has always scared you, this pull he has on you, but now he’s the one inviting you over. It’s not the time to shy away.

He’s watching you from the reflection in the mirror as you get up. Your naked body is to him like a tall glass of water after weeks without drinking, he feels like he would die right here, right now, if you were to walk away without letting him have a sip.

Even his wet dreams – yes, you’re not the only one fantasizing about your best friend – don’t compare to the sight of you standing in front of his spread legs looking down at him.

“Uh nah, turn around pretty,” he prompts when he sees you’re about to straddle his lap. He enjoys the sight of you doing whatever he tells you to without even having to touch your body, and he stores that information inside a little drawer in his head for later.

You finally sit down, sliding against his hot skin until you’re resting only half of your weight on his thighs. His cock is now sandwiched between your bodies, and he groans when your asscheeks rub against it while you are wiggling onto him purposely.

“I said sit on my cock, I want you on top of it.”

You’re about to fuck your best friend, it doesn’t seem real. Should the two of you even be doing this? This will change everything forever, there would be no going back from it.

You know that once he’s gonna slide inside you you won’t be able to look at any other man ever again. You barely do now, anyway.

Your right hand goes under you to grasp his length, the angle is uncomfortable but you make it work enough to give him a few pumps. His girth feels hot in your hold, and you bring it to your opening to tease yourself with his wet tip.

“Fuck baby, don’t tease me.” The reflection in the mirror shows his tensed body in all his glory, and you get a glimpse of his hands buried in the sheets, he’s gripping the fabric so tight you think blood might’ve stopped flowing.

Ran is trying not to buck up into you, he’s giving you time to adjust to his size, and you realize how needed it is when you finally lower yourself on it.

You’re watching the scene unfold in the mirror, how his cock is slowly sinking inside of you. The stretch leaves you with a burning feeling and when you nearly reach his base you realize how full you are. All your bumps and ridges are being deliciously stroked by his skin.

Your lips fall open in a pant and Ran is groaning right by your ear as he straightens his posture and bends slightly over your body. “I’ve been dreaming of this for years,” he confesses while his hands grasp the fat of your thighs, spreading you to him as he loops your legs over his, keeping them open just like that with his knees.

He can’t believe his eyes when he gets to fully glimpse how far he’s stretching your cunt with his cock. All the patience in the world wouldn’t help him hold back anymore.

He bucks up into you, having you take his cock down to the base. You let out a shriek at how big he feels inside, and after that, he starts moving. Being on top made you, at first, feel like you could be in control, but it seems like the orders he was barking at you weren’t the only thing he was planning on doing on his part.

Ran starts pounding into you from below, strong thighs helping him in bucking up. You’re being split open on his cock and he’s enjoying the show. The sound of skin slapping against skin is so sinful, but your eyes are now closed in pleasure as you’re reduced to nothing but a moaning mess. His thrusts are so powerful that it takes you very little time to lose your mind.

He’s calling for you, you can hear his deep voice and feel his hot breath on your ear after you slumped against his bigger body, resting your leaned-back head on the crook of his neck. “Mhmh, open your eyes, pretty girl,” like the good girl you are, you do as said, even if you’re struggling to keep them open when his thrusts don’t let up, but instead seem to be getting deeper every time you do something he asks of you right.

He grabs your chin with his thumb and pointer, redirecting your line of sight towards the mirror, where you can see his heavy balls slap over your glistening skin from below. “Look at how much you’re dripping, that’s how I slid in so quickly.” You whimper at that, Ran always had a way with words that could get to you even when nothing of sorts was being said, always the teasing one, but now that he’s running his mouth with all these dirty thoughts you can’t help but be even more affected than usual.

“You take my cock like a pro, mh. You like it, don’t you, my pretty little slut? Oh, I just know you’re loving this. Bet your little vibrator couldn’t make you feel this good.”

He’s pressing down on your belly, making the pressure on your navel feel ten times more intense, and all you can focus on is how he’s spreading you open. “It’s so big Ran- Ah,” he thinks your words are gonna get to his head. He has to keep a solid grip on you not to melt at your praise, “Fuck Ran, please, please baby.”

“What is it that you want, use your words.”

“I wanna come, pleasee, I need it so bad,” He loves how polite you are, asking for it with a please. He’d give it to you no matter what, but he appreciates how much you’re trying for him. He knows you can get a little hot-headed, or maybe he just found that one field where you finally succumb and let others take care of you.

Ran reaches over to the forgotten toy and switches it back on before placing it over your neglected and pulsating clit. He never had anything against sex toys, he doesn’t see the harm in using them to bring more pleasure to his partners. He knows you could come from his cock alone, but he needs to feel you gushing around him right about now, before he loses it. He wants to see you dripping to the ground before he fills you up to the brim.

You grasp a handful of his hair and pull it without shame as he fucks you with abandon while rubbing your clit with the vibrating toy. He has to hold your thigh open with one of his big hands because you keep clenching your muscles, and he needs to watch as you come undone.

“Fuuck,” you’re cursing loudly, without a care for your poor neighbors who must be going crazy with the loud noises at such a late hour.

Ran is hitting all the right places, he’s prodding and searching all over your body like he needs to study it, to learn it, and knowing him and how attentive he is, you’re sure that the next time it will take him half of the time to get you there. Or maybe he’ll use his knowledge to drag it out like the teasing little shit he is.

But who said anything about a next time? You’re not even sure as to why the two of you have fallen into bed together, but what you know with certainty is that you’re perception of Ran has shifted the moment he cut his hair.

It might be crazy, ruining a years-long friendship over something so trivial, but it’s like your best friend Ran was the one with the braids, and the one you’re sitting on top of, who’s kissing your neck and whispering sweet praises in your ear, who’s bulkier and more charming and wears purple striped suits, is someone else entirely, but someone that you love all the same.

You’ll always cherish your braided Ran as your friend, but this older version of him will not be able to live inside your mind while battling your feelings as you’ve always done.

The man in the mirror looks at you with lust, but under all of that is the shade of his unchanging lavender hues, the ones who have been staring at you with unnamed affection for years. Maybe it’s time to let go of that uncertainty and fall into him once and for all.

“Ran, I’m gonna come.” He’s so good at reading your body already that he doesn’t stop, he just forgoes the vibrator opting to massage your clit with his thumb, spreading you open with two fingers, while his other hand reaches your boobs. He knows how sensitive they are, he remembers you telling him once, and that’s why he has avoided touching them until now.

His fingers alternate pinching and pulling at the erected nipples, and his hand grasps the entirety of your left beast to pull you down as you try to fight his thrusting and press you onto him.

He noses at your cheek, inviting you to meet him for a kiss. It’s a deep one, with tongues entangling and teeth bumping against each other, he has to rein you in as you’re panting and mumbling.

You don’t have the strength to speak anymore, but Ran knows the exact moment you dangle and trip over the edge because you squeeze him so tight he lets out a string of curses.

He feels you gushing around him, the squelch of wetness becoming even more loud making his cheeks tint red. He’s never been shy when it comes to sex, but the way he’s fucking you now it’s so nasty that he can’t believe how you’re letting him. His sweet girl.

Now that you’ve come on his cock, he slows down his hips to avoid overstimulating you, and he helps you regain your breathing as he kisses your cheek, “You’re doing so good, sweetheart. Mh- Fuck,” Your cunt is squeezing him so hard, coherent thoughts are slowly leaving his mind in favor of you. Nothing else matters now but you.

Ran has to gather all of his remaining strength to slip from you and lay you down on your white sheets. Big eyes are looking up at him as he just hung the moon and the stars, and from his position, he gets to watch your face contort in pleasure as he slides right back inside your wet heat.

“Ran-“ “I know, baby.” Your nails are raking down his chest, red marks showing up on the untattooed side of his body. Your neck is straining as you press the back of your head into the pillow, and he eyes the still unblemished skin before placing his lips on your pulse point, sucking and biting as he goes.

His thrusts are slow but deep, you can feel the heat building up in the pit of your belly all over again. You buck up against him, watching as he lets out moan after moan, getting closer to his end. He sounds so fucking good.

He wants to drag this out, scared of what might come after the both of you come down from your highs, so he pins down the side of your hips with one hand, resting on his hunches as he grasps both of your wrists in the other and raises them over your head.

He’s circling his hips now, rubbing his navel against your clit and relishing in all the pretty noises you’re letting out.

“Pretty girl- can you come fo’ me one more time? You’ve been s’good to me, gimme another. Just one- one more,” Ran’s voice is strangled, he’s trying to hide how much the pulsing of your cunt is affecting him, with very little success. His balls are strained and heavy with cum, he wants you to come around him as paints your walls in white.

You’re moving to break free from his grip but his strength doesn’t let you, so you try begging for him, “Rannn, more! Please, need more, I’m so close- Wanna cum.” You’re whining, sweat running down your body, he looks at how your skin is glistening and wants to lick you up.

Ran has never been able to tell you no, so he moves the hand that was holding you down to your neck, thumb resting over your pulse as he squeezes enough to make you feel it. His hips resume his thrusting with a purpose.

“Cream on my cock, ‘m gonna fill you up, angel,” and you do just that, on command. Ran thinks you ruined every other woman for him, right there and there. It’s like you were fucking made for him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, babygirl.”

He’s right behind you, mouth parting as he groans and repeats your name like a fucking prayer. You’re arching your back, your chests are pressed together and Ran swears he can hear the sound of your heartbeat as he fills you up with cum.

With scrunched-up eyebrows and eyelids fighting to stay open, his purple eyes are taking you in. Your legs are locked behind his back and his hips keep pressing against yours as he slowly drags out your highs, cum dripping down his thighs as he tries to fuck it back into you.

“Fuck, I feel so full,” you manage to let out in surprise after regaining your breath. Ran lets go of you the moment his mind is clearer, and when you feel him slip out from within you, for a moment you’re scared he’s gonna get dressed and leave you laying there.

But Ran just parts your legs before you can close them in shyness, and takes one good look at the mess you’ve both made before diving in. He’s happy he’s gotten to fuck you raw, so now he gets to taste how good you are together.

You’re still so sensitive that when his tongue makes contact with your folds, you tremble. He takes his time in eating it out of you, loud smacks and wet noises can be heard as he does, along with his hums of approval, “Mhh, taste so fucking good, baby. Wanna try?”

You furiously nod at that, dragging him away from your heat before he gets in his head that he needs to make you come again; you don’t think you’d be able to do that now, the overstimulation from those simple touches already taking you to the verge of crying for him.

Ran finally kisses you again, tongue slipping past your lips to make do with his promise, and you moan in appreciation at the taste of you combined. Everything he does is just so fucking hot.

He doesn’t stop once you do, and risks stripping you of your breath completely, but you’re not any better. The last thing you want now is for him to not kiss you anymore, so you grip his infamous hair once again, scratching his scalp with your nails as you’ve always liked doing to get a reaction out of him.

Ran shakes in your hold, he has to pull away or he’s gonna fuck you all over. He can feel himself getting hard against your thigh, so he decides to leave your embrace. He’s aware of the elephant in the room, and his maturity is screaming at him to talk things out before he can fall right back into it.

“Ran… please, don’t leave,” he glances back at you because of the way your voice breaks while muttering that sentence. His heart clenches when he sees your lash line glisten with unshed tears, so his hands find their way to your pretty face to hold it as he stands close to the edge of the bed, bending over you. He kisses the tip of your nose, then takes your mouth in a chaste kiss.

“‘M not going anywhere, my love. Just need to take care of my pretty girl. Give me one minute and I’ll be right back, okay?”

A simple “‘mkay,” leaves your lips in a mumble, and Ran helps remove the sheet from under your spent body to cover you with it before leaving the room.

It takes you a few seconds to elaborate on everything. Aside from what happened in the past hour, you’re now fixating on the names he just called you. My love. My pretty girl.

His? You definitely are, you just didn’t think he knew.

Once he steps back in the room, you notice he’s cleaned himself up and wore his discarded boxers. You take him in while he walks closer, silently appreciating his physique as you’re used to doing. But this time you get to recognize the bruises and red marks littering his body as something you’ve done yourself.

As promised, he’s carrying a wet towel and a bottle of water, and he carefully cleans you up with the former.

After making sure you’re hydrated, he settles by your side under the sheets and drapes his arms around your waist as both of you lay on your respective sides, facing one another.

“I was planning on giving you a gift, after the party was over, y’know? But you just had to run away,” he lets out a big sigh, as if thinking back to your fight makes him drained all over again.

“What is it?” You ask, as curious as always. He loves this side of you. He loves you, actually.

“I gave Rin one of my braids after I cut them off. I was thinking about giving you the other one,” your eyes widen, and the movement of your fingers running over his collarbone stops as you ponder over his words. “I know how much you like them, so did I. Want my two favorite people to keep them safe for me.”

Your heart has never beaten this fast, you think it might start overheating and set your whole body on fire. You bat your eyelashes, willing the tears away as you hook your hands under his face, gently stroking his jaw.

“Thank you,” is the last thing you whisper before closing the distance, repaying him with another short but sweet kiss.

When you separate, you lean your forehead against his and he softly calls your name. In the closeness of your embrace, you meet his lavender haze, “I love you.”

The only thing that follows his sentence is silence. You think you must’ve fallen asleep, this has to be another one of your dreams, one of those sweet ones you used to have when Ran still had his braids and the two of you were younger.

Ran could easily take your stillness as an answer. He could fall victim to his hidden insecurities and make you think he meant it in a platonic way to somewhat try and save what remains of your friendship. But he knows that no matter what your response to his confession might be, he wouldn’t take it back for the world. There’s simply no getting over you.

“Don’t misunderstand,” He knows how much you overthink, that’s why he should’ve said this before. “I’m in love with you, always have been.”

You think your heart must’ve stopped completely now.

“Ran…” “Sh, I know, it’s okay.” He feels the need to comfort you straight away, to let you know that not sharing his feelings is okay. He’s always gonna be there for you, no matter what. “God, Ran, I love you so much.”

The lips that suddenly find his, again and again, are not the only thing taking his breath away. Both of you cannot believe how stupid you are, how you’ve been in love this whole time while thinking the other could never see you that way. His hands are all over your heated skin, caressing down your back as you hold him closer.

“Want you to be mine, baby.”

“‘m yours Ran,” his kisses are spreading everywhere he can reach, he’s getting drunk on you once again. Bitten lips part to let out panting breaths, and you notice soon enough how the newfound confessions are affecting not only yours truly.

Heady eyes and tinted cheeks present themselves to you. You think the marron of his natural blush and the shade of purple staining his pale skin look a lot like the color of the hair that started this all. You love it already, just like you love him.

And Ran lets you happily grip onto it as he takes you again and again, that night. No more wet dreams that leave you running away from him, he’s gonna make sure to fill your nights with something that’ll make you want him even closer, every day, from now on.

Right before falling asleep, as dawn leaves space for daylight behind your closed curtains, you take one last look at your sleepy Ran.

You comb back his messy hair to uncover his pretty face, softly kissing his forehead before falling into a dreamless sleep. There’s no need for dreaming anymore, you have everything you want and need right here in your arms.

Might have to send his hairstylist a bottle of wine as thanks, though.

[kamiversee]

➶-͙˚ ༘✶ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙁*𝘾𝙆 𝙇𝙄𝙎𝙏

✧.* CHAPTER 50 || The Sad Backstory

[ { SYPNOSIS } ] ➤ A tale in which Gojo Satoru blackmails you into seducing a list of people to clear his debt. Sounds easy enough, right?

[ { CHAPTER CONTENT } ] ➤ language, heavy angst, childhood trauma, heavy mentions of violence/abuse, & death mentioning.

[ { A/N } ] ➤ The family dynamic isn’t canon to the anime/manga at all, in case that wasn’t obvious before now. So, the relations depicted here are simply made up for fanfic purposes. (Just wanted to put this disclaimer out there just in case)

[ { WORD COUNT } ] ➤ 4.2k

[ { PAIRINGS } ] ➤ jjk men x f!reader. gojo x f!reader. geto x f!reader. toji x f!reader. choso x f!reader. sukuna x f!reader. nanami x f!reader.

[ [ chapters mlist } ]

——IT WAS SILENT for the first few minutes. Aside from the heat blowing onto the two of you, there was this sense of distance and coldness in the air.

Was that due to the rain? Was it the weather that’d brought such a despairing feel to the two of you? Or, was it truly that distance and coldness were approaching?

You didn’t know what to say just yet and neither did Choso. The thoughts in his brain had slowed and he was organizing how he should go about this while wondering if you’d just come out and explain yourself.

Who should start this tough conversation, he or you? Does it matter? If you don’t start, does that silently say something about you and what's been done? If he doesn’t start, does that make him seem upset with you? The two of you collectively felt the same thing and you both didn’t know what to do.

You weren’t used to getting to this point in a conversation. What you’d grown accustomed to was nothing but confusion on top of vague explanations that further clouded your blurred assumptions of the truth. Gojo had done that to you far too many times for you to know what to do now.

How… What’s the right way to tell Choso everything? Are you going to tell him everything? Is it best that you do? What if he hates you like how you hated Gojo? It wouldn’t be weird after all, you hated Gojo and loved him at the same time— whether or not you’d like to admit it.

What about Gojo-, wait what? What about Gojo? Why are you considering him right now? Are you worried that if you explain the story of the list, it’ll put this negative stigma on Gojo? Who cares?

You do.

You hate that you do but it’s true.

You’ve seen too many sides of Gojo for you not to care about painting him as some big villain when, at the end of the day, even villains have tragic stories that molded them into the person they are now. That doesn’t excuse the man but since you know nothing of the truth about Gojo, you can’t see yourself making him seem like a bad guy anymore.

He has his issues, sure. But, you don’t know why. That’s what makes this all so damn difficult.

How can you tell Choso that the other person you fell in love with is the reason you slept with Sukuna? What would Choso think of that? Would he pity you or would he blame you for not coming to him sooner?

How the hell are you going to-

“Baby,” Choso calls out, ripping you from your thoughts completely. You’d zoned out and didn’t even realize you had tears in your eyes until you blinked them away and turned your head to Choso.

His hand reaches over to you and he places it atop your thigh. You look down and notice your leg has been bobbing up and down excessively. Were you that anxious?

This won’t go badly, right? Why are you panicking? Are you-

“Relax,” Choso whispers, and his thumb swirls over your thigh, trying to soothe you. “Whatever you’re thinking, ignore it.”

You swallow and stare at the man with widened eyes, “But-“

“It’s just you and me right now,” He says, forcing a soft smile on his face, “Get outta’ your head.”

You take a deep breath and sniffle, batting your eyelashes as you try to rid your eyes of the tears. Choso lifts his hand from your thigh and in a way that seems to be second nature to him, he wipes away the tears from your face.

“It’s just me ‘nd you, baby,” He murmurs, “Stop being so nervous, okay?”

“Choso,” You hum, watching the way his gaze softens.

“Yes princess?” He replies. His voice is so gentle now that it’s making you feel guilty for some reason.

You exhale carefully, “What if… W-What if I tell you everything a-and you…” Your eyes water all over again, “What if you hate me-“

He cuts you off with the sound of your first name leaving his lips. His tone is still light but there’s this sternness to it, almost as if he didn’t like what you just said, “There’s no truth you can give me that’d make me hate you.” Choso reassures you, leaning closer just a bit, “I love you. Everything that’s you, I love.”

Your nerves are still unsettled, “E-Even if-“

“The worst thing you could say to be is that you’re in love with Sukuna,” He tells you, scoffing a little.

You shake your head no and your face twists up, “I’m not.”

“Alright then.” Choso shrugs, “I told you, I’ll love you no matter what. In a dark room, you’re my light, no matter how dim that light may be.”

You frown, “Cho, you really did lie, you’re just fine with words.”

“Only at times like this,” He murmurs, “When uh, when it’s you I guess…”

You lift a hand up to your face, pulling his hand away and turning to it. Choso watches you as you shyly kiss his palm and he swallows down the tsunami of loving feelings that threatened to drown him. Such a simple action and yet it made his mind blank for a second.

Then you move away from his hand, “Okay,” You utter, “Where uhm…” Your eyes trail back over to him, “Where should I start?”

You release his hand and he retracts it from you simply. Thinking for a minute, Choso does that thing where he studies your eyes, losing himself in them. Then, he lets out a sigh when he comes up with something.

“What if we uh,” He moves to adjust himself in his seat, “What if I ask you questions and you just answer?” Choso suggests.

You blink, “You… You don’t want me to just tell you everything?”

“No,” He sighs, “There are certain things I don’t think I’d want to know.”

By that, it’s meant that you may give him details that he just doesn’t want in his brain. Choso wants the truth, yes, but only parts of the truth that won’t make him feel sick. Knowing that you had sex with Sukuna is already enough, he doesn’t need more details surrounding that. Hence the offering of asking questions. 

“Okay,” You murmur.

“But,” Choso’s brows knit together and he faces forward in deep thought, “Well, I don’t know if maybe I should just tell you everything first.”

You turn to face forward as well, your eyes dropping down to your lap as you toy with your fingers, “Well, that’s up to you I guess. Is it better for you to tell me everything so that I have it in mind or is it better to know all I’ve done as you tell me everything?”

He swallows, “The first, I think.”

“Did that even make sense?” You breathe out to yourself, worrying that you may have confused him-

“Yeah,” Choso says, “Yeah it did. T-That’s uh, that’s actually better than what I suggested.”

“Is it?” You ask, glancing at him.

He nods, “Mhm, I think if I tell you everything, you may understand the reactions I’ll have to certain answers you give me.”

A sigh slips past you, “Okay, tell me everything then.”

There’s a hint of a smile there on his face but it lingers for only less than a second before that, and every ounce of emotion is drained from his face. Choso’s face goes completely expressionless.

“Where do I even start…” He mutters.

Your voice is soft with him, “Wherever feels most comfortable.”

“Everything about what I’ve experienced with Sukuna is uncomfortable.” He huffs out, “And… I’ve never told anyone about it.”

“Not even…” You bite your lower lip for a second but then you ask anyway, “Not even Yuki?”

“She learned more about Sukuna in that cafe than she has during her relationship with me so, no.” Choso explains, “I don’t like talking about him.”

“I understand.” You say, nodding, “And that’s alright, I’m not going anywhere so, take your time.”

“Alright,” Choso sighs heavily, “Well…”

He starts slow, careful even. It was clear by the way he shifted in his seat and put his words together in a well throughout manner.

Choso began by explaining when he met Sukuna. Because they’re step-siblings, they only share one parent and in this case, it was their father. Choso explained how his dad was a complicated man who found himself having two different women in which he went back and forth between.

Choso met Sukuna when he was five years old, Sukuna being eight at the time. From first impressions, Choso tells you that he thought it was cool to have an older sibling and that he looked up to Sukuna. At five, only Eso was born and not yet Kechizu.

Given that, Choso knew what it was like to play the role of an older brother and he loved it so he thought it’d be amazing to have that experience for himself. Only, Sukuna was the worst thing to ever happen to him. Choso describes in vivid detail how eight-year-old Sukuna looked. For one, the resemblance to the later-born Yuji is uncanny, one would mistake them for twins if they were the same age.

Even so, Sukuna’s appearance was odd. He was only eight and yet he had a bruised lip and a look of pure hate in his eyes. At the time, Choso thought it was cool that Sukuna was hurt but seemed unfazed by the pain and even wanted to be like him.

But, the second five-year-old Choso found himself alone with the older boy and made the mistake of commenting on his bruised lip, praising it in an attempt to connect with him, Sukuna punched him.

One hit was all Choso needed to realize, even at the age of five, growing up with Sukuna wasn’t going to be as pleasant as he thought. And it sure as hell wasn’t, there was nothing pleasant about growing up with Sukuna, especially when Choso’s mother later passed away during the birth of Kechizo.

She was a soft-spoken woman who hardly spoke up for herself in regard to her husband who had an entirely different family so, when she passed, Choso remembers being sad but the emotion didn’t remain long. Anger clouded Choso more than anything at the time and to make matters worse, he and his two younger siblings moved in with his step-family.

It was torture. The process of raising his two younger brothers while being beaten up and ridiculed by an older brother simply made Choso’s life hell. Violence seemed to follow him everywhere. From Sukuna hitting him whenever he felt like it to watching Sukuna’s mother beat up on his father, Choso became very well acquainted with abuse and violence.

Because he knew no better, he never really stood up for himself either. In the slim chance he did, Sukuna would proceed to simply bully him— locking him in a dark room for hours knowing it scared Choso, beating him with items, some sharp, some dull, he doesn’t remember, it all hurt the same.

This hate that burns in Choso’s heart for Sukuna just built up over the years more and more until Yuji was born.

Choso tells you he never knew why but when the kid was born, Sukuna softened up on him for a while. Choso was nine when Yuji was born so for four years before that, he’d been bullied, outcast, and abused by his family, safe from his younger siblings of course.

Maybe it was the way Sukuna softened up after his youngest brother was born that Choso found himself catering to Yuji more than anything. Perhaps it was an act of thanks as Yuji felt like his savior when all he did was be born.

Even so, as much as Choso denies it, Yuji was his favorite. Not at first though, when he initially saw the bright pink-haired baby, he was repulsed, thinking this would be Sukuna in smaller form. Said repulsion remained until the first time Yuji smiled at him.

It was different. Sukuna never smiled so, Choso knew then that Yuji would be nothing like his older identical sibling.

Even so, years passed and Choso continued to endure abuse for his now three younger brothers. Sukuna never laid a hand on any of them since he had Choso to beat up on and for a while, Choso was okay with that.

But of course, that only lasted until their parents passed. A car accident was all it took to strip all five children of their parents. But, by that time, Sukuna was eighteen and immediately put in charge of his four other siblings. It was unjust, of course, as no eighteen-year-old should have to raise four siblings by himself.

Choso tells you how he doesn’t remember how it all worked exactly but, Sukuna managed to convince those of the law to have him become their parental guardian. The man got a well-paying job, god knows what it was too because he had so much money, he made sure that all four boys were able to continue to attend school, etc.

Basically, of all this care and parenting, what Choso couldn’t understand is why Sukuna did that. He didn’t know why Sukuna didn’t simply allow the four to go to some orphanage and part ways, it’s not like he ever showed love to them anyway.

But, Choso eventually learned the answer as Sukuna treated all four of his younger siblings as his servants— forcing them to do whatever he needed, regardless of the wrong behind it or the difficulty. Choso lived with Sukuna as his parental figure in that big house he now throws parties at for years.

And for some time, he really believed Sukuna couldn't get any worse. That was, until at age seventeen Choso witnessed with his own eyes Sukuna knocking a woman out.

“He what?” You scoff.

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. It was already a lot to take in but the most unbelievable part of it was Sukuna’s treatment of women, especially after you think back to how he treated you.

“You heard me,” Choso hums, shrugging, “He knocked her out cold. Hell, I thought she was dead.”

Your lashes are batting in disbelief, “He just… He just punched this random chick?”

“W-Well, no, of course not,” Choso goes to explain further, “From what I remember, that was his girlfriend…”

You scoff, “You’re joking.”

“I’m not, she used to come over all the time before that,” He tells you.

Then, Choso explains the entire day to you.

How that day Sukuna came home late in the afternoon covered in bruises, cuts, and blood. Choso tells you he tried to ask Sukuna what happened but, naturally, all he got was a simple fuck off from his older brother. Of course, Choso didn’t need to be told twice and he did that.

Barely twenty minutes had gone by and the doorbell rang. Choso was in another room but he heard Sukuna go to answer it, followed by the sound of his girlfriend’s voice. Choso tells you it sounded like they were arguing and it was so loud and heated up until the sound of a slap echoed throughout the house.

Choso had gotten up from where he was and went to go see what happened and just as he neared the corner, he heard the sound of a punch, followed by a slight crack, and then a thump. When he rounded the corner, he saw Sukuna standing over his girlfriend who was out cold on the ground with what seemed to be a broken jaw.

You’re told that this was the only time he’d ever seen Sukuna act so oddly because although he couldn’t see his face, Sukuna’s fingers were trembling and he was breathing heavily. Then, Choso thinks he imagined it but he swears he saw something wet fall from Sukuna’s face.

“I think it was blood though,” Choso says, “I can’t imagine that man crying but, he did stand there for a while.”

“So, he knocked his girlfriend out and just stood there?”

“Yeah, for at least five minutes just staring down at her, almost like he was waiting for her to get back up,” Choso proceeds, “And when he did move, it was to look back at me. I was scared he’d take his anger out on me like always but, he didn’t.”

“What did he do?”

“He told me that if there’s anything he wants me to learn from him,” Choso slowly looks at you, “It’s that I should ‘never let a woman destroy what makes me a man’.”

“I see.”

“Either way, Sukuna changed again after that.” He goes on with his story, having grown more comfortable with opening up to you, “He went back to hitting me, threatening to hurt Eso and Kechizu, never Yuji though…”

You listened again, nodding and taking in everything given to you.

Choso explains that this continued until he turned eighteen and Sukuna was twenty-one. Choso didn’t hesitate to move out and in doing so, he was soon able to gain custody of his brothers, just not Yuji.

He hated that he couldn’t take Yuji with him as he moved out but, he thought maybe it’d be okay since Sukuna never touched Yuji. Choso hates thinking back on it now because he wishes he fought harder.

Even so, Sukuna just had his way over those in law, or maybe connections, Choso wasn’t sure but he somehow managed to keep Yuji under his guidance. That’s when Choso requested one thing from Sukuna, that request being that Yuji is actually taken care of and never touched.

Less than a month after Sukuna agreed to this promise, Choso came over to check on his youngest sibling, and lo and behold, the kid had a black eye. Choso had never felt such a murderous intent rile up in him the way it had that day.

He and Sukuna fought later that day, Choso not only lost said fight but also knew that because of it, he’d never be able to win custody over Yuji since Sukuna pulled the self-defense card.

Either way, to wrap things up, Choso tells you that since then he’s been back and forth between school and court trying to win custody over Yuji. He’s still struggling with it but he’s trying his hardest. Choso tells you he’s lucky enough to have his other two brothers, who reside in a distant relative’s place now.

Even with the tiring processes of legal proceedings and court battles, Choso explains he’ll keep trying until he physically can’t anymore because he refuses to allow Sukuna to harm Yuji forever. Plus, that bright smile of Yuji’s is what keeps Choso motivated.

It was like Yuji knew his big dark-haired brother would help him out eventually. And even if he didn’t, Choso points out to you how Yuji talks like he didn’t mind fighting with Sukuna and that he’s managed to sneak a few hits on the guy before.

In the midst of all that, there was that day Choso ran into you.

“Like I said, violence follows me everywhere so it’s kinda funny how we literally ran into each other,” Choso exclaims, his face brightening back up for the first time since this convo started. “I was… I dunno, enamored by you? I mean, I’ve had crushes and girlfriends before but just that small first convo with you was everything to me.”

“I’m glad I was feeling talkative that day,” You joke, “Normally I would’ve picked my stuff up and ran off, especially since you’re hot.”

Choso can’t help the grin that spreads across his face, “Mhm, same here. Those shoes you were wearing really caught my eye though.”

“Yeah and your face tatt’ caught mine,” You explain, smiling to yourself as you both recall it, “It’s kinda sad to find out you only got it to cover a scar. I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

Choso shrugs, “It’s fine now. I uh, I actually feel better now that I’ve said it all out loud.”

“Really?” You ask, tilting your head a bit.

“Mhm.” He hums, “I mean, it wasn’t easy to explain, sorry for stuttering so much by the way, but I’m still glad it’s all out now.”

A wider smile spread across your face and despite the tragic story just heard you’re thankful, “Thank you for opening up to me.”

“Thank you for letting me,” Choso replies.

The two of you look at one another. It’s a long gaze, a connecting gaze, a telling one. Sounds of rain hitting the car are heard but it’s all a blur as you both simply take in one another.

That was until you utter his name, “Choso.”

“Yes?” He whispers, his voice slipping out so small as if the next thing you say could make or break him.

Your hand reaches over and his eyes drop to it for a moment as it goes to his face and you shift in your seat so that both of your hands can cup his cheeks in your palms. Choso blinks, wondering what exactly you are doing until you pull him close and lean in.

When close enough, you stare right into his eyes and carefully speak, “In case you haven’t been told enough,” You start, “And, in case you don’t know, you didn’t deserve any of that.”

He nods, “I know-“

“You deserve love, Choso.” You claim.

He swallows hard, worried about where this is going.

A sigh slips past your lips, “And I’m not a perfect person but…”

Choso’s brows raise, “But…?”

“Uh, I don’t know if I can give that to you.” You warn.

He couldn’t believe what you just said, “What?”

“In the way you deserve.” You quickly clarify, “I can love you Choso b-but I’m no better than-“

“You’re the best thing to ever happen to me.” Choso cuts off, “Whatever love you want to give me I’ll take it happily.”

Now you’re nervous and almost insecure given what you know and have done, “What if it’s not enough?”

“We’ll make it enough.” He argues.

You frown, “Choso…”

“I’m serious. I’ve explained myself to you already, I hope it’s understandable that any love you give me I’ll take and cherish for as long as you’ll let me.”

“But you could find so much better-, so much more.”

“I don’t wanna search anymore,” He hums, “And what better is there for me to find? What’s more than you?” 

Your brows pinch together, “Someone who can love you better than me-“

“That person doesn’t exist.”

“Yes they do-“

“Well, I don’t want them.” Choso cuts off. Nothing you say will change his mind.

You roll your eyes, “You need to raise your standards.”

“Why?” He almost smiles, “My standard is you.”

You scoff, “My point exactly-“

Just as quickly as he nearly smiled, he got serious again, “You make me happy and feel like I’m wanted. What more could I ask for?”

“Certainty.” You tell him.

“We’re certain now, aren’t we?”

“I-I don’t know.”

Choso tilts his head at you, “You said earlier that you thought about changing what we are…”

“I know but then everything came out and-“

“And nothing changed.” He interprets, “My feelings for you didn’t change.”

The way he won’t hear your warnings makes you nervous all over again, “Well let me get the rest of the truth out and see if it does.”

“It won’t.”

Sighing, “You don’t know that.” You say.

“I’m telling you, it won’t.” Choso refutes.

“Choso-“

“Baby you could kill someone and I’d still love you.” He claims dramatically.

You blink repetitively, “I-“

His eyes close for a moment as he takes in what he just said, “I know that sounds crazy but, I’m serious.”

It’s hard to wrap your head around but you try, “Why?”

“Because I can’t get rid of it,” Choso explains vaguely.

“Rid of what?”

“These feelings I hold for you.” The way he clarifies everything after a simple question is so refreshing for you, “They don’t go away. No matter how angry or unsure I am, it’s always there. Even when I left you, I wanted to come back because I still loved you.”

“Choso, this is-“

“I told you I’m good at waiting. If the truth from you is poison then let me intoxicate myself. Let me feel the pain that is loving you if that’s what it is.”

“Y-You really need someone better-“

“Why?” Choso isn’t getting it in the slightest and he does not plan to, “Are you not perfect for me?”

“No, I’m not.” You explain.

“I think you are.” He shrugs.

“You’re delusional.”

“Very.”

Yeah, there’s no getting through to this man. He’s in love with you and hopelessly blinded by it too. Thank god you’re not some manipulative bitch because it’d be disastrous for this man if you were.

Choso then moves to comfort himself in his seat again and you do too. “Anyway,” Choso says, “Now that I’ve explained myself…”

You swallow this thick lump of nerves in your throat.

“Can I ask you the first question I have?” He requests.

“Of course.”

“How many?” Choso questions vaguely.

“How many, what…?”

“Guys,” He glances at you, “How many guys have you slept with since knowing me?”

Yep.

You’re fucked.

It was only the first question and you already didn’t want to answer.

But, he deserves to know right? 

Choso deserves to know…

GOJO SATORU ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮

GETO SUGURU ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮

TOJI FUSHIGURO ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙈𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙪𝙢

KAMO CHOSO ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙎𝙚𝙢𝙞-𝙈𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙪𝙢 / 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮

ZEN'IN NAOYA ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙀𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮

ITADORI SUKUNA ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 ���𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙎𝙚𝙢𝙞-𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮???

NANAMI KENTO ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙

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[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

BORIS JOHNSON RESIGNS AS MP. Thoughts? The people howl for a new update to the Big Dog the Clown saga.

Yes this was not on my personal bingo card; my most recent Big Dog event was that a friend of mine works for air traffic control and recently had to delay BoJo's holiday flight by four hours, and on being told that this particular plane had to be prioritised for a runway slot because it contained an Important Clown promptly pushed it to the bottom of the priority list. Lol. And then all this! What larks.

Okay not a lot of detail yet still but LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT THE EVENTS OF 9TH JUNE, 2023 and you know what? It's been a while. Let's do it properly.

7.15am

Another day dawns in the reign of evil Grand Vizier-turned-PM Rishi Sunak. He's a very boring flavour of evil, tbh. Say what you will about Johnson, but at least there was spectacle and showmanship to his clownshow. Something for the children to boo and hiss. An animate ham in a villain's wig, something to really enjoy as you sit back, relax, and savour a tall, cool glass of schadenfreude.

By contrast Rishi just gets sycophants - who are no less ridiculous, but far more grey and boring - who pretend he's a tech bro because "he understands AI" and they think that will make him a visionary and a man of the future and maybe some sort of Elon Musk figure, because that's obviously a smashing template to be copied in a leader of a country.

This briefing was presumably drafted using ChatGPT.

Anyway, this is what we thought the day would be: another dreary overcast washout, livened up by Downing Street's latest attempt at making Sunak seem like a good idea to stave off the hulking spectre of Labour's inevitable GE win next year. How trite. How tedious. How mediocre.

What a shame it would be if... something were to liven it up.

8.39 am

Fun fact!

When a PM's term ends, as their last act in office, they get to present an Honours List. This means they write a list of all the people they reckon have been Jolly Good Sorts who have done Good Clowning and Supported The Community, and nominate those people for honours. Honours here can be anything from an MBE/OBE etc, to a Damehood/Knighthood, all the way up to entering the Peerage i.e. becoming a Lord. Traditionally, people have been fairly reasonable with these lists. Apart from anything else, the outgoing PM can only write the list - the new Prime Minister has to sign off on it, and it's usually the case, of course, that PMs are deposed by the opposition party.

Why am I mentioning this? Well: Boris, you see, has now presented his list to Sunak to validate. You may be unsurprised to learn that it contains quite a lot of clowns.

Another fun fact!

If a sitting MP is given a Peerage, they cannot continue to be an MP. MPs are elected. Lords are not. So an MP offered a lordship right now would have to stand down if they accepted, triggering a by-election in their seat that... well. That anyone could win, couldn't they? Ordinarily. Except Labour's shadow is growing, isn't it? I don't suppose Sunak would be all that happy about losing, for example, any Tory MPs nominated for a peerage right now.

What fun facts.

At 8.39am, Politics UK reveals an as-yet-unverified report that Nadine Dorries and Alok Sharma have been removed from Boris Johnson's honours list, and will go back to vetting.

(They also reveal that Big Dog's dad has been removed from the list, because nominating your dad for a Peerage is "inappropriate". Sorry, Bigger Dog. Apparently even corrupt ghoul Rishi Sunak has a limit to what open corruption he will allow, which is news to us all, most of all Rishi.)

10.41am

Nadine Dorries decides she will play to her strengths, and appear on TV to do some Public Speaking, which always goes well for her of course.

Nothing, let's remember, has been confirmed yet at all. But she's here to put people's minds at ease! No power-hungry status-chasing pink maniac, she! She is very clear in her aims.

“The last thing I would want to do would be to cause a by-election in my constituency.”

Quite right, Nadine. That would be disastrous.

11.20am

Oh, it’s Tory think tank NRG’s conference in Doncaster today.  Gideon George Osborne, pig-stupid former Grand Vizier and idiot fail-heir to David "pig-fucker" Cameron, gives a speech.  Let's see some quotes!

On the Tories’ choices of chancellors since he personally fell on his sword over Brexit left the role:

“You can see when the partnership doesn’t work. The government's paralysed and the politics is terrible.”

Fair, but also you are a government, George.

On Tories who attack the civil service:

“We’re in charge of our country’s destiny. We should stop blaming others if we don’t get things right." 

... right. But you just... Uh.

On Tory culture warriors:

“It’s really important that the Conservative Party is excited about the country we aspire to lead… and doesn’t get in to ‘we’re against all these groups of people’. We’re the inclusive people.”

Well, points for clearing that absurdly low bar, I guess. Christ, I cannot BELIEVE Suella Braverman is making George fucking Osborne look good-by-comparison.

1pm

Ooh. Nadine's attempts to put minds at ease have inexplicably not worked, can't think why not. She's such a reassuring and charismatic speaker normally.

But the rumour is now FLYING about that Nadine has indeed been dropped from the honours list, and specifically because Sunak wants to avoid a by-election that will lose him more seats at a time when he is desperate for even a mat on the floor as long as it's blue.

Sorry, Nads. Still; this morning you were very clear that the constituency comes first, so I suppose that's okay. The priority now is that she MUST stay in position, so the Tories can keep their numbers steady. It is VITAL she remains an MP. Let's remember her exact words!

“The last thing I would want to do would be to cause a by-election in my constituency.”

3.45pm

Nadine Dorries tweets her resignation.

The last thing she does as an MP is indeed to cause a by-election in her constituency.

3.50pm

Except this is Nadine Dorries we're talking about. She's found some flashy balls to juggle, look, and a boy to pour custard down her trousers.

Not five minutes after dropping the bombshell, she deletes the last tweet announcing her resignation, and tweets a new one.

The new tweet says, “it is now time for another to take the reins” as the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire.

The original tweet said, “it is now time for someone younger to take the reins.”

*

On Talk TV, Dorries says that "something significant did happen to change my mind", but doesn’t elaborate.

3.56pm

The whispers are whispering. The rumours are rumouring. The knives are sharpening.

Nadine's now-former seat is Mid-Bedfordshire, and has been Tory since 1929; a safe seat, which certainly explains how Nadine fucking Dorries managed to hold it for as long as she did.

An MP on the right of the Tory party says that if the Tories lose the Mid Bedfordshire by-election, it’ll open questions about Rishi Sunak's leadership CLOWNFALL 3: REVENGE OF BIG DOG LET'S GOOOOOO

3.57pm

Nadine Dorries is removed from the WhatsApp group.

I would love to know who leaked that image. I really should not have that image. Ah well. Now you do too.

4.12pm

Good tweet alert!

5.08pm

Phew! What a day. Let's see how Rishi's getting on.

He approves the rest of BoJo's honours list. Shall we take a look at our newly-honoured citizens? Shall we see what familiar names crop up?

Honours for staff at centre of Partygate Jack Doyle, Rosie Bate-Williams and Shelly Williams-Walker (and a lot of other terrible and disgraced people who were loyal to Johnson, and some of Carrie Antoinette’s friends).

Damehoods for Andrea Jenkyns and Priti Patel.

Knighthoods for Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conor Burns, and Michael Fabricant.

An OBE for Kelly Jo Dodge, Parliamentary hairdresser.

Also honours for Ben Houchen, currently at the heart of a media storm about dodgy property deals.  His huge regeneration project in Teesside is subject to a government investigation regarding the governance, finance and value for money.

*

(Interesting point – Tory MPs Allister Jack and Nigel Adams were offered peerages, but decided to wait, since accepting now would trigger by-elections.

Why were they offered at all, do you think?)

*

So … this means Michael Fabricant is now Sir Michael Fabricant.  Like, actually.  Genuinely.

Nice one, Rishi. Thank goodness you understand AIs.

5.44pm

The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar - journalist who brought down Big Dog one Partygate reveal at a time - tweets her guide to he honours list:

Martin Reynolds, former PPS, invited 200 officials to drinks in Downing St garden.  He told officials to "bring your own booze", later adding: "We seem to have got away with it".

Shelley Williams-Walker, getting a Damehood, was No 10 head of opps & now runs his office.  At No 10 party the night before Prince Philip's funeral she was dubbed "DJ SWW" for her banger playlist.

Jack Doyle & Rosie Bate-Williams, who get OBEs, were press spox who repeatedly denied the parties happened

Dan Rosenfield, who gets a peerage, quit in mass exodus of senior No 10 staff as anger over Partygate grew.  Former chief of staff faced reports he was among senior Downing Street officials who attended a Christmas quiz when restrictions were in place.

Shaun Bailey, who ran unsuccessfully for London mayor, gets a peerage, and Ben Mallett, a close friend of Carrie Antoinette's who ran Zac Goldsmith’s disastrous mayoral campaign, gets an OBE. Both are in this picture of a lockdown-flouting party at CCHQ:

What a sea of punchable faces.

7.58pm

But we've been so focused on Nadine! She's fucked up her juggling, look, but she's sliding around on the rollerskates, ever so distracting. But here's the thing, Tumblrs, here's the thing:

Among all of this, what's the Chief Clown doing?

The Privilege Committee reveals in their draft report that Boris Johnson misled Parliament, and recommends a sanction of more than 10 days.

Does that sound too little? Are you wishing it were smething more meaningful? Let me help put it in context.

This sanction would be enough to trigger a by-election in Johnson’s seat.

8.02pm

Boris Johnson

QUITS

as an MP

The committee said Johson had “impugned the integrity” of the House of Commons. Fascinating! I didn't know its honour had ever been pugned.

He accuses the inquiry of trying to “drive me out”!!!!

"It is very sad to be leaving parliament - at least for now - but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically, by a committee chaired and managed, by Harriet Harman, with such egregious bias".

Worth noting that the committee has a Conservative majority, mind. But you mustn't let things like facts get in the way of your feelings, BlowJo. You never have as a politician. Nor as a journalist, come to that.

(Also SIDE NOTE – “at least for now”??  What are you planning, Big Dog??  I suppose Nadine is leaving an empty seat...)

8.41pm

Christopher Hope of the Daily Telegraph reports he’s heard rumours of a THIRD Tory MP potentially resigning – and another Johnson loyalist at that. Lol. Trololol. Lmao, even. Perhaps rofl.

11.43pm

And finally, the day is wrapped up with the Guardian revealing their front cover for the following day:

Big Dog is OUT, hot trans bloke is IN.

Not a bad finish.