#and very strong performances by everyone else

[revolutionsingingintherainnn]

No Words *ೃ༄

Summary: max defends his girlfriend and gets into trouble

𖤓 mv x reader ⋆｡°✩

𖤓 fluff + slight humour (iykyk) ⋆｡°✩

masterlist ☾☼

y/n had been a fan of formula one since she was a child. every parental figure in her life had been a fan of the sport, so it was natural and she got into it too. thankfully, it also made her realise very quickly in life that she wanted to work in the field of motorsports. she wasn't sure yet, and she was still working her way to getting into the sport, but it was a sure, clear path for her.

after meeting max, and falling in love with him, everything had changed. her family approved of the two of them, obviously, and so had his, though she hadn't cared much about jos' opinion. y/n made it clear in the beginning that she wanted to work in motorsports and she wanted to earn her place. she refused to let max talk her up or anything, because he was the kind of guy who would do just that for his girlfriend. max agreed, and promised to keep their relationship private for as long as she wanted.

it had taken her a few years. she bounced from indycar to motorgp to nascar and eventually made her way to f1 as a journalist. she had gained far more experience than she would've gotten if she had only focused on formula one, and she was confident in her abilities to finally be formula one.

max and her had stayed strong throughout, even if they kept their relationship private. she had met and become friends with daniel, lando, carlos, and all of max's friends. they often played padel together as well. mix the competitive spirits that max and she possessed, it was always fun.

after a year of being in formula one as a journalist, max and y/n had decided that it was time to stop hiding. they skipped the soft launch part, and jumped directly into the hard launch phase that left a lot of fans shook.

unfortunately, it also got her a lot of hate. y/n went from being one of the best journalists in f1 to one of the most hated ones for the same reasons that she was loved. the fans adored her because she was a woman of colour making a name for herself in such a sport, and that her parents had sacrificed a lot for her and she was making them proud. now, she was hated because her success became max's story and how he put in good words for her and how she was only with him for the money.

it broke her heart, but max was someone who had received a lot of hate before in his life, so he taught her all the ways to ignore the comments and focus on what she did best. it helped a great deal, but it also made her determined to prove that her career had nothing to do with max.

it was getting better, slowly and over time. max and y/n promised to never lose their temper on the comments. a lot of interviewers and fans had also asked the other drivers on the grid to comment on their relationship, asking if it was ethical for a journalist and a driver to date. but the other drivers always responded with the same thing, always saying how they've known max and y/n for a long time, and their relationship was no one else's business.

unfortunately, after a particularly hard race, max finally lost his cool.

"well, max, it's safe to say that this particular race of yours wasn't the best that you've performed. what do you have to say about that?"

"uh, nothing, really. we just didn't have the pace, and with some mistakes on my side, i lost a lot of points. but, i'm sure we can cover it up next race." max replied.

"you don't have to worry about us writing a bad article about you. your girlfriend and we will only be writing praises, don't you worry. the only difference would be that we won't take your hard earned money like she does," the interviewer laughed, nudging y/n.

the cameras were all focused on them, there were fans nearby, and other drivers. everyone was watching. it was live tv. the entire world was watching. the thick crowd of an audience had their gaze fixed on y/n, and all she could do in that moment was hang her head and try not to cry.

that's the moment max lost his cool. y/n was standing right there, and the interviewer had disrespected her on a very public platform.

"actually, my girlfriend will always tell me what i need to hear, whether it's good or bad. y/n y/l/n, a well known journalist, who is also standing right there with you, will write exactly what happened on track, because that's the part that she reports on. she made her own career, so fuck you for dismissing all of it." max bursted, before he stormed off.

the interviewer was spluttering, not sure how to react, but completely outraged as he forced the fia to take actions on max's outburst. y/n slipped away silently, needing to go back to max.

later on, the fia decided to punish max for using "language during the fia sunday press conference". their decision: obligation to accomplish some work of public interest.

later, an interviewer asked him if he regretted his decision of defending his girlfriend and getting a punishment, max responded, “no.”

“so, what do you think of the punishment given to you? do you think it’s fair?”

“no words.”

.⋆｡⋆☂˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆.

i hope you guys enjoyed this! i had a lot of fun writing this, mostly because i had no idea what my brain wanted me to write, but somehow i kept on typing. anyways, this is my prompt list, so y'all can select a number, give me a driver and i will write it as soon as possible! i also have a google form for a taglist if anyone's interested! you can sent in your requests here :)

[juanabaloo]

Why BTVS 5x16 The Body needs to win in that poll over the MASH series finale...

You can argue that the series finale of a very popular show was always gonna have huge viewership because it's the SERIES FINALE. (Point for MASH)

You can argue that MASH was a 2.5 hour movie length episode and comparing it to a 44 minute regular length episode of TV - in the middle of the season no less - isn't fair. (to me it's a point for BTVS, but some may see this as a point for MASH)

But here's what it boils down to...

MASH's series finale touched on each main character and wrapped up the loose ends. Their main point was war sucks and it fucks people up. One character realizes that their memory is incorrect and something truly terrible happened, and while he didn't do it he witnessed it. (This is the part that stays with me after watching this episode, years ago.) A ceasefire is announced but people still die after that. War sucks, but we love these characters and we hope they do OK post war. War sucks, love each other.

You can get something out of the MASH series finale if you randomly watched it, but it's broad. And really, even if you watched every episode, it's pain but it's broad.

The Body? The motherfucking episode The Body??

(Obviously huge SPOILERS ahead)

You could not know ANYTHING about any of these characters and still cry your eyes out at it. That first take? That long take with no cuts where Buffy finds her mom lying on the couch? The way SMG is acting? Like two levels better than her always amazing acting level? The way every little detail of that take is perfection? The crew really needs to take a bow for this one. The fake out of Buffy's fantasy that the paramedics revive her?

The way Buffy tells Giles "We're not supposed to move the body!" What she says. The way she says it. The way she reacts to it, realizing what she said.

It's not broad. It's specific, so specific. The way the different people react. The way everyone feels helpless. The way Buffy is on auto-pilot at some points. The sound, OMG the fucking sound!!

(pauses to sip some water)

The fake out of Dawn hearing the news. Buffy going to tell Dawn. The way EVERYBODY fucking knows it's BAD news. The way Dawn reacts. (OMG the sound again!!) The way the rest of the school witnesses it.

Tara and Willow comforting each other. (OMG I forgot about all of this. Jesus. And OMG it's their first on-screen kiss.) "Strong like an Amazon."

(flips table)

Willow talking about what to wear. Anya's questions. And then. Anya's fucking monologue, with her voice twisting. JFC that fucking monologue.

"... and no one will explain to me why."

(yes of course i'm crying)

The quiet moment where Tara comforts Buffy.

"I know it's different for you … because it's always different, but … if you ever need…"

And then. "... it's always sudden."

The way at the end there is still normal everyday stuff to do, and it sucks but you have to do it, because that's what life is.

Grief will fuck you up. You will feel helpless. Love each other. Just being there is something. Objectively this feels like just as strong a message as the MASH message. But really, I feel like a lot of people know the message from MASH, even without experiencing war. But experiencing loss at the level of The Body? It's so motherfucking personal.

You wanna vote for MASH because it had higher numbers, go ahead.

You wanna vote for MASH because you like the characters more, fine.

But don't tell me that the MASH finale is better than The Body. Don't waste my fucking time.

Vote here

TLDR: The Body went deep and focused and FUCK does it hit.

[rimouskis]

can I be so open and vulnerable with you guys. the card I was given from people at my old office was sincerely so nice and really validating but also I feel like the main impression I left other people with was "she's really nice" WHICH IS GOOD, I DO WANT TO BE KNOWN AS NICE but also part of me is like... should I maybe strive for "innovative" or "creative" or "a go-getter" because being The Nice One just feels a little mealy-mouthed of me y'know?

[askshivanulegacy]

Hey this isn't like me yelling-callout-post-NOW or anything but I was scrolling through replies on the trolley-problem-palestine post and I do want to say that I have to unfortunately be invested in US Politics as a non-US citizen because of the way these elections affect the rest of the world, culturally and politically. The US is one of the richest and most influential countries in the world and the way it decides to interact with the rest of us, where it sends money and military to, and the conversations people in the US are having even about domestic issues end up shaping the conversations that happen outside of it (trans and immigration issues for example). It's horribly unfair and I'm fuming about it always why can y'all veto shit ❤️ but uh yeah, just a minor nitpick with the influence of the elections on everyone else. I could be entirely wrong in my perception of the way things are but that's how it seems to me rn.

That post was a long time ago, so I can't remember specifically what I said about it, but I don't disagree with your ask.

My big beef (and what I typically rant about) with most of the chatter about the US elections and Palestine isn't that the elections influence other countries. They definitely do.

My beef is that all the US tumblrites are making Palestine into the one single issue ever, in the world and in the US, and they're putting on blinders to everything else.

Palestine isn't even CLOSE to being the single issue or even the most major issue. It simply is not.

And in a US election, Americans NEED to take a look at OUR issues. The issues that affect everyday life. Affordable and accessible education, housing, healthcare, LGBTQ+ issues, rights to bodily autonomy, etc., etc.

In a US election, those are the things that are the most important. In a lot of ways, those are the only issues that functionally exist, within the context of the election bubble. Yes, you can and should consider foreign policy as a factor, but it should NEVER be the only factor ... not when there are so many raw and bleeding gaps at home, and clear, obvious, and impending threats to the very lives of the people these sjw tumblrites claim to care about.

I'm saying that election time is the time for Americans to focus on America for just a minute. And when all I hear is Palestine to the exclusion of all else - all rational thought, all sense - with the conclusion being "punish Biden because he happened to be president when Israel was being a little shit," then that's when I say none of that matters.

Because the US election is not about Palestine or any other country. It's about the US.

People desperately need to remember that.

No, I don't want to put America first, and I care a lot about how we interact in the world. But by God, you don't put your own country LAST in the election that is specifically for your country and will determine how you survive ... and IF you survive. You don't throw your country and everyone in it under the bus.

We have the right to be a little selfish for our election. Not Trump-selfish, but selfish enough to have some sense for the things happening here. It's time to set Palestine on the shelf for a while - at least long enough to realize that "punishing Biden" is idiocy.

Also that Biden is not only America's best strategic option, but he ALSO happens to be Palestine's and the rest of the world's.

Honestly, I've seen more of that perspective from non-Americans, and I hugely appreciate it. I just need the actual Americans in the room to realize that 1) they need to take off their fucking blinders, and 2) their stupid little short-sighted Biden-punishment stunt will not only harm themselves but also all the other countries they seem to care about more than their own.

And I want them to start giving a fuck about the country they currently live in.

[pearl-nouveau]

A Woman's Purpose - Cregan Stark x Reader [chapter one]

summary: Your mother, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, has always prepared you to marry and you have always resisted, terrified that you will only ever be seen as a wife. But your heart is torn when love catches you by surprise.

contains: mentions of self-harm, aged-up characters (Jace is ~19 idk)

a/n: wow i have not posted on this blog in YEARS but i lurk in tumblr reader insert oneshots like it's my part-time job, and i wrote this on AO3 so i decided to post here and hopefully get some love. i really love posting my writing even if it is not perfect, it's just a passion. let me know if i should post the second chapter and my asks are always open! xx - pearl🦪

Beauty is power, my mother used to tell me, stroking my silver hair as if it were made of golden thread. She loved my hair. Use your beauty to set yourself free. I had no idea if she meant for her words to bring some kind of comfort to me - they did not. 

Sometimes, I hated her for bringing me into the world altogether. While Jace and Luke envied my resemblance to our mother, I detested sharing her light hair and lilac eyes. It seemed to me a symbol of my imprisonment - it became clear to me, hearing all this talk of my beauty and nothing else, that I was never to be loved or seen for anything else.

In my youth, the abstract concept of my fertility and status made me a formidable form of currency within the royal family. Jacaerys, older by one year, made his way as heir by training in combat and dragonriding and studying the history of Westeros and Old Valeria - I, however, was confined to studying the family trees of the realm's powerful houses, to perform the perfect Velaryon princess and eventually be bred like a cow.

I hated my life. 

Many attempts were made to rebel against my predetermined future. At ten and two I sliced all the hair from my head, leaving a shaggy, uneven mess of shimmering half-bald patches that took years to grow back. I had never seen my mother so angry until at ten and four I began slicing patterns into my arms and legs to scar the perfect pale skin everyone complimented me on. Soon she required a chaperone with me at all times, which only made me more furious, and I began picking fights with my cuntish uncles and coming back from dragon rides inexplicably soaking or covered in soot. I waited for my mother to attempt to put together the puzzle I had laid out in front of her; to figure me out and decide that her daughter - the strong-willed, intelligent, adventurous one - matters more than the empty shell of a married woman that I will surely become. 

At the very least, my mother allowed me the power to turn away whomever I wished. It seemed she hoped I would find someone who struck my fancy. But as time passed and my antics worsened, her grip on me tightened, and I began to fear the wost: an impending betrothal. 

She frequently asked me to rack my brain and think of any previous men she had introduced me to who I may want to explore further. But I was stubborn. I maintained that no one had caught my eye, and I insisted that I would never marry. Whenever I said such things, my mother would frown at me in a way that hurt my heart. She was my greatest antagonist, but I loved her, and I knew that it saddened her to put me through such pain. 

Even if there was one man who never left an impression on me, whose memory kept me awake in the darkness of night, I would never tell my mother. It was too humiliating after so many years of fighting marriage to be seduced by love.

Every so often I allowed myself to think about him before I went to sleep, to be swept up in the beautiful dream of someone's arms around me. I could imagine him saying to me, I choose you. That was what I always dreamt of hearing. I choose you, as you are. Just you. 

Jacaerys tried to sympathize with me but he would never truly understand. He did allow me to partake in his own pastimes to grant me a change of scenery from the walls of King's Landing. 

"It infuriates me that she herself is allowed to break barriers as heir to the Iron Throne and I must remain shackled to tradition," I complained to Jace as we sparred in a remote corner of the keep. "She gets to be immortalized as the first of her name while subjecting me to a loveless marriage."

"She was in an arranged marriage with our father." Jace pointed out, sending a particularly hard offensive move my way. I easily thwarted it. 

"Well..." I trailed off. There was nothing to say, not in words, about our parents, or our parentage. It was an unspoken issue, even between Jacaerys and I who were nearly as close as twins. We supposed it would always be shrouded in mystery. We were prepared to always wonder. It seemed unthinkable to ask our mother any questions, nor our father, nor... 

Strong boys, they said. 

Perhaps Jace and I wouldn't speak of it because our difference in hair color had always been a sore subject. I was broken out of my thoughts by another offensive move, this one catching me by surprise. I stumbled back but recovered, moving around the side of my brother as he laughed at me in the way only an older brother would. 

"I'll get you back for that," I snapped at him, but grinned. He smiled back, shrugging cockily. Bring it on, his eyes told me. 

We sparred a bit more until our breaths were heavy in our throats and our swings became more jests than challenges. Eventually, he tossed his sword on the ground and fell upon a sack of grain. I sat next to him and for a moment we were not prince nor princess. We were just two siblings. I sighed, knowing it wouldn't last for long. 

Jace seemed to decide to bank on the moment as well because he looked to me and spoke. "Was there really never anyone who caught your eye? Not in all those years of meeting suitors?" He thought for a moment. "There were some good ones."

"Some good ones?" I scoffed. "Who, pray tell?" 

After a few moments of consideration, he began to chuckle and I rolled my eyes. The chuckle became a cackle and at this joke, I did not laugh along. We both knew that most of the options I had been presented with were vapid, shortsighted, insecure children, as were most men.

I was about to hit him to shut him up when he stopped suddenly and his face brightened with realization. 

"I know a good one," Jace said, "Cregan Stark."

A flush crossed my face at the name.

Usually, I only allowed that name to cross my mind in the darkness of night, but Jace had disrupted that routine. "What about him?" I tried to ask innocently. This time my brother was the one to roll his eyes at me. 

"Don't play the fool, sister," he teased, "when he came to visit those years ago everyone could see that you both took a liking to each other. Even you couldn't fight him." He nudged me playfully with his elbow. "He fights like a Northerner, and he wanted to fight for you."

"Oh, hush."

"Why did you ever turn him away anyways?"

His question silenced me. It was a painful memory. Cregan had come to treat with my grandsire and pledge his support as Warden of the North, and in those two moons he stayed at King's Landing we came to know each other well. Perhaps the reason why I had opened myself to getting to know him was because he had not come for the intention of courting me. In fact, I found him wonderfully ignorant about the social politics of the royal family, and he did not know of my existence upon his arrival. 

The day we met, I was in the Godswood with a book and a porcelain cup of candied almonds. A midnight blue veil covered my thigh-length silver hair. I hated my hair, and I hated that my mother would not let me cut it. I refused to have it braided and let it fall unbrushed and wild down my back.

He had come into the courtyard without noticing me tangled in the roots of the tree. He came closer to examine the trunk thoughtfully, allowing me a glimpse of his face through the branches. I had heard of his arrival and listened from behind closed doors at their meeting, intrigued by his deep voice and foreign accent. I listened intently as he spoke a prayer in a hushed tone. All of a sudden, his gaze shifted to meet mine between the leaves as if he had known I was there the whole time. 

"Apologies, my lady," he bowed his head slightly. "I did not know the Godswood was occupied."

"There is room enough for two," I said shyly. I was not accustomed to being pleasant towards men. I was known for being a beautiful devil, a menace with a sour tongue. It made me self-conscious to think that I was changing my behavior for a man. But I was merely matching his politeness; and he had no reason to falsify his kindness, since he had no idea who I was. 

Luckily for me, I had no reason to overthink my words because he went silent for a long while, lost in a wordless prayer. After a quarter of an hour had passed, he came closer to me, and gestured to the root beside me. 

"Do you mind if I sit?" He had asked.

I shook my head and he moved his thick cloak to drop down beside me. 

"Pardon my intrusion, my lady, I find myself feeling lonely when I come to the South. The Godswood calms me."

"I understand, Lord Stark."

His eyebrow quirked. "You know who I am?"

"I'm afraid I do." I smiled. I loved having the upper hand. I decided I wouldn't tell him who I was. 

"What is your role here in the castle, my lady?" 

"To please lords like you." I jested. Cregan leaned back slightly, taken aback. I quickly realized the suggestive wording of my joke. "Not like that," I quickly corrected, "I was just... I mean-"

"I know who you are, princess." He chuckled at me. I was glad to be rescued from the embarrassment of my failed joke. I gazed at him questioningly. He leaned forward and gently removed the veil from my head. "Unfortunately your appearance does not allow you anonymity." 

I blushed. "What have you heard about me?" 

"Nothing, I admit, until your grandsire told me about you today. He told me of your age, not many years my junior, and I supposed-"

"- That I might make a fine breeder for you?" I snapped. There went the illusion of politeness. This was where they usually ran, when I became a beast instead of a beauty. A piece of work not worth the effort. 

Instead, Cregan merely chuckled. "Actually, I sought a companion. A friend. Being here is lonely for me, and I thought you might show me what life in King's Landing is like. If I am to swear fealty to your family, I seek to know your customs. Your mother has told me that you are the most well-acquainted with the keep of her children." 

You smiled. Had your mother truly said that? It was true, since you spent so much time darting around the palace avoiding her orders. 

"Would you mind giving me a tour?" He asked. His tone was so gentle, so uncomplicated. It was like no man had ever spoken to me before. With respect, as if he were speaking to a friend. It was refreshing.

For the next few weeks, Cregan and I formed a friendship based on mutual respect. He informed me of Northern politics and asked for my opinions on complicated political matters through a Southern perspective. I introduced him to my dragon, Vermithor. Afternoons were spent in the Godswood picnicking for the purpose of introducing him to local cuisine, and evenings were spent in the library discussing literature. The relationship felt as easy as breathing to me, and I could tell he felt the same. After close to two moons, it had begun to frighten me how much I longed for his presence when we separated at the end of the day. 

There had always been a tangible tension between us that toed the line between friendship and romance. Lingering gazes, intentional touches, and meaningful words kept me up at night. He opened up to me about the unique grief of losing his wife in childbirth and having to leave his infant son at home so soon afterward. I showed him the scars littered across my body, and explained to him how I hated my beauty.

He had taken my head in his hands and looked through my soul with those gray eyes. 

"Your beauty... It is just a fraction of you. What is truly incredible is your kind heart, your wit, your intelligence, your soul..."

I had been unable in that moment to keep myself from kissing him, so I let my mind empty and I surged forward to connect our lips. He responded with fervor, bringing me close, the pads of his thumbs barely grazing the peach fuzz on my cheek. I could not even bring myself to feel ashamed about grabbing his tunic underneath his cloak, my fingers unknowing but desperate. He had taken my hands and pulled back, only to kiss my nose, then brow, then the corners of each eyes, and then my knuckles. 

Suddenly I came too. I saw in front of me the path that had been laid for me - a wife, be it to a good man or a bad one. I was still determined not to let that happen. 

As I often did, I had fled. I had avoided him until he went back to Winterfell. Two moons later, a raven came from him. I didn't dare open it, too afraid to face my actions. Even if I felt that I knew what the contents were, Cregan was not like other men I knew - thus I had always wondered what the letter said. I wondered if it was true that he truly cared for me and saw who I was inside. The thought made me realize that even I myself did not know what path may be laid in front of me. My feelings confused me, and I decided to shut the Lord of Winterfell out of my mind forever.

Except on some dark nights. 

And except for now, when Jacaerys prods my arm and awaits the answer to his question. I realized I must have been silent for a long time as his voice began to register in my head. 

"Lost in thought?" 

"Ha-ha," I shoved him back. "Sort of." 

Jace's face became serious. "I was only jesting, but perhaps I shouldn't have brought it up. I know you truly did care for him."

"How could you tell?" I asked, genuine curiosity lacing my tone. It was past the point where it was worth feeling awkward about the truth of my feelings. I was only human, after all. 

"He was kind to everybody, but especially to you." Jace pursed his lips in thought. "Although at the same time, he does not treat you like you're soft. It was like he loved hearing you speak. Like your word was God."

I smiled. 

Jace nudged me. "And... he looked at you like you hung the damn sun in the sky."

My heart skipped a beat hearing that. I knew it was true, but I was used to people looking at me in awe. As if I were a ball of light floating in front of them, ethereal, untouchable. Cregan was not afraid to see through me, to touch me. He made me feel held.

Emotion overcame me in that moment. I quickly scrambled up from the bag of grain Jace and I were lounging on, grasping my sword and tossing my hair over my shoulder. 

"Well, it's too late now," I quickly said, "He's in Winterfell and it does not matter if he cares for me or not, I do not want the life of a housewife."

Jace stood. "Who says that getting married means you'll become a housewife? You'll be a lady, you could do whatever you please." 

"It isn't just the marriage, it's the principle of it!" I cried, moving away from him towards the main training yard. "As soon as I take those vows, it means my purpose is only to bear children." As we entered the larger courtyard and grew closer to other people, he grasped my arm and spoke to me in a lowered voice. 

"I know you think I do not understand, but I am soon to be betrothed as well, likely to someone I will never love."

"Well, at the end of the line, you have a throne." I spit at him, spinning on my heel and leaving him staring helplessly after me. 

[surftrips]

HEADCANONS — FLIRTY ACADEMIC RIVALS w/ CORIOLANUS SNOW

you're not sure when the rivalry started, but for as long as you could remember, you were always sat next to coriolanus snow in class, whether by assignment or choice. neither of you actually hated the other, it was more a friendly competition born out of your strong feelings for each other that neither of you trusted yourselves with, so you resorted to teasing and playful mockery.

both of you care very much about your academics, snow on his way to win the plinth prize, and you, eager to impress your parents and secure a job in the capitol. when you put two highly ambitious and motivated students next to each other, it was no wonder you were always top of your classes. some people called you the power couple, but you denied the latter half of that term.

"where's your little boyfriend?" sejanus had asked one day. "how many times do i have to tell you, he's not my boyfriend!" you responded. "tell me then, why haven't either of you dated anyone?"

the easy answer to that question, and the one you always resorted to was that you simply had no time for dating right now. never mind the fact that you've been using that excuse for your whole life.

corio, on the other hand, never denied the dating rumors. not because there was any truth to them, but more so to annoy you. "corio, did you tell professor crane we were going to formal together?" "yes, what's wrong?" he feigned innocence. "what's wrong? you told him we were going together! as in boyfriend girlfriend!" "i still don't see the issue."

most days, he drove you crazy. and he probably wasn't even aware of his affect on you. shoulders touching when reading a textbook together, quickly pulling away his hand when your fingers went to turn the page at the same time, pretending not to be flustered on the rare occasion he gave you a compliment.

other times, it was nice to have him sat by your side. for example, the nights when you stayed up late studying often led to you dozing off in class, leaning on corio's shoulder until he gently nudged you off, "hey, sleepyhead. what time did you go to sleep?" he would tease.

the best classes were the ones you took with a professor that you both mutually hated— you could hardly control your laughter when he whispered a remark in your ear, or the shivers that he sent down your spine from being in such close proximity to you.

one time, he found you hiding in a corner of the library after receiving a particularly bad grade on a test. you had abruptly left him in the hallway, claiming that you had an "important phone call" to take, but of course, he knew you well enough to know that something was wrong and you needed space. thirty minutes later, he was pulling you off the floor and taking you out to ice cream.

"my girl," he said, wiping off your tear-stained cheeks. "what can i do to make you feel better?" you had wanted to kiss him right then and there, to resolve the tension between you two once and for all, but you didn't want your first kiss to be under these circumstances.

life in the capitol was not as glamorous as everyone else made it out to be. you faced an immense pressure to perform well, uphold the reputation of your family, and be successful, and most of the time you felt alone and exhausted. but coriolanus was always there for you, when things were good, and especially when things got bad.

[emberuby]

heartthrobs (i don't belong to anyone else) | s.jy + p.sh

pairing: manager! jake x actress! reader x actor! sunghoon

summary: jake seems to lose his patience as you keep being shipped with your series costar, park sunghoon. an argument between the two leads to a night to prove who you truly belong to.

warnings: smut, established relationship (with jake), jealousy, possessiveness, threesome, unprotected sex, face sitting, oral (both f and m rec), vaginal sex, rough sex, degradation, creampie, dom! jake, dom/kind of switch! sunghoon, sub! reader, some jakehoon action.

note: this is sort of a spin-off of the queen's guard? but not really bc u don't need to read it to understand this, it's more of a mention. also, this is my first threesome/poly fic ahhh hope it's okay. like always, feedback is greatly encouraged and if you have any questions let me know. ^^

wc: 5.2k

“So what was it like filming all those sex scenes?” the interviewer asked, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. 

The crowd erupted in excited noises, now that the panel was discussing what they had all come to hear. The panel was a long white table, and sitting on it were the rising stars of the hit historical romance series, ‘The Queen’s Guard’. 

Lately, everyone in the world seemed to be obsessed with Park Sunghoon and you. You two played the main characters of the show, and your chemistry was so strong that people began mixing reality with fiction, thinking you two worked amazingly as a real-life couple when in actuality, you were already in a long-term relationship. 

You laughed awkwardly, looking over at Sunghoon for help in replying, but unlike you, Sunghoon always seemed to like these kinds of questions. He was definitely guilty of playing into your PR performances where you two pretended to be utterly enamoured with each other. 

You raised your microphone to your lips, “Well actually, filming those scenes is much less glamorous than they seem on screen. It’s quite mechanical; it gets sweaty and hot and very awkward. Sorry to burst your bubble everyone, but it’s not really the environment to get turned on in.” A couple of people laughed at your answer, including the interviewer.

“Speak for yourself. I think it’s quite sexy filming with you,” Sunghoon smirked at you. This caused screeches and cheers to come from the room. You rolled your eyes at him, as though to tell him to tone it down on the flirting. Sunghoon always flirted with you so obviously it was almost too much to handle. You looked over at the edge of the stage to see your boyfriend sitting there, face stoic and still, not showing any signs of emotion. 

You knew it bothered Jake how much people shipped you with your co-star, even if he tried not to show it. You tried to not care too much, given it was a part of your job, but you always felt a bit guilty when you had to act this way for the camera. 

The team behind the current press tour toldyou and Sunghoon to play along into the bit and act as though the time you spent together while filming has made you two fall in love. It was indeed a great marketing strategy, but Jake was possessive and liked for people to know you were his. 

Surely he was not happy with the new wave of people convinced that your real boyfriend was Park Sunghoon.

You spoke up again, “Hoon is only joking. Honestly, I think we both have gotten used to filming sex scenes, but especially in the beginning, it was very awkward. Do you guys recall the scene in season one? It was in my bed chambers with—”

You didn’t even have to finish your sentence before the crowd erupted in excitement, knowing exactly what you were going on about. You were of course talking about the scene in the previous season where your character loses her virginity to Sunghoon’s. It was incredibly intimate and a fan-favourite scene due to the chemistry and sexuality. It was a great payoff to a rather slow and burning build-up. 

“If I may add something,” Sunghoon spoke into his mic, making everyone go still. “That was actually the second scene we ever filmed together.”

“No kidding!” the interviewer gasped into her mic, “So you guys stepped foot on set and immediately just started taking your clothes off?” 

Sunghoon threw his head back to laugh, and you covered your face with your palm to hide your flustered expression. God, this was embarrassing. 

“It was a very awkward scene to film,” you said. “You can imagine, we weren’t very familiar with the set and the story yet, but I believe the director chose to film it so early on to see how our chemistry worked together. I suppose we did well because we weren’t replaced by other actors.” 

Sunghoon chuckled at your remark. “We make a great pair, her and I,” he said cheekily, and you knew for sure that clip would run wild on social media after people got their hands on it. Sunghoon was always a PR machine. 

You looked back again at your boyfriend. Jake was seething as he sat restlessly on the backstage of the panel. There you were, looking beautiful as ever, answering the ever-so-annoying questions and playing pretend lovers with Sunghoon.

Jake never disliked the fact that you were an actor. His jealousy never stemmed from the fact that you had to kiss and pretend to have sex with your co-stars, he knew that was your job and he respected it. 

‘The Queen’s Guard’ was actually quite a guilty pleasure for him. He would sometimes turn on an episode when you weren’t around, especially because of your disdain for watching projects you were featured in. 

He quite liked the show. How could he say he didn’t enjoy watching you getting railed in a historical setting? You always looked so sexy in your tight corsets that made your breasts press up against your chest and your gilded historical gowns. Not to mention all the close-up shots of your ass and thighs when you would ride Sunghoon’s character that always managed to give him a hard-on. 

He supposed the story was also interesting.

Ever since your new rise to fame and the success of the show, he knew that a whole new wave of people would be obsessing over you. It was a given when you looked that beautiful and sexy, but at the end of the day, he was the one you came home to, and he was the one who made you see stars while bouncing on his cock every night.

The problem for Jake was the parading of your and Sunghoon’s potential relationship. Everyone online seemed to love you two together and wanted you to get together, and he hated that. 

Come on, people. It literally says right there on your Wikipedia page, ‘Partner: Sim Jaeyun’ since four years ago. Not Park Sunghoon, nor anyone else. How much more clear could it be?

For fuck’s sake, he’s Sunghoon's manager and he was the reason he even got the role in the series, and this is how he repays him? By making fuck eyes at his girlfriend and flirting with her on camera for the whole world to see? 

He knew that Sunghoon had developed an attraction to you during the filming of the series, that was obvious enough. You may have not realised it because of how loyal and devoted you were to Jake, but this was more than a PR performance for Sunghoon. The bastard so obviously wanted to fuck you and it made him look ridiculous. 

“Just before we wrap up this panel,” the interview chimed, “could you two give us some insight into the third season? I heard some talk around the town that filming will begin soon.”

“Yes, that’s correct. We will be off to Scotland in a few weeks to shoot the upcoming season. We really can’t reveal much, but what is it that you would like to know?” Sunghoon spoke up, raising his eyebrows in curiosity.

You shook your head, knowing that Sunghoon just opened a can of worms with that question. 

The interviewer smiled mischievously as she said, “On a scale of one to ten, how steamy is this next season about to be?” People in the room began cheering in anticipation.

“Thirteen,” Sunghoon said confidently. There were whistles and exclaims heard throughout the room, and it truly felt like the crowd erupted in excitement. You giggled at all their reactions, but he wasn’t even remotely wrong; the next few seasons were about to be intense. “I swear I’m not exaggerating. I got the chance to read the script recently and had to change my pants like three times.”

You covered your face with your palms at his crude comment, shocked by its implications. No wonder people loved Sunghoon so much, he really played into the bit. 

The interview ended shortly thereafter, and before you could stand up to get off your seat, Sunghoon came up to you and held out his hand for you to take. You blushed, knowing that everyone in the room was watching your interaction. You placed your hand into his palm and you two walked off together side by side. 

As you walked off the stage, you didn’t fail to notice the way Jake’s jaw was clenched and he was throwing daggers at your and Sunghoon’s intertwined hands. You swiftly let go of Sunghoon’s hand and began walking up to your boyfriend. 

God, he looked so hot when he was jealous. You tried to lean up to give him a peck on his cheeks, but he grabbed you by the waist and pressed his lips onto yours. You were startled as you felt his tongue plunge into your cavern, and you were mortified as you accidentally let a whimper slip past your tongue.

The backstage was mostly empty except for Sunghoon and a few staff walking around minding their business, but you weren’t used to Jake doing such public displays of affection. He slipped his hand down to your skirt, taking a handful of your ass, and before your mind could trail off and forget where you were, you pushed Jake off you. Your breathing was shaky as you tried to compose yourself, your panties already getting wet from a mere kiss. 

Perhaps you got excited at the thought of getting so intimate with Jake in front of others, especially Sunghoon. You shook your head to snap out of your thoughts. You shouldn’t have been thinking of other men that way. 

“Might as well piss on her to claim your territory,” Sunghoon remarked with a controlled smirk. God, Jake would do anything to slap that smile off his face. 

“Well, she is my territory, so maybe you two need to cut back on the camera flirting,” Jake said with a frustrated tone. One of his arms was still wrapped around your waist, wanting to clearly show Sunghoon who you really belonged to.

“That’s quite dramatic of you,” Sunghoon said, taking a step closer to you. “You know what this industry is like, Jake. It’s all for show.” 

“I think I can tell when a guy is trying to fuck my girlfriend,” Jake said, letting out a sigh of frustration. 

“Jake,” you said warningly, placing a hand on his chest. “You need to relax. Like Sunghoon said, this is just PR. He doesn’t seem me that way—”

“No, I do want to fuck her,” Sunghoon said with a knowing grin. You could feel Jake’s hand tighten around your waist and you snapped your head at Sunghoon in shock. That was forward of him. “But just ‘cause I want to doesn’t mean I’ll act on it, so you can calm yourself.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Park. I gave you this job, your career is in my hands,” Jake sneered. 

“Are you saying that if I keep flirting with your girlfriend, you’ll have me blacklisted?” Sunghoon asked, not seeming threatened by him in the slightest. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying this petty brawl. 

Jake didn’t say anything. Instead, his focus was now on you. You looked up at him with an annoyed expression, but he couldn’t believe that you were stupid enough to not realise that your own coworker was attracted to you. 

“Practically everyone who watches the show wants to fuck Y/N, it’s not like I’m the only one. And yet you only get bothered about me, I wonder why that is,” Sunghoon pretended to ponder. “Is it because you view me as a threat?”

“In your dreams,” Jake sneered.

“I definitely have had dreams about the three of us, in case you’re asking.” 

You gasped. Surely you three shouldn’t be having this conversation so out in the open like this. 

Jake walked up closer to Sunghoon. The look in Jake’s eyes was a mix of anger but also curiosity. Although he was possessive to a fault, something about the thought of making Sunghoon watch while he fucked you open was enticing. 

Maybe he would even let Sunghoon fuck you a bit, but only to prove to you how much superior Jake was at pleasuring you. If he couldn’t make the world understand that you were his, perhaps he could make Sunghoon understand how obsessed you were with Jake.

He could already imagine it in his head, the astonished look on Sunghoon’s face as you cried and withered as Jake’s cock plummeted inside you, not being able to handle his sheer size and the meticulous way in which he fucked into you. 

“You think you can fuck her better than me?” Jake chuckled, amused at the thought.

Sunghoon’s eyes shined, knowing where this conversation was heading. “I think she’d enjoy herself plenty.”

“Deal. I’ll make you watch as I fuck her open in front of you, and then you’ll understand why she’ll always choose me.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” Sunghoon spat. 

Jake rolled his eyes, holding himself back from hitting the egotistic man in front of him. He turned around to look at you questioningly. “What do you think princess?” he asked. 

Your eyes drifted back between the two men towering over you. You’ve always loved Jake so much that it was hard to imagine another man in your life, let alone your bedroom. That being said, now that Jake and Sunghoon were staring at you like this as if you were prey and they were your predators, you felt a wetness begin to form in between your legs at the anticipation. “I-I,” you stuttered, “I think…”

“Say the word, Y/N, and I’ll leave you two alone,” Sunghoon said reassuringly. As much as he wanted to get into bed with his hot manager and even hotter co-star, he didn’t consider himself a home wrecker. 

Jake cupped your chin. “I can tell by the look on your face you want it,” he said. He was all too familiar with your body language and knew by the glint in your eyes that you were interested in this, even if you weren’t before. 

You cleared your throat, trying to gain back your confidence so as to not look too nervous about this whole arrangement. You looked up to Sunghoon, your faces now a mere inches away from each other and said, “Let’s do it. See you tonight in our hotel room.” 

Jake and you were sitting in the back of your Uber, driving back to your hotel room from the bar. He didn’t have much to drink, but the flush on his cheeks gave away how tipsy he was. You couldn’t help but admire how beautiful he looked.

While you were busy staring, Jake’s head was leaning down towards his phone as he was scrolling through his social media. He knew he was being stupid and dramatic, but he couldn’t help but look up your and Sunghoon’s names on Twitter, only to find some of the most annoying posts he could imagine. 

After the show’s fanbase got their hands on the clips of the panel, they ran wild with it.

‘The way Sunghoon looks at her 🥹’ 

‘I can’t wait for Sunghoon and Y/N to recreate the tower scene in S3. It’s going to be so fucking hot 😩’

‘I just know that Y/N’s man is losing it rn’

That last tweet couldn’t be more right. Jake’s mind was reeling as he read the tweets and watched the edits, all shipping you and Sunghoon together. It was like he was falling down a rabbit hole of misery. Before he could click on one more edit of you and Sunghoon together, he felt his phone being snatched away from his grasp.

“You’re being ridiculous, Jake,” you said sternly, although unable to hide a small smile from how adorable your boyfriend was. 

“They know that you have a boyfriend, isn’t that crazy? Maybe if they thought you were single I’d get it, but come on,” he groaned, shoving his face into his palms. 

You began rubbing his back, “I don’t belong to anyone else.”

He looked over at you with loving eyes. “I know, princess. I just wish everyone knew that.”

You scooted closer to him and placed a soft kiss on his lips. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. You don’t need to prove anything because I fucking love you.”

Jake clicked his tongue and grabbed you by the wrist, bringing your palm down to his crotch. You could feel how hard he got already. “Does it seem like I don’t want to do this? It honestly really turns me on to think of showing that asshole how well you take my cock.”

“Oh yeah?” you smirked. “What if he ends up fucking me better than you?” 

“Tread lightly, Y/N. No man on this earth can make you as wet as me. Nobody will ever make you scream, clench or cum like I can. I’ve ruined your body for anyone else,” he said through gritted teeth. 

You clenched your thighs together to relieve your arousal, and Jake smirked at the sight. 

You began trailing your hands towards his zipper, trying to free him of his trousers, until he swiftly stopped you. “Jake, I want your cock in my mouth,” you whined, giving him the doe eyes that usually worked in getting him to do anything you wanted.

Unfortunately, the eyes didn’t seem to work on him as he shook his head and said, “As much as I want to, princess, save it for later. We’re almost there.” 

When you two finally arrived back at your hotel, it was like you were both shaking in anticipation. You kept wondering what it would be like to be fucked by Jake while another man watched, and Jake was excited at the prospect of showing Sunghoon exactly why you were his.

After you swiped the key card and entered your room, you almost screamed as you saw a figure standing in front of the kitchen table.

“Sunghoon?!” you exclaimed, your mouth gaping open. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Sunghoon had a mug of tea in his hands and looked at you confused. “You told me to come here,” he said matter-of-factly. “Did you already forget?”

“Let me rephrase: how did you get in here? Did you ask the front office? God, that’s so creepy—”

“I gave him an extra key card,” Jake said from behind you. “It was supposed to be for emergencies, so yeah this is pretty fucking creepy.”

“This is an emergency. My balls have been blue all day while I waited for this, so come on, get going,” he said, waving his hands towards the bed. 

You were left astonished, while Jake just grabbed you by the waist and pulled you through the room. He sat you down on the lush mattress, and there you were, looking up towards Jake and Sunghoon while they eyed you like you were their last meal. 

God, tonight would be the death of you. 

“Your dress is beautiful,” Sunghoon said, his eyes glinting. 

You smiled at him warmly, “Thank you—”

“Take it off,” he demanded. The dominating tone sent blood rushing to your cunt, and your mouth was left agape as you continued staring at him. 

He cupped you by the chin, tipping your face upwards. His voice was cold and annoyed when he said, “Did I tell you to freeze and stare? I said take it off.”

Fuck. Holy fuck.

Jake smirked to himself, knowing how much you loved being pushed around during sex. “Come on, princess. Give us a show,” Jake chimed. 

You slowly stood up and looked down at your black mini-dress. It was made of silk and didn’t have any straps. Jake loved you in strapless dresses as he got a clearer view of your cleavage, and it was so easy to slip it off you when he wanted to fuck you quickly in public. 

You reached behind your back to try to unzip your dress but had trouble reaching the pull tab. Jake could see you struggling, so he walked behind you to help you take it off. He slowly unzipped it, savouring the way the silk fabric pooled down your body. 

He finally pulled it down to the floor, and now you were completely bare and open to the two men’s taking. Sunghoon gawked as he noted that you weren’t wearing a bra or a pair of panties underneath your dress.

“You fucking slut,” he whispered, “what if you got caught? What if you flashed some bastard and he got to see your pretty little pussy?”

“I bet she’d like that,” Jake said from behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and trailing his hands down to your glistening cunt. He used two fingers to begin swirling around on your clit, which caused electricity to travel up your spine.

“N-No!” you moaned.

“No?”

“I only want you to see my pussy. Only you two,” you managed to say while your mind was already running wild at the intimate touch. 

Jake latched his mouth onto your neck, sucking on the sweet spot right above your shoulder. You let out a sigh, which quickly turned into a groan as Sunghoon leaned down to begin sucking on the other side of your neck. The feeling of two pairs of lips was foreign but a very much welcome feeling. It felt like your mind was about to explode at the pleasure erupting in your body. 

Sunghoon split from your skin for a moment to catch his breath and looked up at Jake with enticing eyes. “You’re quite handsome up close,” he said through a mischievous grin. 

Jake rolled his eyes. Given how long Jake had been Sunghoon’s manager, he knew how flirty the man was around everyone, men and women alike. It no longer fazed him when he said things like this. 

Sunghoon leaned towards Jake, his eyes asking permission to take their staring contest to the next step. You watched carefully as their faces began coming closer together, excited at the thought of them kissing each other. 

Jake nodded, and Sunghoon swiftly latched his lips onto Jake’s. Jake’s fingers were still inside your pussy, and at the same time that Sunghoon sucked on his bottom lip, Jake slipped his fingers deeper inside you, making you whine in pleasure. Jake sighed into the kiss.

Given his line of work, Sunghoon was very much used to kissing and making out with other men. Just last year he landed the role of a bisexual vampire, who also happened to be a bit of a whore. That’s all to say, he had plenty of practice with the lips of other guys, and it came like second nature to him now that Jake’s was on his.

You reached behind you to grip Jake’s biceps to help steady you. Jake was getting harder as he could feel your slick begin spilling down his fingers. 

When Sunghoon let go of the kiss, the smile on his face was like that of someone who won an award. He looked so proud of himself, you almost felt amused. 

“Get on the bed, Sunghoon,” Jake said demandingly. Sunghoon did as he was told, laying himself comfortable on the mattress, his head resting up against the silk pillows. God, he was such a brat.

Jake picked you up by the waist and laid you beside Sunghoon on the bed. He pressed one more kiss to your cheek before telling you, “Get on top of him. I want you to sit on his face.”

You raised your eyebrows in shock. Didn’t he want to make Sunghoon watch while he fucked you? Perhaps he changed his mind after that kiss. You supposed Sunghoon really did have a way with his lips and tongue. 

You shakily began straddling his chest and manoeuvring yourself closer to the bed frame. Now there it was, his face had a clear view of your pussy. It was as though his eyes were shaped like hearts as he stared at your cunt, already wet and puffy from the fingering it got from Jake. He needed to devour it immediately. 

Sunghoon grabbed your hips roughly, pulling you down to latch his mouth around your nub. You let out a yelp at the shock of contact. This wasn’t a position you were all too familiar with, and the way Sunghoon’s tongue lapped around your hole was making your thighs quiver. 

“Fuck!” you moaned, throwing your head back.

Jake had to hold back from just jerking himself off at the sight of you like this, so beautiful with your body flowing with pleasure. 

You could feel yourself reaching your climax, and the sensation was all too strong. You began to try to lift yourself above his head, trying to get away from his tongue, before you felt a palm harshly strike you in the ass, causing you to yelp out. 

At first, you thought it was Sunghoon, but both of his hands were still wrapped around your hips. No, this was Jake wanting to punish you for trying to get away from what he told you to do. He landed his palm on you one more time before saying, “If you try that again I will tie you up and eat you out until you’ve cum enough times that you can barely think. Sit on him, properly this time.”

You felt tears begin to well up in your eyes at the mixture of pain and pleasure, then felt Jake’s hands be placed on top of Sunghoon’s. You whined as you felt Jake push you down harder onto Sunghoon’s face. You were left breathless at the feeling of his wet mouth and his nose on your clit. 

“He’s going to suffocate!” you said worriedly. Jake was exerting a lot of pressure on your hips, and you were terrified that Sunghoon being enveloped in your thighs and pussy would make it hard for him to breathe. 

Sunghoon raised your hips up ever so slightly to say, “If I died with you cumming on my lips, I’d die a happy man. Don’t worry your pretty head.”

Just like that, he continued the assault on your pussy and you could literally feel his devious smirk on your cunt. You tried to be more involved then, rocking your hips back and forth as he thrust his tongue into your cavern. 

Fuck, you swear you were seeing stars. 

“Jakey…I’m going to cum. I’m coming.”

“Cum on his lips, princess,” Jake whispered behind you. “Let yourself go.”

At his instruction, you cried out in pleasure as you felt a fire ignite in the low of your abdomen. Your vision faded to white as you released, and both Jake and Sunghoon held you steady as you let the orgasm wash over you. 

Sunghoon may have continued eating you out for a while longer, causing a bit of overstimulation. You continued crying out in pleasure before Jake pulled you off of Sunghoon, and gently laid you down with your back on the mattress. 

Your breath was shaky and you already looked fuck out, streaks of wet mascara running down your warm cheeks. Jake loved it when you looked like this. 

Jake quickly plunged his hardened cock inside you, not even giving you a proper moment to take a break. There you were back again, legs spread wide for him, ready to take whatever he gave you.

Even with the preparation that Sunghoon gave your pussy, you still squirmed at the way your walls stretched to accommodate him. At first, he tried to slowly sink his cock into you. He then felt his tip touch your cervix. His hips were pressed against yours and he couldn’t bring himself to go any deeper.

He began rocking himself into you, making your walls clench tighter around him at the pleasure of his cock rubbing on your walls. The way his tip slammed inside of you so deep was making you drool. 

You looked over to see Sunghoon join Jake in taking off his trousers and moving over closer to your head, his cock a mere inches away from your face. You opened your mouth wide to let him push himself inside. He groaned at the feeling of your wet mouth wrapped around his cock, even if it was only the tip. 

You were losing track of where you were and what you were doing, as your mind was becoming hazy at the feeling of Jake’s cock drilling so deep inside you, as well as the struggle you had trying to take Sunghoon’s in your mouth. 

“Fuck, baby. Just like that. You look so gorgeous with my cock down your throat,” Sunghoon hissed. 

It was hard to breathe through your nose given how exhausting it was taking two cocks at the same time, but you managed to push through and sucked Sunghoon deeper into your cavern, loving the way his dick felt inside you.

Maybe you were just as insane as Sunghoon because the thought of dying like this, with two cocks shoved inside your holes and overstimulated beyond repair, did not sound like such a bad way to go. 

“Isn’t she just beautiful?” Jake said, caressing your waist to comfort you, as though his cock slamming inside you wasn’t the main reason why your body was shaking so much. Your eyes burned as you felt more tears trail down your face, and Jake reached up to brush them off. 

Jake and you came at around the same time. He spilt his seed deep inside you, loving the way your cunt clenched around him and milked him over every last drop. His cum felt so warm inside your hole, it was almost comforting. 

“Inside or on her face?” Sunghoon asked, feeling himself reach his tipping point. He was going to cum at any moment.

Jake smirked up at him, “My dirty girl likes to swallow, doesn’t she?”

You tried to nod your head, but even that was too exhausting so you let out a muffled noise of agreement. You felt his cum spill inside your throat, and you swallowed as much of it as you could before he pulled out and let some of it spill on your chest and face.

Your eyes were pink and shiny as you looked up at Sunghoon. Surely, you didn’t have the voice to say anything, but you hoped that your pleading eyes were enough to signal to him that you wanted him to come closer to you. 

And there you laid. Jake was behind you, his softening cock still deep inside you as he tried his best to keep his load from spilling out. Sunghoon was in front of you, facing you as the side of his head was lying on the silk pillows. 

All he could do now was just admire how beautiful the two of you were, and think about all the other things he would do with you for the next few hours, perhaps even the next time you three got together. 

Now that Sunghoon got a taste of Jake and you, he wasn’t sure if he could ever let go.

[alexiroflife]

"red"

MDNI, very suggestive content

satoru gojo x singer!reader

Synopsis: utahime brings satoru and shoko to a bar to watch her friend perform, and satoru is immediately whipped for you the moment you step on stage. utahime warns him, however, not to get close to you, but how could he refuse the way you look at him?

to sum it up: you have a strong effect on men, satoru included, and despite the stories utahime tells him about you, you match other's freak

WC: 15,482

Warning(s): smut smut smut, unprotected sex, dom/switch, vulgar language,

happy 500 followers!! thank you all so much for your love and support, you're all amazing. i can't believe there are already half a thousand of you. here is my gift to you and i hope you enjoy <3

-

The moment Utahime proposed going out to see her friend perform at a grungy bar smack in the middle of the city, Satoru was incredibly skeptical. Normally, the white haired sorcerer was left in charge of staff outings since, according to him, he had the most creativity out of the group of professors that trekked out into the late night after long, grueling weeks of training their students. 

It was a good thing he took charge of their activities, too, since everyone else’s suggestions were always so boring. Nanami’s idea of an entertaining night out wasn’t even to actually go out, but to stay indoors with a cup of tea and a newspaper cracked open over his lap. Yaga tended to lean toward artistic outings, such as pottery barns or knitting classes, solely due to the bias of his cursed technique. Ichiji hardly ever even made any suggestions himself, often allowing other opinions to overpower his own to the point where he didn’t even want to bother chiming in. Shoko only really wanted to visit anywhere that allowed her to drink and smoke, so she wasn’t much of a problem. And Mei Mei, well, Satoru hardly knew what the hell motivated Mei Mei’s interests aside from some means to winning money, and he was never too keen on allowing her rather questionable interests to lead the group out.

While everyone liked to complain when Satoru dragged them along to engage in the things he wanted to do, they normally all ended up enjoying themselves by the time the night was over. Even Utahime, who would have stepped freely into oncoming traffic before admitting that Satoru’s suggestion that she would initially turn her nose up at the beginning of the night brought a smile to her face by the middle of the evening. He had a knack for these kinds of things, bringing his colleagues together socially in the best ways he deemed how.

Nevertheless, the indigo haired woman pushed her luck enough to finally let Satoru relent his control for one single evening when she groaned on and on about how she refused to miss the performance of some woman she hadn’t even bothered to mention until now. Satoru only did so for the sake of gloating purposes in case this so-called friend of hers turned out to be far less engaging than Utahime claimed. He determined that she wouldn’t hear the end of it for as long as the two of them kept in contact from this night going forward.

Tonight, the group had narrowed down to a select few as well. Mei Mei thankfully had duties to attend to elsewhere, Ichiji had to babysit his niece, and Nanami downright turned down the evening completely, leaving only him, Shoko, and Utahime alone to attend this mystery friend’s show. 

Utahime had in fact begged Satoru not to tag along once she realized that so few people would be coming and she was not entirely fond of him impeding on what could have been girl time with Ieiri, but he persisted, assuring her that he would be delighted to tag along to see what all the fuss was about. Utahime was horrified, to say the least, but she knew that once Satoru had decided upon involving himself in something, there was no way of turning him elsewhere. 

So the three professors trekked on that Friday evening, pushing through busy crowds of people until they approached what Satoru could only describe as a hole in the wall smack in the middle of a row of shops and restaurants. It was a small brick building with a hazy led sign spelling out what he assumed to be the name of the establishment with narrow black doors and the scent of liquor tingling the air as people walked in and out. It was clearly a busy and popular place, well worn by the years and buzzing with visitors. He could hear the overlapping chatter of hundreds through the walls from the outside, loud laughter, the scraping of seats against hardwood floors, and the clinking of beer bottles and flasks. 

This wasn’t exactly the type of place he had expected Utahime to take interest in, leading him to only grow more curious about who exactly they were about to see inside this enticing little building.

“This is it?” Shoko asked coolly, twisting her cigarette over to the other side of her mouth as her brown eyes examined the outside.

Utahime hummed, double checking her phone screen displaying a text bubble with an address that she had been following. “Yeah, I guess it is,” she nodded, looking back up.

“Huh,” Satoru said, scratching the back of his head as he examined the spot along with the two women beside him. “Didn’t peg you for the grungy type, Utahime,” he teased. The said woman gritted her teeth, tossing a glare over her shoulder through the side of her eye. 

“What the hell do you know about my interests?” she hissed.

Satoru smiled, shrugging. He took the first steps toward the door, grinning smugly at Utahime as he brushed past her. “Enough to know that you’ve always been too much of a goody-two-shoes to come somewhere like here all by yourself.”

Utahime growled, clenching her phone tighter within her grasp as Satoru pushed the door open, the noisiness of the inside immediately blaring out into the atmosphere. 

“After you,” he smirked, her eyes twitching.

Shoko patted the woman’s shoulder softly before making her way inside. “Don’t let this idiot sway you with his nonsense, Hime,” she advised with a light smile. “You don’t want him to win, do you?”

That question was enough to get Utahime to straighten herself up, following suit behind the brunette. “Like hell I do,” she grumbled. Satoru snickered, letting the door swing closed behind him once they all made it inside.

Satoru had been right about his earlier observation. It was absolutely packed inside, the space much larger than it looked from standing before the exterior. A series of occupied tables took up the majority of the space, where customers sat and talked vividly, surfaces cluttered by bottles of finished and unfinished alcohol. On the left side of the room, the bar resided with crowds swarming the countertops.

The atmosphere was so dark. If Satoru hadn’t been gifted with his six eyes, he likely would have had to squint to find his way through the dimness. The space was illuminated in a lazy, red glow, specs of golden spouting from the bar for the sake of the bartenders and low hanging lamps swinging over the tables. 

At the very front of the room was a small stage, concealed by a thick velvet curtain. A few men dressed in black stood at the floor chattering amongst themselves and gesturing above, likely in charge of managing the performers or the stage functions. 

“Well, look at you, Utahime,” Shoko patted the woman on the back enthusiastically, the trio standing at the entrance. “You got some spunk in you.”

“It’s not me, it's (Y/n),” the hazelnut eyed woman rolled her eyes. “She’s the one performing at these places.”

“Then you must have some sick friends we don’t know about.”

“And to think, I had no idea you had any friends outside of your colleagues,” Satoru chimed in, inspiring a vein to bulge in Utahime’s forehead. “So, where is this ‘friend’ of yours? I’m starting to think she isn’t even real.”

“Shut up, Gojo! She’s real!” the sorcerer barked. “She told me her performance slot was at ten. That’s in five minutes.”

“We’d better grab a seat then, huh?”

“She said she had the manager save us one up front. I guess we should go check it out.”

“You guys go ahead,” Ieiri waved her hand. “I’m gonna grab a drink. You want?”

“Nah. You know how I get, so no alcohol for Satoru. But here,” Satoru stopped her with his hand on her shoulder. He dug into the pocket of his pants and handed her his wallet. “Go crazy. The black one’s unlimited.”

Shoko quirked a mischievous brow, snatching the leather wallet between her index and middle finger. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Satoru,” she said. “Utahime? Anything?”

“Just surprise me. I’ll need something to get through being out with this idiot.”

Satoru grinned playfully and Shoko nodded before walking off. 

Utahime clicked her tongue, dissatisfied with the fact that she was left alone with the man next to her. Satoru immediately detected her displeasure and smiled, leaning over her shoulder and gesturing his arm forward. “Lead the way.”

“Get away from me.”

Upon spotting a vacant table to the far left in front of the stage, Utahime took the lead as she shuffled awkwardly through the cramped pathways to make her way to the seat. Once the two made it, she spoke shortly with the man standing guard nearby to tell him that she was the expected visitor in which this seat had been reserved for. The man backed off accordingly, recognizing her face from the description he must have been given beforehand. 

The two sorcerers sat down across from each other, Satoru leaning back in his wooden seat with a contented exhalation. “This is a nice change of pace,” he said. 

“If you’re mocking me, quit it. (Y/n) is very talented and I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t think it would be worth it.”

“About that. I’ve been meaning to ask. Why are we hearing about this (Y/n) person now, all of a sudden? You’ve never mentioned her before.”

“Because she’s a human being with her own line of work separate from sorcery. There’s no need to bring her up when we’re on duty. We all have personal lives,” Utahime spoke flatly, fiddling with her purse with her gaze down and brows angled with irritation.

“But she’s human and she knows about you somehow?” Satoru tilted his head.

“She has an idea of the weird things that go on around this country, if that’s what you mean,” Iori sighed. “Even so, none of it concerns her. She’s got nothing to do with any of this stuff.”

“Where do you know her from?”

“God, you’re so nosy,” Utahime scrunched her nose. She hung her bag by its strap over the back of her chair and leaned back. “We’re old friends, that’s all.”

“‘Old friends?’ Why so vague, Utahime?” the blue eyed man pried, a smirk playing on his lips. “I’m just curious to know about who we’ll be watching, that’s all.”

“Your motives are never that simple. You can shut up and watch without knowing her entire life’s story.”

“Okay. Touchy.”

Utahime grinded her teeth together. “So help me, Gojo, if you don’t behave tonight I’m ripping your hair out in your sleep, strand by strand.”

Satoru gasped dramatically, hands flying to his snowing locks fuzzy with misty dust of red casted down upon him by the ambience. “What?! No! Not my beautiful hair,” he pouted. “You’re so mean to me…”

“I’d hope so.”

Satoru threw his arm over the back of his seat. The lights suddenly flared lethargically, blinking between darkness and red to signify the commencement of a performance. Satoru noticed the way Utahime shifted in her seat immediately, turning her attention upward with a gentle smile reaching her features. Satoru followed her gaze and looked up, supposing that he’d see for himself what all the fuss was about.

The lights finally melted into darkness, blocking out the sea of tables in inky blackness with the only light provided now by the stage. Footsteps came into Satoru’s earshot, and he turned to find Shoko squeezing her way over to them, two drinks and his wallet somehow cradled in her arms. She plopped into the empty seat between Utahime and Satoru with a huff, leaning her body over to set the drinks down carefully. The brunette slid Satoru’s wallet over to him across the table. 

“I’ll come back for that later,” she whispered, and Gojo snorted, tucking it away. 

A short man with a scruffy beard climbed his way onto the stage from the steps on the far right, a microphone in hand. He stood before the curtain at the edge of the platform, waiting for the chatter to completely die down before he spoke.

“Good evenin’, everyone. Hope we’re all havin’ a good night.”

A few straggling hollers of excitement and a symphony of claps resounded throughout the space in response. Satoru took the opportunity to clap loudly along with everyone else, Utahime shielding her face with her hand in embarrassment.

“Alright, that’s what I like to hear,” the man nodded, grin widening. “Now, I ain’t gonna stand here long. I know what you’re all here for. So just remember to keep your damn ringers off during the performance. That shit gets distracting for our singer. And if you’re already wasted, which I can already tell most of you are-” a few laughs jump out from the crowd. “-don’t go tryin’ to climb onto stage to join her either. I know how some of you can get. Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you in the back.”

Satoru found the statement strange, to say the least. Utahime’s friend must have been incredibly popular within this establishment to spark the kind of attention that inspired men to try to get onto stage with her. Then again, looking around at the crowd, he couldn’t say that he expected much decorum from them. 

“Alright, I’m done talkin’. Here she comes folks. You know her, you love her, she makes you wanna risk leavin’ the wife, our very own (Y/n) (L/n)!”

The crowd roared, the very mention of your name enough to bring a few intoxicated stragglers to their feet, cupping their hands around their mouths to whistle and shout for your entrance. 

Satoru watched carefully as the announcer left the stage, admittedly intrigued. The overhead stage lights softened, isolating a single spotlight that glared against the ridges in the curtain. The surrounding atmosphere up there mellowed into sultry hues of purple and blue, complementing the recurring overarching red that sank over the space.

The curtains pulled back with a squeak, and there you were.

The white haired man’s brows lifted slowly, subconsciously, when the sight of you revealed itself like a gift on display after a tauntingly slow drag of a satin ribbon between pinched fingers.

You stood beneath the light, fingers clutching the handle of the microphone stand. Your shoulders curved with passion, body hunched into the circular ring around the speaker as though you were drawn to it like it was a piece of you. Your eyes were closed, dark lashes coated with tiny specs of gold from your eyeshadow dusting your smooth cheeks. Your lips, glossed sinfully red, grazed your mic as you took in deep breaths that expanded your bare chest, sweat or glitter glimmering over the shiny (s/c) skin of your collarbone and shoulders, twinkling beneath the overhead beam. 

Adorned over your figure was a tight satin dress that accentuated every detail of your body, gliding over the curves of your hips and hugging your waist generously, cutting off over your thighs. Incredibly sheer tights ran over your smooth legs and down to your feet, snug in a pair of shiny heels you wore all too comfortably. 

“Holy shit,” Satoru heard Shoko whisper. “That’s (Y/n)?”

Utahime hummed in affirmation. “Yes, it is.”

“She’s fucking hot.”

Satoru couldn’t have agreed more. You were more than hot, you were unnaturally, criminally gorgeous. You stood on that stage, soaking in the all the praise that this dive had to offer as if you had done so a million times over, your air of confidence capturing you in a sultry glow complemented by the way those red lights submerged into your aura like smooth molasses milking into cake batter.

Delicately, you opened your eyes, revealing the maroon glint of your (e/c) irises as they danced over the room warmly. Your lips pressed together into a smooth, seductive smile, reading the room and your audience and what they wanted from you, and you catered simply with the look in your eye and the smallest tilt of your enticing, blood red lips. 

Satoru couldn’t look away. You had grabbed his attention, fully, easily. 

The warbled blare of a saxophone brought Satoru’s attention to the small band of instruments he had failed to register behind you when the curtains first pulled away. A large man worked his fingers over the instrument beside a sleek black piano that eventually trickled with a flirtatious flutter into the saxophone’s accompaniment. The commotion within the crowd died down as the music rose gradually, tenderly.

You swayed slowly to the lazy melody, tapping your fingers against the mic handle. Your heel tapped against the floor and your hips, fuck your hips, swung gently with the will of the music. All the amusement Satoru once harbored had completely drained from his body. He felt suddenly earnest, consumed by the sight of you complemented by the symphony that followed, and he watched eagerly in anticipation for your lips to part, for sound to fly from your mouth. He awaited your voice with a sense of severity, face blank, eyes slightly wide. 

As though he had summoned it, a rich note dragged through the air, deep, earthy, vibrating with soul and captivating ardor. The tune ripped through his ears, floating into the atmosphere like a dove gliding its wings through the air, touching the surface of water and rippling waves. It took several moments before Satoru realized that this blissful sound was coming from you. Your lips puckered ever so gently, brows angling as the space between your lips released the most hypnotizing vibrato he had ever heard in his life. 

Chills crawled down his spine from the back of his neck as your voice nearly blended into the glide of the saxophone, slippery yet controlled and achingly sensual. You sang so effortlessly, tone mature and impassioned by your engrossed facial contortions and the subtle movements of your body. Whoops jumped into the air, followed by more claps from stunned listeners, and Satoru couldn’t decide whether he wanted to join them in rejoicing over you or turn around to tell them all to shut the fuck up so he could hear you more clearly.

He was lucky to be so close, watching you within near proximity as your lids lowered over your eyes then lifted with each note and lyric you sang, head turning and face scrunching accordingly. You were so physically reactive to your own voice, to the words that left you, to the people watching and the space you resided. You filled the room with your presence, capturing the building with your intoxicating charm. Your voice was as sexy as you were, and you sang and moved slowly enough for Satoru to take note of every detail. 

The sorcerer sat there hypnotized, dizzy from you. He couldn’t even be bothered with turning to look at Shoko or Utahime to see what they were thinking, but due to their rather stiff silence, he assumed that they were in the exact same boat as him and everyone else within the room.

After a minute or so of sluggish bliss, the pianist shifted the tone of the music and played something bright and mischievous. The saxophone quickly adapted, slurring into the uplifted beat. The crowd reacted swiftly and your crimson lips spread to reveal your shiny white teeth, a grin devilish enough to feel as though Satoru wasn’t supposed to be looking. 

Your jaw dropped to ease out a loud, booming note that sparked the bar into an uproar, your leg lifting and curving over the mic stand. You leaned forward, pressed the bar into your figure as you allowed that inhumane note to drift yourself forward with a tilted chin as you gaze over the crowd over your nose with those feline, hazy eyes. 

Satoru’s eyes gawked over the shimmer of your thin stalkings when you raised your thigh up, the hem of your dress teasing the lace cutoff that cupped over the upper flesh. 

Then, you stood back upward, yanking the mic from the stand to strut downstage, wiring dragging in your wake. You crouched down, voice fluttering handsomely through the speakers with your simultaneous and sudden engagement with those below center. You sang as though you were speaking to individual audience members, knees bent and arm dangled over them, head craning as your eyes isolated everyone, face by face. 

A shout of your name jumped out as you looked around, and you loved it, responding with a playful wink as you maneuvered yourself into a seated position. Your legs dangled over the ledge, ankle crossing over the other and weight leaning on one hand.

“She’s so good, isn’t she?” Satoru heard Utahime whisper excitedly into Shoko’s direction.

Good was an understatement. You were flawless. A gem. A fucking masterpiece hidden within the confined walls of this establishment.

You were so smooth, shifting about languidly like your body was melting into all the right positions. You were like a drug to survey, seeping through Satoru’s veins and numbing his senses, leaving you to be the only thing within this space that he was perceptually aware of. 

He watched you turn to look all around, finally drifting your face into the direction of his table. Your eyes found Utahime first, a glimpse of amiable excitement flickering through your gaze with a twitch in your smile. The said woman waved enthusiastically with a beam. Your smile brightened as you continued singing, (e/c) eyes dancing over Shoko and then finally onto Satoru.

The white haired man stilled under the spotlight of your gaze, your piercing eyes far more intense now that they had connected with him. His skin tingled, sapphire eyes holding your own as something within you sparked, eyes jumping ever so subtly as you took in his frame. 

Satoru wasn’t normally easily swayed into speechlessness, let alone nervousness, but damn. Your eyes were practically devouring him whole as they shamelessly roamed over his body, hungrily, as if you were going to pounce on him. 

Satoru grew hyper aware of his physical reaction to you in that moment. His heart was pumping steadily yet loudly within his ears and his throat had run dry, Adam’s apple bobbing whilst he tried to appear unfazed by you to no avail. A battle of dominance transpired between your shared eye contact, and he couldn’t deny the fact that you were winning. Your voice floating on in compliance with your gaze wrapped him into a chokehold, burned his peach skin, and for the first time in his life he felt rivaled by a human woman’s natural power outside of his ordinary world of sorcery and chaos. 

Your hand supporting your body weight slid out, your figure leaning along with it and your eyes failing to leave Satoru’s even for a second. Your hand carried you until you were laying on your side, hand propping up your cheek and left leg crossed over the other. The blue eyed man’s eyes widened as he took in the manner in which you presented yourself before him, for him. The mic pressed into your soft lips, your gloss grazing the speaker, corners of your mouth curving with sensual delight. 

You looked so edible like this, mesmerizing him with your voice like a siren out of sea. Your beautiful legs, your jutted hip, those gorgeous lashes, and lord help him, those juicy red lips that had him seeing stars. Red, Satoru observed, was your color as its shade cradled you and illuminated the frame of your body. He drank in your artistry in awe, the room growing warmer around him with each bat of your lashes and gliding of your fingers down your dress. 

Cheers surrounded, but all Satoru could focus on was your face and the sudden ache arousing from his crotch. He glanced down momentarily and caught sight of the growing bulge stretching his nice pants and exhaled heavily. He rested his elbow on the table and slid his hand over his mouth, peering back up at you with blown pupils. 

It was going to be a long night. 

Your grin twinged with an air of satisfaction when you noticed Satoru’s response to your rather blatant flirting, and you pushed yourself back up. You tilted your head over into the opposite direction slowly, eyes trained on his until the very last second, and then they broke away.

Satoru’s daze shattered when a balled up napkin bounced off of his infinity shield. He turned rigidly to find Utahime glaring at him angrily, lips curled into a disapproving frown. “Don’t even think about it,” she seethed.

Gojo examined her for a moment before a devious smirk crept its way back on his lips. He shifted, crossing his legs to attempt to hide the current problem poking into his pants, and grinned. “No promises,” he mouthed and Utahime groaned, ripping her eyes away from him as if the sight of his face disgusted her. 

Your performance ended far too soon for Satoru’s liking. When he looked back up, the accompaniment was dwindling down into the slow pace that it had begun with. You were back on your feet, turning your back to the audience to saunter over to the mic stand. You carefully slid the handle back into its holder, voice soothing into a low, conclusive note that fluttered regally off into a momentary stunned silence. 

You stilled, inhaling sharply as the song reached its end. You blinked your eyes, as though reawakening from a daze, and looked up contentedly. Your hands fell to your sides and you awaited applause that came as rapidly as you had aroused the entire room. 

Gojo made sure that he was the first to jump to his feet, clapping wildly with a ridiculous grin. Everyone else followed, showering you in praise, compliments, a standing ovation well deserved. Shoko ‘whooped’ next to him, joining in on Satoru’s boisterousness while Utahime clapped a bit more politely with a proud smile. 

You gave a little bow, your smile radiant enough to put the sun to shame. You looked over everyone in grateful acknowledgement before turning your attention back to your friend’s table. You took the opportunity to return Utahime’s wave merrily, bringing your fingers to your lips and blowing a kiss to the brown eyed woman. 

Satoru and Shoko’s cheers picked up in volume, and your eyes brought themselves back to them. Your shoulders jerked with a soft chuckle, giving the two of them an introductory wave. Satoru brightened when you looked at him again, gazes exchanging an internal, mutual address of one another’s tension. 

You drew your top lip down, suppressing a bigger smile as you stared at him. Your gaze traveled downward for half a second and your eyes went big. You were quick to brush a hand over your amused expression and lower your gaze the moment the curtains drew over you and shut, concealing your beauty once more.

Satoru jutted out his bottom lip in momentary befuddlement, looking down to be reminded by his… problem. He was lucky that he was wearing pants that were tighter around his lower waist and crotch area, keeping the print of his dick somewhat compressed, but you had still managed to notice from your view upstage. 

Well, more accurately, you had been looking. 

Satoru grew ecstatic at the notion. 

“You!” Utahime pointed an accusatory finger at the blue eyed man once the applause had died down and chatter arose once more. People began to leave after your show had ended, having only come to watch you sing, and hell, Satoru couldn’t blame them. 

Satoru lowered his hands and pointed an innocent finger to his chest. “Me?”

“If you sleep with (Y/n), so help me-”

“Woah, hold on now,” Satoru stopped her. “What makes you think I’m the kind of guy to go around sleeping with strangers?”

“Oh don’t play coy, I saw the way you two were looking at each other earlier,” she rolled her eyes. “I hardly care what you do in your free time- frankly it makes me gag to think about it- but please just leave (Y/n) out of it.”

“Oh come on, it’s not my fault she was looking at me. What’s a guy to do in that situation?” Satoru shrugged. “I’m sorry I can't help my incredibly good looks.”

“I mean it, Gojo.”

“Utahime, let’s be real. She’s your friend. I wouldn’t do anything to mess with her. I’m not the horrible guy you take me for.”

“I don’t think you’re horrible, I think you’re an idiot whose arrogance is going to get you in a world of trouble one day. And I’m not even talking about how you’d affect her, I’m talking about her.”

“Hm? How do you mean?”

“She will eat you alive.”

“Eat me alive?” he repeated curiously. The prospect had only further piqued his interest. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

“Don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you… I’m just thinking maybe I should see for myself.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Shoko laughed. “Think of it this way, Utahime. If Satoru sleeps with your friend, he’ll be admitting that you chose a great place for us to hang out tonight. After he doubted you, and all.”

Utahime paused, a noble grin reaching her features with the touch of her finger to her chin. “That’s right! He’d have to admit that he was wrong about me. Looks like you’re not the only one who knows how to plan a fun night out, huh?”

Satoru watched the woman gloat in her newfound honor with a blank face. “Jeez, Utahime. I didn’t think you were so obsessed with trivial things like proving me wrong. I was just playing around earlier,” he badgered, successfully rousing her agitation and disrupting her temporary air of victory. 

“I can’t stand you!”

“So,” Shoko sighed, turning to observe the flow of people exiting the space as the lights rose once more overhead. “Are we gonna get to meet this girl, or what? She put on a hell of a show.”

“Oh… yeah, hold on,” Utahime pulled out her phone. “She told me before to just wait for her to text saying that we can head backstage. I think she’s in the dressing room.”

Satoru buzzed with the anticipation of seeing you up close. Something about the way you stood up there, the way you presented yourself, the way you looked at him made every fiber in his being tremble with excitement as though you were a celebrity he had only dreamed about gaining the privilege to encounter in person until this very moment. 

He looked over his shoulder at all the drunken men who had been hollering your name and brimmed with vanity. Those poor idiots could only ever ponder about speaking with you one on one and seeing you up close, when he was able to saunter his way back to you with absolutely no obstacles in his way. It was foolish of him to sneer down at these non-sorcerers, who had been established as far beneath him the moment he was born, but he couldn’t help the pride that swarmed his chest when he thought about the advantage that he already had with you in comparison.

“Ah, there it is,” Utahime smiled upon seeing your name pop up on her screen. “Alright let’s go. Gojo, keep it together.”

“When have I ever done anything but that,” he grinned.

The three found themselves being led up the stage and behind the curtain by the same guy who had presented your performance. They walked through the narrow right wing and toward a door at the end of the room. The man knocked loudly upon it, announcing to you through the barrier that you had visitors before walking off. Another shiver wracked Satoru’s body when your honey-like voice called out that the door was open.

Utahime turned the knob slowly, peering into the room hesitantly. “(Y/n)?”

The door opened widely, revealing you sitting at a foggy mirror and a beaten leather chair. The surrounding clutter of storage and clothing was enough to show that you had been in this space often despite its rugged, vintage look. 

The light of your vanity illuminated the brick space. You looked up when the door fully opened, and that jaw dropping smile graced your red lips again. 

“Utahime,” you greeted happily. Iori beamed, rushing into the room to wrap you up in a hug the moment you stood. You let out a surprised huff, easing into her arms and chuckling. “I’m so glad you made it,” you said, rubbing her back. 

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it for the world! The second I knew you were performing here, I came running,” Utahime replied, pulling away to look at you. “You were so amazing out there.”

“Aw, you think so?” you raised your brows, serene grin broadening. 

“Absolutely! You made everyone go crazy.”

“I try my best,” you shrugged, eyes darting over to the brunette and the white haired man standing at the doorway. You raised a brow. “I see you brought some friends with you.”

“Ah,” Utahime recalled, releasing you from her grip. “Yes, these are my colleagues. This is Ieiri Shoko and… Gojo Satoru,” she grumbled the latter bitterly, slimming her eyes at his cocky gaze. 

You hummed. “Oh yeah?” those eyes of yours flickered over Satoru rather noticeably. “Well, nice to meet you both. I hope you enjoyed the show.”

“Enjoyed it?” Shoko echoed, crossing her arms with a tipsy grin. “We loved it. You’ve got a crazy set of pipes on you. And that dress? Fucking incredible.”

You accepted the compliment genuinely. “Thank you, you’re sweet.”

“How long have you been performing?”

You followed the owner of that voice and found yourself staring into captivating blue hues once more. A small smile rested on his lips and his hands were tucked into his pockets as he looked at you. 

You sharpened your gaze and lowered your lids. “Do you mean here or in general?”

He shrugged, glossy lips puckering as if in thought. “Both.”

A glint flickered through your eyes when you responded, leg crossing over the other. “Been performing for ten years, here for one.”

Satoru lifted his chin and parted his lips, humming in understanding. “So you’re a real professional then.” 

“I don’t know, what do you think I am?” you asked him.

Gojo immediately picked up on the light banter that you were encouraging, therefore he, so taken by the sight of you, could do nothing but play along. Especially when you proceeded to check him out with absolutely no remorse.

“I think you’re good enough to be with the stars somewhere. On a big stage with a big crowd. Bigger than any of us could imagine.”

Flattery, though common, still seemed to have a rather carnal effect on you. You tilted your head over your shoulder, eyes glistening with intrigue. “Who says I haven’t been?”

You clearly liked to challenge, to push your limits and see if your words and responses were strong enough to make the man before you falter or stumble over his words. If Satoru Gojo were anyone else in this world, he internally conceded that he would have, but he liked this daring persona you harbored. He liked the way that you were aware of the fact that you could bring a man to his knees with a look alone, the way you could shift your words to chip away at someone’s resolve and make them a mess at your feet. 

He thought it was so hot. 

If Utahime had been right about you earlier, that you would eat him alive if he had been presented the chance to make a proper move on you, he would have let you consume him blissfully. 

He wanted you to consume him.

“You’re right,” Satoru chuckled lowly. “If you have, you’d be right where you should be. In the limelight.”

Your smile spread as your locked gaze soaked him in, and Satoru knew that he was set. 

“Alright,” Utahime’s voice cut through the thick air. Her expression was bored, having very clearly witnessed what was slowly unveiling before her. While she didn’t approve of it in the slightest, she was hardly the least bit surprised.

Shoko had kept quiet as well, looking between you and Satoru with knowing widened eyes and a tight laugh-suppressing smile. 

“(Y/n)? When’s your next show?” Iori asked you, clenching her jaw when her eyes cut through Satoru threateningly. The said man hardly cared, for you were initiating far more of the tension rising between the two of you than he was. After all, Satoru hadn’t been bluffing before when he had questioned the accusation thrown about regarding his sex life. He was a busy man with very little to no free time aside from the few hour block he took out of his Friday evenings to spend time with his fellow sorcerers. 

Of course, women were drawn to him, but he found very little interest in entertaining their efforts. In his mind, the act would have been like poking fun at forgotten admirers for the sake of entertainment. It was beneath him, sleeping around, and he hardly trusted anyone enough with his powerful mind and body to be vulnerable with them. Consequently, he kept to himself, flirting around every now and then but never crossing the line between pretty words and physical intimacy.

So to be dragged into your will with little effort had stunned him, more so because he was not opposed to your unspoken invitation in comparison to how he would have normally reacted to someone’s advances. You looked like you were trouble, conniving, gaining control of a room with the tricks of your beauty and your talent. You knew full well that you were an unfathomable treasure, a sex symbol amongst the little world that you had built for yourself, and that alone was dangerous. Satoru knew so because he himself was just as dangerous for the same reasons and far more. 

You weren’t even intimidated by his presence, like most human women were. He was abnormally tall with prominent features that stood out like a sore thumb; snowy white locks that glowed blindingly in the sunlight and eyes as vast and blue as the sky above. Normally, people shivered under his gaze, cowered in his wake, but you demanded his submission as though he was just another man, and hell, he couldn’t even be offended because he wanted you just like any other man. 

“Usually I perform every Friday,” you started, pulling your eyes from Gojo to look back at Utahime. “But next week they’ve got another guest performing in my place ‘cause I want off. Sometimes I do stuff at the bar in one city over too, but during the weekends. You’re welcome to come check it out whenever. All of you.”

“We’ll definitely have to stop by more often. I can’t believe I’ve been missing you all this time.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it. I can only imagine how swamped you are with work and everything, being a professor and all. Just come when you can, no hard feelings.”

“Do you have a social media handle?” Ieiri asked. You nodded, smiling.

“Yeah, it’s my full name pushed together. You follow me, and I’ll follow you. I love making new friends.”

The brunette immediately exchanged information with you, and just like that, the night was over.

Utahime was the first to bid farewell, claiming that she had to get up early the following morning for some business to attend to that Satoru and Shoko knew as a quick mission orchestrated by Tokyo Jujutsu High. She gave you another tight hug and Shoko followed, telling you that it was great meeting before turning to the door with Utahime. Satoru was the last to leave the room, turning over his shoulder to casually part with you. 

You watched him closely, leaning your hip against your vanity with your hand on upon the other. Your red lips pressed together in a stiff smile, desiring eyes watching as you said goodbye, though you knew deep in your gut that this wouldn’t be your last time seeing Satoru Gojo.

On the way out, Satoru stopped in his tracks on the stage steps, standing over the now completely vacant building. Utahime and Shoko walked with their arms linked to the exit, Shoko stopping first when she realized that Satoru was not directly behind them. The women turned, catching sight of him looking around the room calmly.

“Satoru!” Shoko called out. “You coming or what?”

He smiled, lowering his head to look at the brunette from across the room. “Nah,” he sighed contentedly. “I think I’ll take in the ambience a bit more and… ponder over the performance we just watched. Why end the night so early, you know?”

Utahime’s expression fell flat. “It’s a quarter past midnight,” she deadpanned.

“And yet, there’s still so much the night has to offer.”

Shoko snorted, turning back around and waving her hand over her head. “Whatever you say. Text me after you get laid.”

“Like I said, Shoko, you know I’m not that kind of guy!”

Utahime huffed, shaking her head in disdain. “You’re playing with fire, Gojo. We all know you’re the strongest, but you shouldn’t underestimate that woman’s control. She will break you.”

Satoru scoffed, waving the indigo haired woman off. “Please. I’m unbreakable.”

Utahime rolled her eyes and turned her back to the strongest sorcerer of the modern age. “It’s your funeral.”

His funeral, huh?

Satoru never knew himself to be the masochistic type, but somehow, the thought of you metaphorically killing him only made him harder. 

You emerged from behind the velvet curtain about ten minutes after Shoko and Utahime left. You were rifling through your purse for the keys to lock up, which the owner usually entrusted you to do when you performed because you were close personal friends. 

Your heels clicked and echoed throughout the vacant space, no signs of life aside from the sound of your footsteps. Even so, you knew you weren’t alone before you had even rounded that corner to exit backstage. You could sense the overwhelming presence of that friend of Iori’s who had been ogling over, and you hadn’t been surprised. When you looked up from your bag and saw his tall figure sitting patiently at the same table he had occupied earlier that night, chin propped in his fist and eyes glowing through the dim space to find yours, you lowered your arms knowingly. 

“Hate to break it to you, but the show’s over, pretty boy,” you said smugly. “You’ll be waiting in the dark forever until my next one.”

“That’s okay. I was actually waiting for you,” Satoru replied suavely.

“Is that so?” you stepped down the stairs slowly to make your way over to him. “I don’t give autographs, if that’s what you’re looking for. I haven’t made it that big yet.”

“Whattt? No way. I thought you said you’ve been with all kinds of stars before.”

You walked up to the table, slinging your purse off of your arm and tossing it carelessly on the surface. “Don’t get me wrong. One day I will be,” you sighed. “Just not yet.”

“Well, you could’ve fooled me,” Satoru grinned, watching in the dim light as you slid into the seat across from him. “I’ve never seen anyone perform the way you did.”

“You must not get out much,” you teased. “I’m really not all that special in places like these.”

“Okay, we both know that’s bullshit,” Satoru cocked a brow, giving you a look as your grin widened. “You’re unreal on that stage. I’ve been around enough to know that.”

“Clearly,” you chuckled. “I appreciate the flattery, Gojo.”

Your laugh was heavenly, and holy shit, you remembered his name.

“Satoru,” he corrected you, quickly ridding the both of you of any formalities that could have gotten in the way. Your lips parted slightly with fascination, and you caught the way Satoru’s eyes jumped to the motion.

“Right. Satoru,” you tested his first name on your lips, and Satoru thought that he would have combusted right then and there.

If that hadn’t been enough to blow a fuse in his brain, sitting so close to you and taking in your features within your proximity was a gift within itself. You were even prettier up close, the details he couldn’t quite admire from when you were on stage fully displaying themselves before him exquisitely.

Your eyes were so heavy, lined with a coat of black liner that deepened, accentuated the rich hue of your alluring eyes and your skin so smooth beneath the expertly applied coat of makeup you wore for your performance. You still had on that dress too, only it was concealed by a leather coat that reached your thighs, hiding what Satoru so desperately wanted to see now that he was mere feet away from you. 

“So, a colleague of Utahime’s, huh?” you prodded, seeking further information from him. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a teacher.”

Satoru laughed lightly at the sentiment, momentarily forgetting that you had no clue about what his profession could have possibly entailed. “I get that a lot,” he elected to say.

“And at a religious school no less?”

You were testing the water. 

“It’s just work,” Satoru shrugged. “I never thought about it as religious or non-religious, which I know is probably weird to say since I am a professor there.”

“No, I get what you mean,” you said. “Work is just work,” you repeated his words, and Satoru smiled.

“Exactly.”

“Then you come to these kinds of bars for, what, a break from all the sanctity?” you mused.

“Not really. I’m actually not much of a drinker. I only came here for the entertainment. Per Utahime’s suggestion, of course.”

“Right,” you smiled. “Speaking of, Utahime doesn’t seem to like you very much. I only got that from the way she introduced you like she wanted your head on a silver platter,” you observed smugly, Satoru releasing an amused breath. 

“She acts like she hates me, but I’ve known her for years. She’s just always been easy to mess with and she lets me pick on her.”

You laughed, clearly understanding what he meant. “So you’re that kind of guy, huh? Picking on poor Utahime. No wonder she hates you.”

“Well, when you put it like that, you make me sound like some kinda monster,” Satoru sulked slightly, much to your amusement.

“I wouldn’t mind it if you were. I could take it.” 

Satoru’s cock twitched, your words alone enough to further stimulate his lust for you. 

You could take it.

The phrase had so many different possible connotations, and you knew it. Your eyes said it all as they melted over his face, surveying his facial reaction to the way you lifted a nail between your teeth to bite down on it mid sentence. 

It drove him crazy. 

“You don’t seem like the type though,” you countered your previous statement. Satoru leaned forward slightly, inquisitive. 

“No?”

“Nah, you seem too nice.”

The blue eyed man snorted. “You think I’m nice?”

“Or maybe that’s not the right word,” your painted finger tapped against your bottom lip, the flesh so plush beneath your touch. 

He wanted to feel that softness against him. He wanted your lipstick to stain his body. To stain his life. He wanted you so bad. 

“I mean, I guess I do consider myself to be generous,” Satoru played along, a laugh bubbling in his throat.

“Mmmm,” you pressed your lips together, slimming your eyes and setting your elbows onto the table. You leaned into him, eying him closely, studying his cunning smile and pressing your chest into the table. “I take it back.”

“Damn, you don’t think I’m nice anymore?”

“You’re more… extroverted,” you decided. “You know how to talk to people, and it comes off as generosity. Sometimes. But in reality, it’s just you being lighthearted.”

“So lightheartedness and generosity aren’t the same thing?”

“Hell no,” you smirked. “You could be a dickhead and still be spirited.”

He chuckled again. You were so forward. “You’ve got a point.”

“You’re also a little flirty, you know that?” you specified. “I think that’s a part of your ‘lightheartedness.’”

“Oh really?” the strongest sorcerer shifted to open his fist and lean his cheek over in his palm, peering down at you through his lashes. “Pretty, if I’m flirty, then you must be in love with me.”

You were momentarily stunned by the comment, your pleasure with the conversation only growing as Satoru grew more brazen. “Wow. That’s a new one,” you grinned, pretty teeth on display again, and Gojo found himself mirroring the sun before him. 

“I’m just saying, I’m not the only one who’s been flirting. You can’t tell me otherwise.”

“I never said I wasn’t,” you admitted freely, your tongue swiping over your bottom lip. Satoru sucked in a heavy breath as his pants only grew tighter. “Hate to break it to you, though, I don’t do love if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not. Somehow I didn’t peg you as the type.”

“What did you peg me for?”

Satoru took a few seconds to reply, staring at you. “As a woman who your friend told me would eat me alive.”

“What?” you released a real laugh this time. It was a loud, bright sound that boomed through the empty space and left Satoru’s cheeks aching and dimples popping from how hard he was smiling in reaction to it. He watched the way your head tilted back and your eyes scrunched closed, your expression displaying true thrill. 

You were so beautiful, he couldn’t stand it.

“Why’s that so funny?” he asked in the midst of his idiotic simpering.

You swiped a finger under your eye as you calmed, shaking your head with lingering giggles. “Because Utahime would say something like that about me,” you exhaled. 

“Can I ask if she was wrong?”

You interlocked your fingers, elbows on the table, and rested your chin atop them. “No, she’s not,” you said, softly. “But you know that anyway, don’t you? You look pretty smart.”

“Aw, thanks for noticing,” Satoru cooed. “You’re right. I knew that the second I saw you.”

You hummed, dragging your eyes over his face, then down to his hands. “Then why are you here, Satoru? To get eaten alive?”

There went Satoru dick for the third time that night, jumping excitedly within the confines of his pants. The predicament began to grow rather uncomfortable, and you were quick to notice when he shifted in his seat in an attempt to be subtle and his dark pupils expanded amidst the pools of sapphire beneath his messy hair. 

Your perfectly plucked brow arched as you looked down when he shifted. “Problem?” you asked knowingly, sensually, and god, you were only making his situation worse. Your lips bounced apart with the end of your question, your mouth now slightly agape. 

Satoru could feel his skin burn, your presence unbearably intoxicating. 

A muscle in Gojo’s brow twitched as you lowered your palms flat to the table and pushed, your chair scooting loudly across the floor. Blue pools of desire followed your figure as you rose from your chair slowly, rounding the table with your fingers dragging along the surface. Satoru’s heart was hammering, entirely fixated on you as you approached and stood over him. 

Suddenly, you kicked your foot out and knocked it against the front leg of his chair. Hooking the point of your heel over it, you dragged the furniture away from the table to face you. You broke your eyes from his to look down, the image of his throbbing hardon meeting your eyes kindly.

“Looks like it,” you answered for yourself.

Satoru instinctively released his technique when he saw you coming into him. You leaned over and pressed onto his shoulder, throwing your leg around him to straddle his lap. Satoru hissed, corner of his lips twirling up as his eyes flew to where your thighs crowded around his crotch, tights stretching perfectly over the way the fat of your thighs expanded when you sat.

You pouted, sliding your arms around his neck and tilting your head down to meet his lowered eyes. “What’s wrong? Got no more talk in you?”

The white haired man trembled under you, wordlessly taking you in. You smelled so good, your scent invading every one of his heightened senses as your gentle fingers dragged over the nape of his neck. You leaned in closer, brushing your wine red lips over his glossy ones as he exhaled shakily, warm breath fanning against your skin.

“Am I making you nervous, pretty boy?” you whispered into him, and he fucking shuddered. “I thought you wanted this…”

Your fingers tangled up and into his hair, pushing his locks from his forehead and tilting his head back. You looked over him, marveling at his beauty as his cheeks reddened and his hands cupped over your waist. His lashes fluttered with the brush of your fingers through his silky strands, eyes inky pools as he looked up at you desperately. 

“Funny, your dick may be making all the moves for you,” you teased, words vulgar as they dripped from your tongue.

Satoru’s length jumped against your inner thigh, hardening beneath your weight. He clenched his jaw and drew his brows together, digging his fingers into your hips under your coat. You hummed, drawing your lips to his ear. “See? All of a sudden he’s more talkative than you are.”

“Fuck,” Gojo hissed, your voice in his ear snapping something deep within him. “Baby, you’re something else.”

“What are you gonna do about it?” your fingers curved down the side of his jaw and over his throat. “You gonna let me ruin you?”

Satoru smiled breathlessly, his grip around you tightening. “I should be asking you the same thing, pretty…” his heavy hands smoothed down over your ass, pushing you further up against him. You raised your brows, pulling away to look down at him daringly. 

“That’s pretty cocky for a guy who lost his words for a second, there,” you licked your lips. 

“Oh, baby, you have no idea how cocky I can be.”

You grabbed a fist full of his shirt, tugging harshly. “Then prove it.”

Your mouths were clashing into each other’s before Satoru could even process his next thought, which only would have been something about you. Your lips were so soft, plush as a cloud as they mashed into his own, your red gloss smearing over his lips and chin, painting him red, and Satoru knew then that he could die happy. 

Satoru reached up blindly and pushed your jacket off your shoulders. You swiftly shimmied out of the fabric, letting it drop to the floor whilst your lips remained locked hungrily in a primal, hot, greedy battle. The white haired man immediately snatched the opportunity to feel over your body, memorizing the curves that followed his hands beneath the smooth fabric of your tight dress. His legs spread beneath you, feet pressing into the floor to hump up into your hips as your body curved into him like the trickle of water smoothing down a pipe. 

He grunted into your mouth as you nipped and bit, curling your tongue into his mouth to fight for your authority. Satoru welcomed your dominance, floating into a twisted heaven as your hand curled over his throat and your tits pressed into his shirt through your dress, thighs rubbing over his sides and nails dragging down his chest to rip open the buttons of his shirt. 

“That shirt was expensive,” he breathed heatedly into you between the swift seconds your lips broke apart. Wet smacking filled your ears as you pressed back in, pushing your body flush against his large frame and licking your tongue along his lip.

“I don’t care,” you purred. Satoru released a shaky moan, slamming his lips back into yours, eager to taste every bit of your lipstick and the slick of your tongue. 

You jumped back to stretch the material of his shirt further apart, buttons popping with the revelation of his flushed, bare pecs and the hint of his well-sculpted upper abdomen. You dragged the shirt from his shoulders, Satoru yanking his arms free to grab your cheeks and press you harder into him. “Your lips feel so good,” he huffed mindlessly, a string of saliva pulling from the two of you as you parted. 

“All I did was kiss you,” you breathed.

“So kiss me more,” he demanded. “Everywhere. Wherever. I don’t give a fuck.”

“So bossy,” you groaned, teeth grazing his jaw as you slid your hands down his exposed skin, feeling over the ridges of his abdominals. Satoru jerked, breath releasing with a vocalized sigh as your touch smoothed over his stomach. You popped open the last button of his shirt and ripped it out from under him, throwing it over your shoulder with a pretty smirk, lipstick smudged messily over your cheek. “I’ll kiss you when I want to kiss you, where I want to kiss you.”

“Don’t be like tha-mmm…”

Your hand slid over the bulge of his pants as you pressed yourself up above it to free the space for your access. Satoru clenched his jaw and watched intensely as your fingers traced over the outline of his hard on teasingly, teeth sinking into your lip as you monitored his reaction. “You feel big, Toru,” you observed sweetly. “Can I call you that? Toru? You like that, baby?”

“Fuck, yes,” he heaved, eyes blurry. “Call me whatever the fuck you want.”

“Atta boy,” you praised, pressing your lips to his cheek as his cock jerked beneath your hand. “Ohhh, look at that. Someone likes praise…”

“You’re- killing me, baby,” he looked up at you, jaw hanging as stuttered breaths escaped him. “Need you to take care of my cock, pretty, can’t handle the way you’re touching me.”

“You must be so used to getting what you want,” you sighed. You leaned to place your finger at the base of his balls, watching the way his body jumped. You slid your finger all the way up his concealed shaft slowly before ripping it away with a sweet smile. Satoru made a noise like a dissatisfied whine in his throat. “I already told you, I’ll do what I want when I want it.”

He tossed his head back, brows curling. “(Y/n),” he whimpered.

“Ooo, don’t say my name like that,” you pushed your hips back down to roll against his cock, a pretty moan fluttering from his muscular throat. “You’ll get me even wetter than I already am.”

Satoru’s hands clutched down onto your thighs, squeezing harshly with aching want. 

“Relax,” you ordered, and he did, sinking back into the chair as your hands climbed over him and your lips touched the crook of his jaw. “Good boy.”

You slid your tongue along his skin, sinking your teeth into his neck like a damn vampire, smoothing your open mouth over the stinging bites, marking his skin redder than that makeup you wore. Satoru breathed heavily, twitching beneath you uncontrollably. You hadn’t even done anything to him yet, and he was already a mess at your will. His moans strained in his throat as you sucked circles on his neck mercilessly, capturing any piece of his perfect skin you could find. 

He needed you to free his cock so badly. It was causing him pain, at this point, how achingly hard he was. He could feel precum already staining his underwear and soaking through his slacks, but you kept him waiting, pressing you clothed mound to his bulge as his grasping hands pulled your dress over your legs and scrunched it around your waist. 

Your lace cut offs and string panties unveiled themselves to him and he almost came then and there beneath you. You were so bad, dressing like this to perform as though you were asking to get fucked afterward. As though you knew Satoru had walked through those doors and would melt into putty the moment you laid your hand on his chest.

“Uh uh,” you whispered, feeling Satoru press his dick up into you again. He could feel the slipperiness between your thighs, soaking your thin underwear and threatening to pool through to touch his clothes. “Stop that,” you said firmly, glaring up at him from where you had begun nipping at his chest. 

Your back was arched, your ass sticking out over his lap, and oh, you were just begging to be fucked, but Satoru couldn’t bring himself to do anything but what you told him. Not yet at least. He got off on the way you dominated him, the way you took control with no idea that if he wanted to he could have snapped you in half. 

Only, if he wanted to. 

“Pretty, I want you so bad,” Satoru said through gritted teeth, gazing longingly at you through the mess of his hair. He involuntarily bucked up into you again and you gasped, gripping his shoulder tightly with one hand and onto the hand that gripped your waist with the other. 

There you were. He had finally gotten a reaction from you.

Your face darkened, your eyes hard. You looked back up at him with eyes that could kill, expression falling into intensified hunger. Satoru gulped.

You lifted your hips and grinded them forward, pressing them down and swiveling your lower body with rapid pressure. Gojo inhaled sharply, eying the way you slithered across his dick like a goddamn snake, movements glossy and abrupt. His fingers dug into the skin of your waist, curling into the waistband of your panties and stretching at them eagerly. 

“You’re so fucking impatient,” you growled, rolling your hips over him again and moaning softly when his bulge rubbed against your clit. “Shit, how fucking big are you, Toru?”

“You would- hah- know if you took my f-fucking cock out, princess,” Satoru moaned, pulling at your hips to keep them in motion. You finally complied, rocking your sopping cunt against him slowly, the friction against your heat sparking waves of pleasure to your brain.

“Mmm, fuck,” you whispered. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Baby, come on,” Satoru begged, encouraging you to keep going. You began to get yourself off, using his hardon to stroke against you dripping pussy as humped his pants, pulling back and pushing in, back and in. “There you go, pretty, grind that pussy onto me. Make yourself feel good…”

“I said- ah- s-shut up!” You pushed him back by his shoulders harshly, holding him still against the back of the chair as you rode him out through your pants, brows furrowed and mouth hanging open. Your pace quickened, your clit throbbing with each grind it took against his length. “Why do you feel like this with fucking pants on?” you breathed out, confounded by howquickly he was making you feel this good.

“Take them-ngh, fuck- o-off, and it’ll feel better.”

You fumed, slapping a hand over Satoru’s mouth as you glided your throbbing pussy into him hard. A muffled groan escaped Satoru’s mouth, eyes threatening to roll back as a string of curses fled your lips. 

You wanted him to shut up. No man had ever spoken to you this much, in such a manner that Gojo was encouraging you with that sweet, needy desperation lacing his deep voice. It was only dragging more arousal from your cunt, and you weren’t used to this. You weren’t used to responding to a man’s body and mouth this way. 

You usually did all the talking. You were normally the one watching in amusement as a man shook like a leaf underneath you. You were usually the one experiencing less pleasure, but hell, you had only dry humped Satoru for five minutes and your pussy was already pathetically crying for him. And his mouth, god, he just wouldn’t be quiet, and his inability to do so was threatening to weaken you.

You truly did not want to comply with his desires, but you could no longer deny that the both of you longed for the same thing. 

You kept your hand secure over Satoru’s mouth, his fucked out gaze drinking you in as you hurriedly unbuckled his belt, fumbling over the straps and leaning away from him momentarily to do so. Satoru’s hands moved to help you, but you pushed them away, pressing against his mouth harder.

“Don’t touch,” you ordered. His groan of frustration and want vibrated against your palm, his hands grabbing immediately into the plush of your exposed ass beneath you bunched dress. 

You scooted further down Satoru’s legs so that you could tug his pants down once you got his belt out of the way. You hadn’t even bothered to stand to pull them all the way down, for you were in far too much of a rush to free his dick to care.

Your fingers found the hem of his boxers, ripping them down quickly. Your lips curved back into a smile, your frustration fading, when his gorgeous cock flew free and smacked angrily against Satoru’s abdomen. A smear of shiny precum spread over his skin in his tip’s wake, the pink head oozing generously. Your eyes grew, internally and temporarily stunned by Satoru’s size. He was long, unnaturally so, with bulging veins wrapped around his shaft and trailing upward. A soft tuft of white hair resided above his dick at the end of a teased happy trail.

Your (e/c) eyes admired his entire figure once more, his heaving breathing, sweaty brawny chest, the love bites you left behind, littering his collarbone and either side of his neck within circles of your lipsticks stains that trailed up to his nose behind your hand, his flushed skin, and sex dazed sapphire pools. 

“You’re such a pretty boy, Toru,” you praised. A glimmer of light flickered through his pupils in reaction to your gentle words, a stark contrast to the way harshly you pushed into him. 

Gradually, you wrapped your free digits around his base. Satoru moaned, broken voice rumbling into your hand. Your tongue touched the top row of your teeth as you reveled in the feeling of his dick in your hand. It twitched within your soft palm, fluttering toward you with a mind of it’s own.

“You wanna do me a favor, baby?” you asked, and Satoru nodded eagerly. “You wanna move my panties to the side so I can slide your pretty dick inside me?”

Satoru trembled, nodding again with fervor. You leaned down and kissed his cheek again. 

“Go ahead,” you spurred him on.

The white haired sorcerer wasted no time in reaching under you to rip his fingers into the thin strap of your thong. He stretched the band out desperately before feeling his way further down, freezing when he touched a cool patch of slick dripping from the cloth hiding your pussy from him. 

He pushed the fabric aside as you had advised him to and experimentally slid his fingers over your slit, collecting your sticky fluid as it seeped down his palm. His chest jumped with another muffled moan, eyes hardening when your dark lashes flickered and your thighs jerked over him. You were so wet for him, and you were trying not to show it on your face, but Satoru could tell that you were deprived of him, of real, attentive, passionate doting. He could tell that you needed him as much as he needed you.

Satoru allowed his mind to wander as he sank his index finger past your lips and into your warm, gooey walls. You mewled, hips bucking downward. “Satoru,” you warned, but your voice lacked your previous grit. The blue eyed man smirked behind your palm just seconds prior to your removal of it from his mouth. Your lids grew heavy over your eyes as he dragged his finger out and pushed it back in slowly, swirling around your gummy insides. “Ahhh, shit- f-fuck you!” you moaned, the sounds you released so pretty.

“Don’t fight it, gorgeous,” Satoru coaxed, finding his voice again. He plunged his finger deeper inside you, twisting and twirling so slowly that you almost saw stars. “Fucking hell, this pussy is so greedy. She’s sucking in my finger like it’s nothing. Such a perfect cunt for me.”

“St-Stop with that c-cocky shit, oohhh god,” you gasped, lowering yourself back down and ducking your head into Satoru’s shoulder as he worked another finger into you slowly, your juices squelching loudly with their lazy pump in and out. 

“So you can be cocky, but I can’t, hm?” he turned to murmur into your hair, listening to the sinful sounds your needy pussy made around his fingers. Your arousal proceeded to flood over him like a pool, drenching his wrist and dripping onto his balls and the wooden chair. “Mmmm, you really like this, baby. You’re drenching me so good, almost like you’ve never been fingered before.”

“This’s exactly-y why I covered y’r mouth,” you mumbled, breath hot against his neck. “You talk too goddamn muchhh, fuck, Toru, right there! Right fucking there, like thattt…”

“Hm? Like this?” he curled the tips of his fingers against your walls and you yelped, notifying him that he had discovered your sweet spot. “Right there, right pretty?”

“I already told you, yes,” you moaned, gripping the back of his chair. “Yes, yes,” you murmured, and Satoru hissed.

“Enjoy it, baby. So pretty. Such a gorgeous girl, such a gorgeous little pussy…”

“Fuck, Satoru,” you exhaled raggedly. The said man made a noise of acknowledgement, hypnotized by the steady stroke of his fingers into you. With your hand still wrapped over his cock, you slid your it up his shaft slowly, squeezing softly. Satoru’s fingers froze inside you, his face burying into your hair.

“Oh my god…” he grunted, closing his eyes. “Your hands are so perfect.”

“You’re whipped,” you teased, lifting your hips up into the air so that his fingers could reluctantly leave. 

Satoru studied the stretch of slick that connected his fingers to your cunt as they left your walls. Before he could protest, you were guiding his tip toward you and sliding your sloppy cunt overtop of it.

“(Y/n), fuckkkk,” Satoru drawled, jaw slack while he watched you ease your way down over him. The tip of his puffy dick slowly disappeared within your slimy walls, and his eyes rolled into the back of his skull with the toss of his head backward. His fingernails imprinted into your sides as you sank down, swallowing his girth and taking him into you.

You huffed out, moaning loudly with your hands now pressed into Satoru’s bare chest. His girth was quick to stretch you before you had even made it halfway. A whine caught in the back of your throat as your face tightened. You had never taken someone so big before, and he was filling you up so deliciously. You could feel every twitch, every curve, every ridge and vein of his heavy, lengthy cock as it slipped further into you, your walls tightening instinctively around him the further down you went.

“Oh, baby,” you purred. “Your dick’so… nghhh, shittt!”

“She’s soakin’ me,” Satoru choked out, assisting your glide down with the drag of your hips to his own. “So tight, god, pretty, you can’t be fucking real. You- this fucking pussy, hahhh, that’s it, baby. That’s it, keeping going. All the way. Please, baby, please. Want to fill you up. Need to be all inside this messy cunt.”

“So big,” you mused, watching as he sank into you halfway, and for the first time in your life, you paused. “Fuck, you’re in my stomach!”

“Take it all, honey, take fucking all of it. You got it, pretty girl. Keep going.”

“Don’t- hah- need your help, fucking- fuck!” You sank down further, pushing with the pull of Satoru’s desperate hands. Your breath left your lungs momentarily, Satoru’s long dick sliding up to the hilt of your pussy and stretching you absolutely full. You could feel him everywhere, your bum reaching his balls the moment you saddled onto him completely.

Satoru’s face stilled into blissful emptiness, staring down at where you were connected and the bulge that prodded against your lower tummy. “That’a girl, fuck, you’re so good,” he babbled, hands sliding up your back. His fingers blindly grabbing for a zipper. He peeled it down once he pinched it, curving his hands under your slipping dress as he exposed your bare skin to the empty space. 

The straps of your dress fell down your shoulders accordingly, revealing the plush of your pretty tits that peaked over the fabric. Satoru was overwhelmed, struck by your entire being as you warmed his trembling dick, perky nipples pressing into his line of sight as your dress fell around your waist.

Satoru pushed in, pressing his hands to your lower back and arching you into him as he touched his lips to the center of your tits. His dick nudged your insides with the motion and you inhaled sharply, holding onto him tightly.

“Could you be any more fucking perfect,” he grumbled, catching your perky nimble between his lips.

Your body leaned back and he craned forward along with you, hands supporting your weight to him as he teased your nipple between his teeth. His tongue followed swiftly, lapping over your bud and sucking hungrily off your tit, spit drooling from his mouth as he made out with the plush fat. Your moans carried just as your singing had, lifting melodically into the space and bouncing regally off of the confined walls and casting Satoru deeper under your trance.

“Smell s’good, taste so good, feel so, so good. Can’t get enough of you baby, can’t.”

“You’re so sappy,” you whispered, head rolling on your shoulders and eyes closing as your cunt clenched around him in pleasure.

Satoru moaned into your chest, marking up your boobs as you had his neck. “C’mon, baby,” he grunted. “Kill me.”

You were quick to carefully lift your hips, Satoru’s length sliding along your gummy walls. You were slow at first with the withdrawal before lowering yourself down heavily, his cock slamming back into your aching pussy. 

You both moaned in unison, and you wasted no more time. You set a steady pace, pushing up and pushing back down to sink over Satoru’s dick, juices leaking and mixing into his precum as you clenched repeatedly around him. You rode him out carefully, nails digging into his shoulders. 

“That’s it,” Satoru purred, peering up at you from under your other tit, eyes dark enough to sink into. “Ride me out, gorgeous, use my cock.”

“Fuck, Toru, you’ve got such a good dick,” you whimpered, reaching up to tug into his hair. Gojo’s eyes rolled, skin slapping lewdly with the collision of your ass rippling against his thighs. The slimy sound of his rock hard cock sliding from your drenched heat was like music to your ears, better than any song you had ever sung, better than any cheers you had ever received.

“Ah-ngh, baby, baby,” Satoru blabbered, already fucked out. “So fucking wet, dripping all over me. Pussy feels so good, so so good…”

“Yeah? You like when I ride your dick, baby? You like being the only one I get to fuck after my show? You like being my toy, tonight?”

“Fuck yes, love it so much. Fucking love the way you fuck this cock, pretty, don’t fucking stop.”

“That’s a good boy, Toru,” you purred, sitting fully onto him mid bounce to roll your hips into his. Satoru moaned loudly, uncaring of his volume. His mouth found your tit again, sucking like a madman as you rode him deeply, ensuring that he felt every corner of your pussy around him and that you felt every glide of his slender cock into your wet heat. “You’re so good, taking my pussy, yeah?”

His cock jerked inside you and he nodded dumbly, tongue swirling desperately over your reddened nipple. You hummed in ecstasy, pushing into him once more and pressing him back as you threw your ass down onto him, slick and pre melting between your connection and stretching with the rapid slaps of your hips into his. You moaned, brows pinching as you brought your lips to Satoru’s parted ones, his groans and whines sliding into your mouth with the insertion of your tongue against his. 

“Yessss,” you cooed into him. “So big, you’re filling me up so good.”

“I ca- nghhah,” Gojo was a mess, moaning helplessly as you bounced mercilessly onto his cock, trapping him against you so that neither of you had anywhere to go. “Sl-Slow down, pretty, fuckkk, shit, slow down,” he begged, but you ignored his pleas, bouncing faster as he held your hips shakily.

“Can’t take it, Toru? Hm?”

“Gonna make me fuckin’ cum already, baby, please…”

“So soon?” you nudged, lifting your hips up to roll slowly over his tip before slamming back down, continuing you pace. Satoru choked over his own voice, leaning his head back and slumping into the chair as it rocked angrily beneath your weight, attempting to support your angry thrusts. “Mmm, not surprised, baby. Saw the way you- shit, were looking at me earlier. Saw… saw your pretty hard on from onstage. You wanted my pussy so bad, didn’t you? You wanted to be snug inside me the second you saw me, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he whimpered, eyes screwed shut. “Needed you. Needed to fuck you in this pretty little slutty dress. Needed my dick in this pussy the moment you laid there in front of me. Fuck, wanted to take you right there,” he whined. His hands slid back to your thighs, pressing and clawing and squeezing. 

“I know, pretty boy, I know…”

“S’much better than I imagined. F-Fuck, fucking perfect. You’re so perfect. Fucking me just right, pretty.”

“You’ve got such a filthy mouth,” you groaned, head tossing back when Satoru’s dick brushed against your cervix, veins rubbing against your g-spot as you switched to rocking back and forth over him. Satoru’s hands grabbed your ass, his eyes flickering between the way your tits jiggled with your body and his dick bulged against your lower stomach with your grinding.

You knew just how to treat his dick, keeping him snug within your wet cavern and massaging it with the fluidity of your hips. “Nghmm, right there, Toru. Right thereee,” you sighed, face contorting with pleasure.

“Don’t stop, honey,” he reached a hand up to your face. “Don’t stop, keep going. Make yourself cum on my dick.”

“Fuck!”

“Yeahhhh,” he smoothed his thumb over your cheek. “Gorgeous baby, you look gorgeous.”

“Stop that,” you whimpered through broken moans, attempting to shift away from the warmth of his palm.

“Nuh-uh, pretty, let me look at you,” Satoru laced his fingers into the back of your hair, holding your face steady and your eyes to his. “Need to see those pretty eyes, they make me so hard.”

You couldn’t fight the moan that caught you, eyes swimming into his as you rolled your hips over his cock, eyes growing heavier and heavier as a knot built in your lower abdomen and your cunt clenched more frequently.

“Mhmmm,” Satoru hummed in satisfaction. “Keep looking at me, baby.”

“I said stop the sappy shit,” you gritted out through clenched teeth. You didn’t have time to pull his hand away, however, when his feet planted into the floor and he pushed up into you, throwing his arms around your lower waist to hold you to him. You cried out, curling against his chest as Satoru thrusted up into you desperately, balls slapping up against your skin as his hazy eyes peered over your shoulder to watch the connection.

“Come on, baby,” he grumbled into your ear. “Don’t give me that, let me admire you like you deserve.”

“Aghhhh, fuckkk,” you sobbed, your body rocking wildly with the force of Satoru’s thrusts. “God, m’fucking close.”

“Me too, pretty, me too,” Satoru’s voice dipped down ruggedly, an animalistic hoarseness to his tone. He couldn’t stop, fucking into you like a rabbit as if it was the very last thing on earth he was going to do. 

You whined, cunt drooling over him as it prepared you for your orgasm. Your clit rubbed against his rigid abdomen, stimulating your nerves further as you quickly approached.

“Give it to me, princess. Milk my fucking cock.”

“Cum inside, Toru,” you demanded, sinking your teeth into his shoulder. “Want your cum in me…”

“Fuck, baby, fuckkkk- mmmm, shit!”

Like an ocean crashing down onto the shore, your orgasms met each other simultaneously, juices drenching his cock with slippery white cream and sticky fluid. Satoru’s arms tightened around you, his seed splurging into your cunt endlessly, his hips rocking with the continual stream of his hot cum into your aching pussy. 

Your moans mixed into each other’s loudly, building into a symphony as you rode out your high, grinding weakly into him as your vision went white.

Satoru’s legs twitched, your own practically numb around his waist. His cum proceeded to leak into you, dripping down your legs and onto the floor. The two of you sat there in your breathless aftermath for a moment, Satoru tucking his nose into your shoulder and pressing a soft kiss there. He felt you sink against him, his hands smoothing gently over your back.

The moment you twitched against him, however, his cock jolted with continuous life. Satoru grunted, pushing himself up into you carefully to ease the remaining ache in his dick. You made a low noise, shifting your hips around him.

“Baby,” Satoru sighed. “Let me bring another one out of you.”

You twisted your head to the side, peeling back to look down at him curiously, slowly. Your eyes were tired, yet still dripping with lust, a soft smile playing at your lips. “Another one?” you repeated, somewhat shocked by his persistence.

“Please,” he whispered. “Need to feel you cum around me again.”

Before you could even respond, he was gripping you tight and standing from his now sticky seat. You kept your legs wrapped around him as he carefully laid you on the table, pushing your purse out of the way.

Satoru leaned over you, kissing your lips hungrily then pulling back to peck down your chest and stomach. He was suddenly so soft, caressing you and kissing you, and you watched suspiciously, unfamiliar and normally opposing this kind of contact.

Yet, you allowed Satoru to proceed.

His hands smoothed over your waist, his pants falling to his ankles. He yanked your bunched dress up and over your head, ridding your waist of the clothing article and throwing it carelessly to the side. He yanked your panties down further and slid a thumb over your clit, rubbing gentle, soothing circles over your sensitive, sopping bundle of nerves. 

You jolted, feeling his cock harden inside you again as he locked your lips together. He kept his finger rolling over your soaked clit, swallowing your mewls and soft moans into his mouth.

Your hands flew to his shoulders as he pushed into you gently, his cum dripping from your entrance and squishing back up into your cunt with his soft thrust. You broke your lips from his and moaned against him, angling your brows as your pleasure built back up in an instant. 

“Let me take care of this pretty pussy,” Satoru mumbled gently. “Seems like y’always take care of everyone else.”

“Satoru-“

“Shhh,” he hushed you as a broken moan fanned over his lips. He pulled back and thrusted back into you again, watching how your mouth froze open cutely and your eyes hardened. “Wanna keep feeling you. Let me keep feeling you.”

“Oh godddd…”

“Yeah, baby, yeah,” Satoru mumbled against you, pussy-drunk. He slid in and out of you with ease, pressing between your legs and pushing fully into you, ensuring that you felt every inch of him gliding back into your pretty cunt, stuffing your cunt back up with his cum. “Could stay in this pussy forever. Shit, she’s so loud. Such a good pussy. My good pussy.”

“Y-gonna split me in h-half,” you stammered, and Satoru grinned a dopey fucked out smile as he gazed at you.

“Look at you, baby,” he cooed, setting a slow pace that gradually picked up speed, rocking into you with the continuous swift caress of your clit. Your body was twitching, brows furling into the sky. “God, fucking look at you. M’so lucky, so lucky I got to have you tonight and not those other- f-fucking, ngh- bastards staring you up and down. Tonight, this pussy is for me. She’s treating me so good.., ruining me for any other pussy.”

“Uhhh, Toru,” you quivered. Satoru responded swiftly, bucking his hips and plowing into you rapidly, watching as your chest stuttered with shattered breaths and your legs writhed around him the quicker he moved circles over your puffy clit. “Gonna- fuck, what the fuckkk, gonna cum againnn…”

“Fuck, can’t get enough of you. Want you to come undone, baby, let go. Let gooo.”

You clawed at his arms, watching his fingers work over your clit and his dick spear into your quivering walls. You dragged your nails down his bicep, leaving bright red scratches, but Satoru couldn’t have cared less. 

You came again without warning, liquid gushing around his dick with your stunning cries. Satoru’s eyes glazed over, hand ripping from your clit so that he could cage over you, pressing his body down into yours as he demolished your pussy, squirt sprouting over his skin and with each pull away before he thrusted back in. Your fluids flew everywhere, and Satoru kept going. 

“Fuck!! Fuck, fuck, fuck, give it to me, baby, fuck meeee, fuck me harder, Toru!”

You were fucking insatiable. You clawed at his back as his inhumane strength kicked in, his hips snapping against yours with feral aggression, grunting and crying out into your ear. 

“Keep squirting on my dick, baby, just fucking like that. You’re so fucking good, love this sloppy cunt. It’s all for me, pretty, all for me.”

Tears pricked the corners of your eyes and Satoru wasn’t far behind you. He snapped himself into you three more times before stilling with a hefty groan, ropes more of his cum pooling into you and spilling onto the ground. He kept his body locked on top of yours, legs kicking around his torso as he fed you his seed, moaning pathetically into your skin. If you weren’t on birth control, you were absolutely sure that Satoru Gojo would have gotten you pregnant.

You huffed heavily, closing your eyes to catch your breath and soak in the silence. Never in your life had you been fucked the way this man had just fucked you at your place of work, and never in your life had you been worshipped or handled the way he had done so to you, despite your understanding of your impact on men.

You laughed suddenly once recovered, body jumping with your amusement. Satoru lifted his head from you, peering down at you, dazed, with his own gentle smile on his lips. 

“What’s funny?” he murmured, eyes taking you in like you hung the moon and the stars.

“Nothing, I just- don’t know what I expected from you,” you sighe.

Satoru tilted his head. “In a good or bad way?”

“A fucking good way.”

Your response was enough to have Satoru beaming, lowering his forehead to rest on your chest momentarily. “That’s all I needed to hear,” he breathed. “You really are something else, you know.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“No, really,” he lifted his head for a final time to lock eyes. “I mean it.”

Your face fell slightly as he looked at you. You sucked your teeth, pushing him away the moment your cheeks tingled. “You’re still too sappy.”

Satoru laughed softly. “How could I not be when you’re talented, gorgeous, and you have the best pussy I’ve ever felt in my life?”

“You’re telling me stuff I already know, honey. I’ve heard it all before..”

“Guess I’ll just tell you again and again,” Satoru grinned, stealing a swift kiss from your nose before sitting up carefully, looking down at where the two of you were still connected. “Uhhh… you wouldn’t happen to have a towel around here, do you?”

You grimaced, sitting up on your shoulders to survey the mess that kept the two of you united. You looked up at him, corners of your lips twitching. 

“How about we give each other head, lick it up, and call it a night?”

Satoru whipped his head back up to stare at you with wide eyes. You knew you had steered into the right direction when you felt his length harden inside you again.

“Sounds good to me,” he smirked.

•

The following day, Satoru dialed Utahime’s at around one pm. The line rang for a bit before it finally picked up.

“What?” the woman growled into the mic. 

“Utahimeee,” Satoru greeted cheerfully, instantly feeling the aggravation wave off of the brown eyed women from the other end of the line. “How are you today?”

“Fine, Gojo. What do you want?”

“Nothing, really. I just wanted to call to tell you that you were right all along. I’m humble enough to admit that. Last night was undoubtedly the best staff outing that we’ve ever had, and it was all thanks to you. I’ll let you plan the things we do more often now,” he beamed. 

“…”

Satoru could envision her pinching the bridge of her nose while her other hand pressed the phone to her ear.

Satoru’s lips tugged downward as he tried to hold back the amused laugh that was threatening to leave him. “You there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Oh. Did you hear what I said?”

“You two had sex, didn’t you?”

“Whatttt?” Satoru scoffed. “Me and who?”

“WHO ELSE, IDIOT?!”

The blue eyed man chuckled slightly. “Look, I never kiss and tell.”

“Then why did you call me?!”

“To thank you for your evening suggestion, obviously,” he said. “Oh, and to tell you that I put your little inquiry to the test.”

“What inquiry?”

“That (Y/n) would break me.”

Utahime exhaled loudly. “I really don’t want to hear about that details-“

“I told you already. I don’t kiss and tell,” Satoru reassured. “But, I will say, she’s really not all that evil.”

“I never said she was evil.”

“You said something along those lines.”

“Yes, I meant she schemes. You had sex with her once, Gojo. As long as it stays that way, it’ll be fine. But the longer you spend time with her, the deeper you’ll fall, and the faster you’ll be torn to shreds. She’s my friend and I love her, but I know very well how she gets with men. I’ve seen it a hundred times over.”

Satoru pursed his lips, thinking back to the two of you exchanging numbers after he had walked you home. 

“Utahime, let’s not forget who’s the strongest sorcerer of the modern age here. I’ll be fine. I don’t risk falling for anyone.”

“…yeah, that’s what they all say.”

Satoru didn’t take Utahime’s warning seriously, of course. You were too pretty for him to turn away from you so quickly, and if you were willing to keep a casual relationship that didn’t interfere with his line of work or your separation from so, he didn’t see any harm in the matter.

Satoru Gojo was the strongest to roam this planet, yes, but you had still somehow managed to bring the strongest to a point of vulnerability, to a place where he was willing to release his technique for you effortlessly, which he never did in the presence of anyone outside of his students, let alone for a non-sorcerer.

Satoru could absolutely understand and physically see where Utahime was coming from, for your impact on him was strangely inhumane despite you being one yourself but hell, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get you out of his head if he didn’t at least stop by to see you perform and feel himself inside you one more time, if anything. 

After all, what could have been the harm in that?

[ellewod]

the disrespect tom glynn-carney as an actor and aegon as a character have to endure — i am just angry tbh.

not only did tgc try to not have his character be a rapist, because he knew exactly that many viewers would never view him as anything else, and he was written that way so that everyone would despise him, in favor of more cherished characters.

no, important and very strong scenes, especially after b&c — not even talking about aegon’s dynamic with helaena, and moments with his children which were not even planned to explore by those writers because they hate him — got cut. they would have shown aegon’s rage and pain, as well as tgc’s abilities as an actor. they got cut, yet we got a billion hours of daemon at harrenhal. unnecessary romance and unnecessary sex scenes.

what’s most important, however, is that tgc STILL gave the performance of a lifetime. he was supposed to be a lead character, rhaenyra’s opponent, yet he got less screen time than daemon.

tom was able to give a character that was humiliated, and stripped of his abilities and strengths DEPTH.

so please look at this and tell me that any other cast member deserved an award nomination more than he did.

yeah i thought so

[milkteabinniechan]

got sudden inspiration from limbo lee know and..

rockstar best friend lino who thinks he's a bad influence on you despite being in love eith you so very much. he's rough around the edges, mean, sarcastic not everyone gest him. but you only see him as the soft-spoken golden-hearted childhood friend who got hotter over the years.

angst that end with crying into eachothers arms about how much they love eachother????

🪻

♡stuck in limbo with you - minho

membership // m.list

A best friend that treats you like a princess. You tease him that he is like a bodyguard that fell in love with his client. But it was true. Painfully true. He had never said it out loud but Minho was head over heals for you and he couldn't hide it any longer. When he helped you buckle your shoes for the show.

"How do I look?" You asked so innocently.

He stood back to fully take you in. He stared in silence for a while. As if he was flipping through every page of every poetry book he had ever read to find the perfect words to describe you. He took a deep breath in and finally said, perfect.

You were in the front row like always. Cheering on your best friend, your number one. He looked so handsome up there on stage. He had a glow about him that made the rest of the world look dark. You knew that light was brightest when he was performing.

You made your way to the familiar path backstage. You nodded at the bouncers and smiled at security. You pushed the dressing room door open to see the regular scene. Half naked, beautiful girls throwing themselves on Minho. He was the brooding bad boy that everyone wanted.

You made eye contact with Minho and obnoxiously rolled your eyes. He flashes you a teasing smile before standing up and moving the girls aside. Minho made his way to you,

"Ready to go?" His eyes sparkle that familiar sparkle that you loved so much.

You nodded your head and the two of you made your way out of the dressing when one of the girls called Minho's name. He exhaled and rolled his eyes, turning around and giving the girl a firm "What?"

You watched at Minho and the girl argued, an argument that you had heard many times before with many other pretty girls. The current girl pouted and stomped her foot, demanding that Minho stay and party with her and her friends. Minho gave a careless response and told her he was busy.

The girl, now visibly upset, makes sharp eyes at you. The gears in her head turned quickly, realizing that you were Minho's aforementioned plans. She spat out an insult about you, something about the way you looked or dressed, but you couldn't really hear her.

However, what happened next was what really shocked you. Minho's hands clenched tight into fists, his body becoming stiff and rigid. The look in his eyes looked as though he could burn a hole right through that poor girl.

Minho spoke in a low, deep tone, "Everyone out, Now..."

One of Minho's bodyguard's recognized his tone and swiftly gathered everyone out of the room. You stayed close to the wall while everyone walked out of the door, the girl trailing behind at the end shooting daggers at you as she left.

You took a deep breath and walked over to Minho. You placed a gentle hand on his arm, feeling him instantly relax at your touch. He turns his head and locks eyes with you, his gaze softening when he sees your face again. Minho reached his hand out and moved a bit of hair from your face, tucking it behind your ear. This was the Minho that no one else got to witness. He looked at you with such admiration and love. He took care of you like no one else could.

"Are you okay?" You asked, scanning Minho's face with concern.

Minho crossed the dressing room and sat down on the couch. He let his head fall into his hands and sigh deeply, "I don't know."

Exhaustion was painted across Minho's strong features. You sat down next to him and rested your head on his shoulder. You breathed in his scent, searching for the words that he needed to hear. You opened your hand near Minho's lap, letting him intertwine his fingers with yours.

"I'm just... So tired." Minho said finally. Tears began to trickle down his face. You watched the man you love start to crumble in front of you. Your heart ached for him, more than your heart could ever ache.

"Minho. I'm going to tell you this because... Because I have to," you started, your heart racing rapidly.

Minho sniffled and turned his head toward you, curious and eyes wide. You took a deep breath and continued,

"Minho, I love you. I love you so much it hurts. It physically hurts to love you, to see the life you've chosen. And I... I could make you happy. You could choose me."

The tears in Minho's eyes matched your own as the two of you sat in a emotional silence. His face was unreadable as his body leaned towards you. A deep kiss hits your lips with a haste that sets your entire body ablaze. Tears continued to fall down both of your faces as your deepen the kiss. The kiss was the kiss you always hoped it would be, but in the back of your mind you couldn't help but remind yourself that Minho still hadn't said anything...

[bogleech]

So like, in people without ADHD, your brain enters a kind of anticipatory state when you're going to do something - anything at all, as small as getting a drink of water or as big as paying your rent - and then releases the reward juices when you actually do it, after which the brain, with or without your input, will attempt to hurry your thoughts along to a different unfinished task. You like to think you control all of this consciously, that you decide you're gonna do stuff and you decide when it's done and then you pick some other stuff, but a lot of it really is automated. So, the sinister thing about ADHD is that when your brain is unable to release normal adequate levels of the reward chemicals, it doesn't have a strong frame of reference for when a task has been accomplished in real life. It doesn't experience a big enough difference between merely planning out the action and performing the action, so when you sit there and you think about what you should do and you go through the steps of it in your head, the single celled idiots who live in there feel like you basically just did all of those things and they celebrate a job well done with their pathetic little squirt of endorphins and they mark it off your to-do list.

And because those same inadequate reward juices also fuel your working memory, they very easily forget about the task altogether, which means the conscious part of you is highly likely to also forget whether you did that thing or even if it ever needed doing at all, and the little idiots dig through their files to alert you to something else they want to go over. But sooner or later the conscious part of you is going to pick up on the cues that there was something you meant to do and you didn't do, maybe seconds later or maybe days later, who the hell knows. Then you think about how you're going to do it and your little guys think "oh shit we're doing this again? Huh weird but GOOD JOB AGAIN EVERYONE!" and this can continue on a loop until the sun goes down and all you did since you woke up was scroll social media. This is not exclusive to ADHD, though; ADHD is when this is life-alteringly chronic. There are many other reasons your brain might be understimulated and not making its own coffee like it's supposed to. Neurotypical people might just experience this whenever they're tired enough. If it's 24/7/365 to the point that a lot of people just think you're flaky or lazy or apathetic, that might be ADHD. Your idiots are in there play-pretending your whole productive life without you.

[44ryder]

Ror characters I think would be great at ✨giving✨

Buddha

Hands down. With his love for food, ya know he would definitely wanna taste you all the time for like an hour at least and make you cum multiple times and then clean up the mess himself *wink wink* and the fun doesn’t stop there, you two always have sex right afterwards because your orgasms always turn on Buddha so much, and he knows he’s good, he would constantly tease you about how much you like him going down on you, even in public

Buddha: *takes a sip of tea but it’s still too hot to drink* “Ah crap! I burned my tongue!”

(Y/n) “Are you alright, honey?”

Buddha: “are you worried for me or are ya worried I won’t be able to lick ya all up tonight~”

Hercules

I can’t even! Hercules is such a people pleaser, he definitely makes it his mission to make sure his lover is 100% satisfied, especially to relax you after a stressful day. Although, I feel like he’d be slow to hints, so sometimes you just gotta straight up ask him to go down on you but he’ll be on his knees in an instant right after because he could never say no to the love of his life and he honestly loves it because he loves to hear your moans and feel your shaky thighs around his face gets him so hard all the time, it’s takes you a little longer to reach your orgasm because Hercules will take his time with you like kissing your inner things and fingering you slowly, so normally you finish once but it’s a big one that has your entire body drained afterwards. you don’t have to have sex afterwards, if you want to of course Hercules will gladly oblige but if you’re tired after your climax, Hercules will gladly cuddle you until you fall asleep in his strong arms or he’ll draw you a soothing bath with your favorite candles and chocolates and rub your neck and shoulders in a well needed massage. The entire time your receiving Hercules will be giving you praises and telling you how much he looks you the entire time because he knows that’s what you like.

(Y/n): *finishes*

Hercules: “mm that’s my girl, I love you so much. Can I draw you a nice bath…or does my empress want me to please her again~”

Apollo

The man’s obviously a lady killer so his tongue and other things are golden. But it’s extremely rare that he’ll go down on you because Apollo wants the spotlight on him but when he does he’ll have you finished in minutes and you’ll always beg for more and he’ll deny you your plea saying “a true performer does not cave to the plea for an encore, you should have made the feeling last longer, dove.”

But he’ll always be ready to fill you with something else right after

Loki

I’m not the biggest fan of Loki but we’ve all seen his crazy long tongue so he def would hit some deep spots of yours just right and have you finishing in minutes. But he wouldn’t do it for a long time in your relationship because he was too uptight, thinking it was weird at first until you finally convinced him to try. He was instantly addicted but he would never tell you and he would wait until you beg him to go down on you again before he made the first move. And he would totally do it in public places so most times you wouldn’t have sex afterwards, and he would constantly whine that his jaw hurts hours later.

(Y/n) “Loki! This is the common area, someone could walk in!”

Loki: “then you better hurry up and cum, my pet~”

Hours later at dinner

“Ugh! I can’t eat another bite, my jaw hurts so so much and it’s all (y/n)’s fault! I guess I have to starve.”

You, beet red in embarrassment while Thor uncomfortably tries not to throw up his dinner and Odin glares at Loki as his crows caw in shock

Shiva

The man has three wives so we know he has learned a thing or two to keep everyone satisfied. I feel like he would rock your world with an orgasm that would last for days and that’s a good thing because you have to share him with his other wives so yes he’s skillful but very rarely has you all to himself. And shiva is giving greedy vibes in bed so he has to be satisfied first if you want him to treat you well. And shiva is a very laid back person so it lasts a long time and definitely leads into sex with him and maybe the other wives. Shivas more into naughty words than loving words during the act so he’d constantly tell you things like,

Shiva: “look at you… so dirty, like the slut you are, I’m only using my mouth and your putty in my hands, such a bad girl you are.”

Brunhilde

Last but not least. We all know our girl is a total freak in bed so she would run laps around these boys when giving oral for sure. But we all know brunhilde has a dark side so she’ll definitely be going down on her partner but pull away before they finish and demand they earn the right to orgasm. Hilde could finish you in seconds but chooses to have you wiggling for as long as she pleases. And she also has no problem using her skills to win an argument.

“Be a good girl/boy and have this place spotless when I get back or you’ll be empty and alone tonight.”

[taexual]

sleepwalking ● 16 | jjk

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader

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

genre: rockstar!jungkook / exes to lovers

warnings: fluff (if you squint really really hard), ANGST, strong language, explicit descriptions of violence & the process of cleaning wounds, mentions of loss of consciousness, SLOW BURN

words: 12.2k

read from the beginning ○ masterlist

chapter 16 ► i’m still your favourite regret, you’re still my weapon of choosing

The performance in Cologne the next day passed by in a blur. Jungkook refused to speak to anyone and only opened his mouth when it was absolutely necessary during the sound check—and even then, most of his vocabulary consisted of grunts or monosyllables.

He wouldn’t have called it sulking—he would have called it existential sorrow—but from the perspective of those around him, that was what this was.

He had dreamed of a happy ending with you. Now, he feared there would be no ending at all. He feared you’d leave and your goodbye would come in a letter. Or maybe just a farewell email.

“I had a wonderful time working with you and I wish you all the best for the future,” would be the last thing you’d write. The last thing you’d say.

You’d leave and he would never see you again.

Although he didn’t talk to you, Jungkook watched you a lot. The band had to do some interviews backstage before the Cologne show, and you were in the room with them, behind the camera. He counted, you only looked at him once.

After the concert, Jungkook took a long shower, but it could not drown his fears. When he returned to the hallway outside the dressing rooms, he saw that the post-show drinks were already finished and everyone had returned to the bus. He’d hoped that would happen. He needed a few more minutes alone.

He entered the changing room with a towel draped over his shoulders and quickly changed his shorts into sweatpants. Just as he pulled his hoodie over his head—somewhat laboriously, as his arms were still damp from the shower—he heard something vibrating against the leather couch in the room.

Confused, he pulled the hoodie on and walked over to the couch. He didn’t recognise the phone, but Taehyung was calling it, so chances were good that the device belonged to Luna. He made a mental note to bring it to her and placed it back on the couch while he packed the rest of his things.

He had just unzipped his bag when he heard the door open and turned his head. His expectant heart immediately jumped over several beats at the possibility that this was you.

But it was the furthest thing from you.

It was Sid.

Sid had many useless, irritating talents, but always finding Jungkook when he was alone, was his most impressive one.

Jungkook started to roll his eyes even before Sid spoke up, but that didn’t deter the older boy from entering the room.

“You’ve been ignoring us the whole day,” Sid said, closing the door behind him. “Well, I don’t care if you ignore everyone else. But you’ve been ignoring me, and I can’t allow that.”

Jungkook threw his jeans and shorts into the bag.

“That is so kind,” he said without looking up. “Did you miss me that much?”

“I did,” Sid said, and even without looking at him, Jungkook knew he had his usual psychotic grin on. Leaning against the dressing table, Sid added, “the clock’s tick-tick-ticking.”

“If you don’t leave me alone right now,” Jungkook retorted, unplugging his charger and packing it, too, “my foot is going to be kick-kick-kicking your ass.”

Sid merely snorted at the threat. “You’re very hostile, you know? It’s just a bet.”

Jungkook scoffed.

He remembered hoping that Sid would eventually forget about the bet if no one mentioned it. How very naive he had been. Sid would never forget. He was like a hateful elephant in this case—he had a flawless memory for anything that benefited him and was constantly at the centre of attention in any room he was in, making it impossible to escape his presence.

Jungkook couldn’t believe that he had once clung to the Katana so tightly that he didn’t even consider the possibility of losing the bet as soon as he made it. It seemed absurd now. What did he want to prove? Nothing made sense to him anymore.

“Is it? Really? Just a bet?” he rebutted, moving closer to Sid with each question. “Because when I told you I wanted to end it, you acted like we signed a fucking contract.”

Sid shrugged, his indifference as irritating as it was insincere.

“A bet’s still a bet,” he replied. “You’ve got to keep your word.”

Rolling his eyes, Jungkook turned around and grabbed his hairdryer from the table. They had already argued about this before. He didn’t have the energy to keep doing it, and he still had things to pack.

“Get fucked, Sid.”

“Come on,” Sid said, clearly expecting a more grandiose response from him. “You keep saying that. But I’m willing to talk to you here. Tell me what happened.”

Jungkook glared at him through his peripherals. “What the fuck do you mean, what happened?”

“Well, you were acting so bold and confident before,” Sid said in a breathy voice, presumably to imitate Jungkook’s manner of speaking. “You were sure you’d get back together, no problem.”

“No,” Jungkook countered, straightening up. “I was sure we could go on a date, no problem. That was the extent of the bet for me.”

It was bad enough, he knew. But he couldn’t move forward if he didn’t own up to it.

“Aww.” Sid tilted his head sideways and pursed his lips to feign sympathy. “But you couldn’t even do that...”

“I fucking—okay,” Jungkook stopped when he felt his agitation grow. There was a voice in his head—very similar to yours—reminding him that Sid wasn’t worth it. “Get out. I’m serious.”

“Was that all talk?” Sid continued as if the younger boy hadn’t spoken. “Admit it, and maybe we’ll come to a different agreement about the bet.”

“Get,” Jungkook said, gritting his teeth, “out.”

Sid clicked his tongue, but the pleasure that this interaction brought him was prominent in his eyes. Antagonising Jungkook was his favourite part of the day.

“Predictable,” he said. “It seems I overestimated you, after all.”

“What the fuck are you on about now?”

“Well, you know,” Sid continued to spin his webs around Jungkook. “You and your manager. I thought you’d win the bet for sure.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jungkook asked, “yet you still agreed to it?”

Sid’s eye twitched slightly—Jungkook felt a great sense of satisfaction at the sight; it wasn’t often that Sid was forced to question his own logic, however momentarily—but he recovered too quickly.

“I like to gamble.” He shrugged. “What can I say?”

“You can shut up,” Jungkook suggested.

“However, you didn’t manage to do it,” Sid went on. “And I have to say, I am genuinely surprised. Not about you, no. I always knew you were pathetically in love with her, that’s just who you are. No offence, just the truth, really. But she’s just—I mean, come on.” He paused to laugh, one hand on his stomach as if he found himself so amusing that he needed to keep his guts from spilling out. “You fluttered your eyelashes at her once, and she went to Paris with you. She’s that fucking easy.”

Jungkook felt the room still as he lifted his gaze from Sid’s stomach to his eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Oh, you know what I mean.” Sid’s grin was about as wide as the distance from this venue to the nearest hospital, where Jungkook thought he was about to send him.

Sid pushed himself off the table he’d been leaning against and walked over to the rack of clothes next to the couch. Jungkook watched him, stiff and belligerent.

“I thought she was keeping you on a short leash. And don’t blame me. I mean, you always ran after her as soon as she called,” the older boy continued, laughing with a little shake of his head—as if in disbelief. He turned and leisurely strolled back towards Jungkook. “But she—I mean, I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much, but even I could have taken her out if I wanted to. Honestly, man, I’m surprised you couldn’t do it. She’s that specific type—you know the one—where she’ll say yes to anyone if they just put in enough effort—”

Jungkook’s punch landed right on the side of Sid’s mouth, cutting him off.

Something in Sid’s neck cracked as the blunt force twisted his head to the side. The corner of his mouth was bleeding, but he still had an almost defiant look in his eyes when he turned back to Jungkook. The tips of his fingers were painted scarlet when he pulled them back from his lips.

“I fucking warned you,” Jungkook growled while Sid continued to stare at his hand. “Get your ass out of here right fucking now or I swear they’ll have to carry you out of here in a fucking box.”

Sid spat the blood from his mouth on the floor and glared at Jungkook.

“That the best you can do?” he challenged. “Huh? Maybe that’s why you couldn’t even get someone like her to—”

Jungkook raised his fist again, but Sid had already been anticipating it. He pushed Jungkook’s hand back with his forearm, knocking the younger boy off balance for a moment—it was then that he landed a punch on Jungkook’s left cheekbone.

A sharp pain surged through the side of his face, but Jungkook was wide awake and furious.

In less than a second, he noticed Sid swinging back again—Sid had always been strong but slow—and Jungkook blocked his blow with his left wrist and rammed his shoulder into Sid’s chest, pushing him into the wall and wrapping an arm around him. The older boy thrashed and squirmed with raging strength until he freed one of his hands.

Jungkook tried to pin Sid’s left arm against the wall—he was left-handed if barely even that—but, being the massive pile of unbelievably lucky crap that he was, Sid managed to use his right fist to reach the boy restraining him.

Sid’s unexpected southpaw caught Jungkook just as he was lowering his head to avoid the blow from the older boy’s dominant hand—and his right fist connected with the side of Jungkook’s head, between his eye and temple.

“You’re f-fucking embarrassing,” Sid snarled, bloodied and breathless, as Jungkook staggered backwards, dazed from the blow. “Weak fucking piece of sh-shit. Birds of fucking feather, you two—both fucking worthless and—”

Sid inhaled quickly before finishing his sentence—but then he ended up not even finishing his breath.

Aggravated and filled with raw adrenaline, Jungkook delivered a furious uppercut, his fist colliding solidly with Sid’s chin. The older boy was propelled backwards by the force—Jungkook heard the thud as his head hit the wall.

Already groaning, Sid was determined to fight back—never mind that the room was spinning—but Jungkook took advantage of the moment while Sid’s vision was still cloudy and pinned him against the wall with his full weight.

“I thought I told you to shut the fuck up,” he hissed, pressing his forearm against Sid’s neck.

Choking, Sid immediately grabbed Jungkook’s arm to push him off, but Jungkook had a clear strength and fury advantage. He did not budge as the older boy resisted him.

Sid knew this wasn’t a good look for him—he could feel that if Jungkook pushed his forearm into his neck any harder, he’d lift him off the ground. Unable to breathe, the older boy paled, but his eyes were black with rage.

“Face the fff-fuh-fucking facts. You’re weak,” Sid wheezed, livid. There was blood in his mouth and something else that rolled around his tongue when he spoke. “And she’s a f-fucking—”

“One more fucking word,” Jungkook warned, pressing his arm harder into Sid’s throat—the other boy couldn’t even look at him anymore, his head was pushed too far back, “and you’ll have to be fucking dissected to find out what the fuck happened to you.”

Sid gasped for breath but refused to stop speaking. “I—unf—f-fucking—”

“What the fuck—” a shrill, startled voice demanded from behind the two boys, “—is going on?!”

Jungkook jumped—Sid felt his arm shove deeper into his throat and let out a half-stifled cry—and turned to see Luna standing wide-eyed in the doorway of the changing room.

He tore himself away from Sid, who dropped his hands to his knees, panting and clutching his throat before straightening again as though nothing was wrong. But his attempt to inhale properly resulted in another violent coughing fit. He bent over to spit out some blood and something else.

The two boys watched as a tooth rolled into the revolting mixture of spit and blood on the floor. Sid looked appalled as he reached for his mouth again, almost prepared to count all his teeth to check if he’d really lost one or if spare teeth were just something he carried around in his mouth without realising.

“Do I have to ask again?!” Luna cried, too shocked to make sense of what she had the unfortunate luck of interrupting.

“It’s okay, Luna,” Jungkook said, wiping his hands on his sweatpants. “Sid was just leaving.”

Sid glared at him, coughed again, and leaned in closer.

“All bark,” he hissed hoarsely. Jungkook could see the small gap next to Sid’s lower canine when he opened his mouth. “No bite.”

“Get fucked,” Jungkook said. “And pack your shit. Don’t come anywhere near me again or you’ll be eating through a fucking straw.”

He watched as Sid narrowed his eyes, fighting a battle within himself. Jungkook’s jaw was clenched, his fists ready to strike if he made another comment or exhibited any signs of even thinking about you.

Finally, Sid turned around and stormed out of the room. As soon as he walked down the corridor without so much as a glance at Luna, she went inside.

Still completely bewildered, she stopped abruptly in the middle of the room. The pool of blood was between her and Jungkook, and they both looked at it for a moment.

“What—” she began, then paused to suppress her disgust as she lifted her gaze from the floor to Jungkook. “What the hell happened here?”

He walked over to one of the cupboards by the window, searching for towels. He needed to clean this up or the venue would report the damages to you.

“Nothing,” he replied.

“You’re bleeding,” Luna said, stepping closer. Jungkook froze as she took one of the towels from him and reached up to his temple. “You’re bleeding so much, in fact, that you might need stitches.”

He shook his head—and then received a punch in the ribs from her. He yelped in surprise and learnt to stand still while she wiped the blood off.

“It’s fine,” he insisted. His temple throbbed with pain, but it still couldn’t compare to the sharp-edged emptiness that he’d felt all day.

“It’s not fine,” Luna said, pulling away. The towel was soaked with blood. Jungkook had to admit that he was surprised he was bleeding so much. Despite the sharpness of Sid’s fists, he had assumed that he’d been merely scratched. “Let me find—”

“No!” His eyes were wide in sudden panic. “Don’t—don’t bring her here. Actually, don’t tell her about the mess here at all. Please?”

Luna watched him for a moment, her eyebrows drawn together in confusion (was he serious?) and eyes bright with pity (what a shame to be so stupid).

“Jungkook,” she said patiently. “You’re going to have bruises all over your face. Probably even a black eye.”

He exhaled and looked down.

He knew he couldn’t keep this from you, but involving you now was the worst possible thing he could do. He was supposed to make things right.

“I know,” he said slowly, “but—I’m… I don’t want this to be another one of my messes that she has to clean up. That would definitely make her give up and go to Reconnaissance.”

Luna lowered her gaze, taking a moment to process the fact that Jungkook knew about the other band, but instead of the hysterics that everyone would have expected from him, he’d been rather composed all day today. Until he got into a fight with Sid, of course.

She tossed the towel onto the puddle of blood on the floor. She had no intention of cleaning it up herself, but she couldn’t stand to look at it.

“Well, have you considered not getting into this mess in the first place?” she asked then.

“Believe it or not, he started it,” Jungkook mumbled as he gathered more towels from the cupboard.

“Does that even matter now?”

Luna had to step back as he bent down to mop the floor. Some blood had already seeped into the wooden floorboards, but Jungkook scrubbed over the stain with the towel anyway.

“No,” he said, concentrating his irritation on the repetitive motions as he wiped the floor. “I guess not.”

“At least let me get some band-aids for you.” She looked around the room. There didn’t seem to be any first-aid kits here, but she had a few band-aids in her bag that she’d left in the waiting area outside. “Although I don’t know if that’s even enough.”

“It is enough,” Jungkook said. “I’m fine. He barely—barely touched me.”

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Luna turned to the door, muttering under her breath, “fucking boys.”

Jungkook couldn’t help a small smile.

“I heard that!” he shouted.

“I wanted you to!” she shouted back without turning around.

He chuckled, then winced at the sharp twinge in his temple. The adrenaline must have worn off, or the pain was getting stronger. He stopped scrubbing the floors, hoping to leave a message for the organisers and personally apologise for the mess later.

Then he crossed his legs on the ground and leaned his head against the wall. For just one second, he closed his eyes and rested.

He made a decision while he did.

He resolved to make sure that Sid wouldn’t come anywhere near him, Rated Riot, or you.

He finally realised that he had friends here—real friends. They had been here all along, the people who loved him. Hoseok, who took care of him when he was hungover. Yoongi, who tried to find help when he thought Jungkook was feeling a little too much. Taehyung, who didn’t leave even after Jungkook admitted how much he’d fucked up. And Luna, who looked about ready to physically beat some sense into him, but still stayed to help him with his wounds. Namjoon, Jimin, Seokjin, and Maggie, too—honestly, the entire team who laughed at his jokes, teased him and always supported him.

Although he was still worried about being alone with his thoughts, Jungkook knew he didn’t need Sid to fill the void. Now he wondered if Sid had always been the void he was trying to escape.

He was determined to prevent history from repeating itself. These people that he’d desperately wanted to call friends had already contributed significantly to your break-up once before, without him realising it.

Well, now he realised it. And he was going to fix it—all of it.

He could start by eliminating the reason why he kept making the same mistakes.

A minute later, Luna returned to the room. The sight of Jungkook sitting on the floor with his eyes closed made her look twice as she felt her heart drop in sudden anxiety.

She thought about turning around and looking for you, because you had a lot more patience to deal with this than she thought she did. But then, she knew that another argument was the last thing you or Jungkook needed right now.

She took a deep breath and approached him.

“Here,” she said as she grabbed another towel and squatted down next to him with the few band-aids that, frankly, seemed meagre when she saw the cuts and bruises on his face up close. “Let me help you.”

Jungkook had only briefly opened his eyes to look at her and then closed them again.

“Thank you,” he said as she wiped more blood from the side of his face before applying the band-aid. She didn’t mean to be gentle. She wanted him to understand how much he’d messed up. But her movements ended up being tentative and careful anyway.

“Don’t thank me,” she said, biting her lip as the blood immediately seeped through the band-aids. They would not hold; they both knew that. She sighed and pulled away from him. “She will see this. You will have to argue with her again. I can’t help you with that.”

He nodded his head once. “I know.”

Luna rose and walked over to the back of the room, considering this. She leaned her hip against the table and looked back at him.

“I don’t, um—okay. For what it’s worth,” she said, resting her hands on the table on either side of her. “I don’t think she’ll quit. Not even over this.”

“You really believe that?” Jungkook asked, opening his eyes. The hope in them was so bright that it was almost blinding.

Luna nodded. “She loves the band too much. Not even you can change that.”

He looked down. That would have to be good enough, he decided—just the fact that you would stay, even if it wasn’t for him. Even if it was despite him.

“I-I hope you’re right,” he said quietly.

“Okay, so now—” Luna jumped onto the table to take a seat, “—tell me what happened with Sid.”

Ordinarily, this would have been a long story. But Jungkook knew Taehyung might have made telling it a bit easier for him.

“Taehyung said you know about the bet?” he asked to be sure.

“Yeah. He told me back in Tilburg after he saw you leave with her to talk. Or, well, he assumed you would talk,” Luna explained. “In any case, you should be grateful that I know my strengths. Otherwise, I’d be punching you, too.”

Considering how much smaller than him Luna was, Jungkook smiled reflexively.

“I appreciate you not doing that,” he said with genuine respect.

“I’ve mentally kicked your ass, though.”

“Well, I deserve that, I guess.”

“So, this was about the bet, then?”

Jungkook sighed. He hadn’t technically allowed Sid to say any additional adjectives after he’d called you “easy,” but even this was too much. Jungkook wasn’t sure if he could talk about it without wanting to rip Sid’s eyes out and feed them to him.

“He was… just riling me up. He said some—some things,” he said, choosing a gentler word, even though several more appropriate expletives came to mind. “And he took it too far. Trust me, he deserved to get hit.”

“Oh, I trust you,” Luna said. “I just don’t think you should have been the one to hit him.”

Jungkook swallowed, feeling a metallic taste in his mouth. It didn’t bother him much. He’d tasted worse in the past few days.

“If I didn’t do it,” he said, “no one else would have.”

“Why are you so sure about that?” Luna asked, her voice less confident.

Most of what she knew about Jungkook and Sid came from questionable fan accounts she’d seen online—the stories she read were almost always outrageous, but now that she’d gotten to know Sid on this tour, she found those accounts much more plausible. Surely then, if Sid was this loathsome to everyone, someone was bound to deck him sooner or later.

“Everyone else is afraid of him,” Jungkook replied.

“And you’re not?” she asked.

The question felt mocking—even though it didn’t sound like that was Luna’s intention.

He thumped his head against the wall. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

The room was silent for a few minutes as Jungkook sat motionless, and Luna’s gaze kept wandering to the pile of towels on the bloodstained floor and then back to his resigned figure against the wall.

“Can I ask you something?” she said then.

His voice was tired. “Yeah.”

“Why did you make this bet in the first place?”

He inhaled, and a sharp, stabbing pain shot up from his lungs to his throat. It probably wasn’t a good sign, but he did not have the energy to worry about it at the moment.

He scratched the uninjured side of his face with his hand—his knuckles bruised and torn—and let his fingers linger there. It was a reflexive reaction, Luna observed, as he tried to hide from her. Or, rather, from her question.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Sid and Jude were getting in my head about how I was like some—I don’t know, pathetic. They made me feel like I was less of a person because I still had feelings for her.”

“Less of a person,” Luna said, “or less of an asshole that they seem to be trying—and succeeding—to be?”

Jungkook sighed, allowing the pins and needles to settle in his oesophagus. He wanted to say something but swallowed the answer with the bitter taste in his mouth.

“So, you made the bet to prove them wrong?” she asked in response to his silence.

“I—I don’t know,” he said again. He sometimes felt like he was a different person when he was with his friends. And now that he was determined to never see Sid again—but the repercussions of their friendship were still evident—Jungkook didn’t know who he really was anymore. “I think, at first, I agreed to the bet to prove a point.”

Luna raised her eyebrows. “But there was another reason?”

“Yeah, I think that… there was something else,” he said with a slow nod. “I realised later that I might have agreed to the bet because I wanted to win it. Not—not for the money, and not just to prove that I wasn’t pathetic. I just really—I wanted to go on that date with her. I wanted her. And the bet was—it was a kick in my ass to finally act on my feelings.”

Luna’s eyebrows suddenly dropped in disappointment and she turned away to hide her expression, even though Jungkook was too weary to lift his head and look up.

“There were better ways to act on them, you know,” she said. “Less painful ways, too.”

“Oh, I know,” he said with a wry smile. “Unfortunately, I’m fucked up.”

“You… you’re not fucked up,” she said, although to be honest, after learning about the bet, she thought he might be. But now that she saw how much his choices tormented him, she realised that he wasn’t all black and white. He was very, very grey. “You just did a fucked-up thing.”

Jungkook snickered weakly. “That’s nice of you to say. But I was always… I’d always been a problem.”

“Because of your friends?”

“Yeah—well, mostly, yeah. B-but she—” he paused here as another jolt of pain shot through his chest at the mention of you. He filled his lungs completely with another sharp intake of breath, then tried again. “She still—she still loved me. You know? I used to look at my friends and think I had nothing compared to them. But then I met her, and I—I had everything. I didn’t deserve her, but I—she was with me. She wanted to be with me. And she was the one good thing in my life. And I took that for granted. And now that I—now that we… anyway. I blew it. Now I really have nothing. Serves me right, I know. I just wish she wasn’t—I wish I hadn’t hurt her.”

Luna closed her eyes and sighed in response to the endless additions that Jungkook could not seem to control as he spoke.

She felt a little upset, she couldn’t help it. But she also felt a little giddy. She’d never heard Jungkook say these things about you, but she’d suspected that was how he felt all along.

However, she wasn’t one to make empty promises, especially when those promises were not within her control, so she could not say things like ‘you two will be fine’ or ‘you didn’t blow it.’

Honestly, she couldn’t find an appropriate response no matter how much she tried, so for a good minute, the two of them sat in silence.

Then, Jungkook finally raised his eyes from the ground. “Why’d you come here, by the way? I thought everyone was on the bus.”

Luna blinked, remembering suddenly.

“I left my phone here after the show,” she said, instinctively checking her pockets to make sure she really did not have it.

“Oh.” He pointed to the opposite side of the room. “I think I heard it vibrate. On the couch.”

“Ah.” She pushed herself off the table. “Thanks.”

He watched through his eyelashes as she picked up her phone. One of his eyelids was dropping and he was afraid to blink.

When Luna glanced at the screen—and probably saw the missed call from Taehyung—Jungkook said, “you should go.”

She turned around and took in the scene in the room once more.

It was miserable here. Jungkook looked miserable.

“I’m sorry I can’t say anything encouraging,” she said, biting her lip. “She’s my friend. And you’ve done a—well, this isn’t good.”

Jungkook nodded and swallowed, but it didn’t soothe his dry throat. “I know.”

“I’d like to help, but I—I’m always going to be on her side.”

“Of course. I understand.”

Luna sighed, because he had claimed he understood, but still looked as if happiness was a concept he’d never experienced in his life.

“I just—I don’t know what to tell you before I go,” she admitted. She knew she didn’t owe him anything, but leaving him here in this state didn’t feel right, either. She had always been compassionate, but the intensity of it surprised her this time. “I don’t know what she’ll do. A-about you, I mean. Not about Reconnaissance.”

Jungkook considered this. The side of his head felt torn and cracked. The poor band-aids were already dark red.

“What would you do?” he asked.

Luna raised her eyebrows at the abrupt question. “Me?”

“If you were her,” Jungkook explained. “Or if I were Taehyung.”

She licked her lips, taking a moment to choose her next words.

“Jungkook,” she said. “No offence, but Taehyung would never do something so stupid.”

A defeated, humourless smile appeared on his lips. “Yeah. You’re right. He wouldn’t.”

As soon as the tiniest glimmer of hope in his eyes dimmed, his voice sounded as if it was coming from somewhere underground.

God, Luna thought. Now the room was even more dreary.

Even though she was going to support whatever decision you would make about this, she couldn’t just leave without saying anything to him. Having no one on his side while he tried to redeem himself was unfair.

Advice, she figured, had to be the best thing she could offer him right now.

“Listen,” she said with a determined inhale. “I can’t judge what I would do if I were her because I don’t share her memories. I don’t know what happened between you all those years ago. Or even what’s happening now. But… if I were you, I’d give her some time.”

Jungkook nodded, looking at her with what he hoped was a grateful smile.

“Interestingly enough, that’s what your boyfriend told me,” he said.

“Yeah? Well, he gives great advice.”

The corners of his lips stretched further. “Matching set, you two.”

Luna slid her phone into her pocket and grabbed her bag, zipping up the pocket where she had kept the band-aids.

“Just be careful, okay?” she said. “We’re leaving for the airport soon, so don’t stay here too long. Don’t make her look for you. I’ll, um—I’ll try to do damage control.”

“Okay. Thank—”

Before Jungkook could finish, the door of the changing room opened wider, diverting their attention.

They both turned to look with very different expressions on their faces—Luna was already scowling, thinking that Sid had come back. Jungkook, on the other hand, appeared absolutely terrified, thinking that it was you, about to witness him sitting on the bloody floor—literally—with band-aids on his face.

“Oh,” a gasp left Minjun’s lips as he stopped in the doorway. “Sorry, I was—”

“It’s fine,” Jungkook said, immensely relieved. “You can come in.”

“Hold on,” Luna warned. Minjun remained frozen under her gaze. “Will I have to intervene? Because I think we’ve spilt enough blood already.”

Minjun raised his eyebrows. “Whose blood?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Jungkook said to the girl. “Thank you, Luna.”

She watched the two of them for another minute until Jungkook nodded reassuringly again. Hesitantly, she nodded back and gave Minjun a pointed look.

“Okay. But you watch your hands,” she warned. “He has to be on stage tomorrow.”

“I—I mean no harm.” Minjun raised both hands, taken aback by her hostility. “I don’t know what happened here, but I’m—I come in peace.”

“Good,” Luna said with a firm nod. She glanced back over her shoulder at Jungkook. “I’ll see you later. Put some ice on your eye when you get back on the bus. It won’t do much for the colour, but it might help with the swelling.”

“Will do,” he said and called out as she exited the room, “thank you again!”

After Luna had left, Minjun entered the room and closed the door behind him. Only then he noticed the bloody towels and the dirty floor. Squinting, he leant forward a little and detected something else between the towels.

“So,” he said, straightening. “What the fuck happened and whose tooth is that on the floor?”

Jungkook snorted. “Sid’s.”

Minjun’s face lit up with childlike glee. “No fucking way! Did you do it?”

“Yeah,” Jungkook said with a grin that made him look vaguely menacing, considering how bruised and battered his face was.

“Awesome, man,” Minjun said, coming closer to pat him on the back before squatting next to him.

“He deserved it.”

“I don’t even care, to be honest. I’m impressed.”

“Yeah. Well.” Jungkook lifted a hand to gesture at his own face. “He’s landed some good ones, too.”

Minjun observed his bruises and the bloody band-aids that seemed quite small for a normal cut, but remained remarkably resilient on his fresh wounds.

“You’ll live,” he concluded.

Jungkook turned to him. A little awkwardly, he asked, “why, um… why are you here?”

“Ah.” Minjun reached into his pocket for something. “Here.”

Jungkook immediately recognised the keys to his Katana in his friend’s palm.

Speechless for a minute, he just stared at Minjun’s hand without moving. He had a feeling—against his better judgement—that this was a trap. That by taking the keys, he’d sign something else to the devil.

“What—?” he tried to ask.

“Take it,” Minjun urged, wishing to relieve himself of the unwanted weight of the keys in his hand.

“But the bet—”

“Fuck the bet,” he said, waving his palm up and down when Jungkook still didn’t reach for it. “It went too far.”

“Sid,” Jungkook began, hesitation and doubt evident in every centimetre of his face, “didn’t agree to this.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure Sid’s mother didn’t agree to give birth to a fucking clown, but shit happens,” Minjun countered. “Take the damn keys.”

Jungkook finally extended his shaking hand and felt the familiar cold metal under his fingertips. He paused before pulling back with the keys.

The Katana was his. But instead of relief, he felt a new weight in his chest.

“Why?” he asked, looking down at the key ring, adorned with a gaudy, jewelled pendant with the initials “JK.” It was a trinket you had bought him during a drunken escapade at a local fair. He still remembered your delighted squeal when you spotted the two letters in one of the jewellery stands.

“Because this is stupid and pointless,” Minjun said. His legs had gone numb, so he mirrored Jungkook’s position and sat down on the floor, leaning his back against the wall. “Some fucking bet is not worth ruining your relationship over.”

With a small smile on his face—because they were two miserable losers, hanging out on the floor of his band’s changing room—Jungkook clutched the keys and pushed them into his own pocket.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do it earlier,” Minjun said. “I was afraid, I guess. Of what Sid would do if I went against his wishes. But then I… came to pick you up from that hotel bar in Tilburg—”

“That was you?” Jungkook cut him off. He had been wondering how he ended up back on the tour bus.

“Yeah,” Minjun replied. “You called me and asked to take the bike back to the rental shop because you couldn’t do it anymore. Man, I swear, I thought you were on some bridge, the way you phrased it.”

Jungkook looked away. He was not in a good place when he called his friend, and alcohol must have exaggerated it. “Sorry.”

“You still looked worse than I expected when I got there,” Minjun continued. “I thought I might have to take you to a hospital to have your stomach pumped, and I don’t fucking speak Dutch. Nor did I know where a fucking hospital was in Tilburg.”

Jungkook laughed at his rising tone, and Minjun smiled, too.

The smile turned ironic, however, when he added, “you threw up on my shoes.”

Jungkook, who never got drunk enough to experience a hangover the next day, let alone throw up, raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“I don’t remember that,” he said, meaning that it didn’t happen.

Minjun ignored the dismissive tone in his voice—he had a ruined pair of Converse to prove his accusation.

“Lucky you then,” he retorted. “You regained some colour after that, though. But you wouldn’t stop talking about her. It was like—like you couldn’t understand anything of what was happening, but you could still remember her. It hit me then, how little the bet really mattered. I mean, I always thought it was stupid, but that night, I—I saw what you were feeling. You regretted everything. I wanted to give you the keys right then, but you looked like you couldn’t recognise yourself in the mirror, so I just dropped you off on the bus. One of your—Hoseok was awake. He thanked me.”

Jungkook needed a minute to reflect on the conversation he’d had with Hoseok later that same morning.

“He didn’t tell me,” he said.

Minjun shrugged. “He had nothing to thank me for, anyway. I’m your friend. Sorry I didn’t act like it before.”

This was the first time that one of his friends had apologised to him, and Jungkook recognised the significance of the moment. He realised with blinding clarity that out of the three people he had invited as his personal guests on this tour, there was only one he truly wanted to stay here.

“Yeah,” Jungkook said, a little overwhelmed. “I’m—thanks for doing this now.”

Minjun nodded and the two of them shared a moment of comfortable silence. But Jungkook couldn’t quiet his thoughts—Sid wasn’t here, but he still couldn’t shake his presence.

“There was something that Sid said to me today,” he spoke up. “I-I think he likes her.”

“What?” Minjun was surprised. He glanced back at the tooth on the floor in front of him. “What’d he say?”

“He—just some shit.” Jungkook looked down and pulled on a loose thread on his sweatpants. “About how he could have convinced her to date him.”

Minjun blinked in another wave of surprise. He had a very different understanding of what Sid felt for you and Jungkook, but now he was confused.

“He’s just trying to get under your skin,” he tried to rationalise.

“No, but think about it,” Jungkook said. “Why else would he go to such great lengths to persuade me to participate in this bet? To force me to continue it after I’d clearly won?”

Again, Minjun needed a minute to find a response.

Jungkook clicked his tongue and looked away. “See, you can’t disagree.”

“I mean…” Minjun bit the corner of his lower lip. “I guess it makes sense, but—”

“I know that she wouldn’t consider him in a million years,” Jungkook added. “I’m not even thinking about that, I’m just… wow. How fucking stupid. He ruined this for himself and for me.”

His friend sighed. He didn’t want to keep talking about this. “Yeah.”

“And I let him,” Jungkook finished.

“Yeah,” Minjun repeated. “He deserved getting his tooth knocked out. And you deserve the swollen eye.”

Jungkook raised his eyebrows and puckered his lips. He wasn’t going to disagree, and Minjun smiled in relief when he saw the humour in his friend’s eyes.

This had to happen, Minjun thought. Jungkook wouldn’t have been able to move on if he had not found another way to prove that his own self—and his relationship with you—was the one thing he would never lose, no matter how hard Sid tried.

“What, um,” Jungkook asked after a minute, “what are you going to do when Sid asks about the keys after the bet is over?”

Minjun, feeling much more relaxed, merely shrugged. “Knock another one of his teeth out?”

Jungkook laughed and smacked his friend on the shoulder, despite the pain in his head when he moved.

“Oh, come on,” Minjun said, grinning. “He still has, like, fifteen left.”

“I’m sure he has more left. Implants or not.”

“Now, see, implants are harder to knock out. We’d have to meet and discuss the logistics of that. Perhaps attack in secret.”

Jungkook laughed again, and Minjun joined in, too.

They both felt significantly better.

However, Jungkook still had a lot of things to take care of as soon as he got up from the floor.

He should have told you about the bet earlier, but he hadn’t. All he could do now was make amends for a lapse in judgement with terrible consequences.

No.

There would be no consequences. He would make sure to never hurt you again.

And he’d begin by following through with his plan.

Jungkook asked Minjun to give him some time alone and found his phone in the pocket of his sweatpants. He dialled Seokjin’s number, and Seokjin referred him to the Head of Security on tour, Mick.

Mick was lovely. He fostered pets and looked after injured animals in his cabin on the edge of the forest, where he lived with his three dogs. Jungkook had visited him once and felt very much like he imagined Harry Potter to feel when he saw Hagrid’s hut for the first time.

Mick was also three times larger than Jungkook. His primary responsibility on tour was preventing intoxicated individuals from climbing onto the stage and ensuring trespassers did not decide to have an excursion on the band’s tour bus.

Now, Jungkook decided as he spelled Sid’s name to Mick over the phone, Mick was going to make sure that Isidore Hamlet Mercer-Hastings—a name that likely had Shakespeare himself rolling in his grave—could not enter any venue where Rated Riot was scheduled to perform.

It wasn’t quite as dramatic as a restraining order, Jungkook supposed. But blacklisting Sid from his gigs seemed like a good start.

Half an hour later, Jungkook had barricaded himself behind the curtains in his bunk. He was fully awake but he didn’t want you to see what he looked like.

Naturally, you had assumed he was sleeping and had no reason to talk to him anyway, so you kept yourself busy with an e-book in your bunk as the bus made its way to the airport.

Then, most unfortunately, your relative peace was disturbed when you received a text message from Nick Zhou. It was as if he could sense the terrible turmoil in your mind and your heart, and he wanted to add more fuel to the fire.

Things like that happened sometimes, you thought. Coincidences—unless you decided to treat them as signs.

Nick had sent you a picture of the perfectly green palm trees visible through a window. You zoomed in and assumed that he had taken the picture somewhere in Australia, where Reconnaissance were currently on tour.

In the text below, Nick said, “new album in progress. Would be nice to have you with us when we put it out!”

Anxious suddenly, you considered putting your phone away and just carrying on with your e-book. But your uncertainty was relentless—maybe if you replied to him, you’d gain a clearer understanding of what you should do.

You typed back, “hope you’re having fun! I’m still thinking about it.”

Then you exhaled and tossed your phone to the farthest corner of your bunk so as not to be bothered in case it vibrated again. Texting him back didn’t work. You felt just as tense as before.

You exhaled and attempted to keep reading, but silence was simply not meant for you today.

With the flight to Manchester only five hours away, Luna decided it was a good time to discuss with you what had happened in the changing room.

“Hey,” she whispered as she crept up to your bunk, moving stealthily and quietly as if she were a secret agent on a mission.

You looked up at her from your screen. “Hi.”

She wanted to talk to you, but now that she was doing it—or getting to it—she didn’t quite know how to proceed; or even where to begin, actually.

“So, um,” she said, sitting down on your bunk and taking her time to find a comfortable position. You put your tablet away and watched her. “I wanted to check up on you a little.”

You smirked. “Yeah? But not a lot?”

“Not yet.” She smiled at your teasing question. “You’re not critical, but I do think I have some cause for concern.”

You pulled yourself up and pushed a pillow behind your back to sit straighter. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, you and Jungkook seem to be avoiding each other.”

You regarded her for a minute until you reached the inevitable conclusion—you suspected it yesterday, and now Luna’s knowing gaze fully convinced you that it was true.

“You know about the bet,” you said.

Luna looked around. No one on the bus appeared to be listening. Nearly everyone that she could see either had headphones on, or had their curtains drawn.

She glanced back at you and settled her gaze on the corner of your dark brown blanket.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I found out about it at the same time as you, more or less. Jungkook had, um—he’d talked to Taehyung before he told you.”

“Ah,” you said. “Well, that’s—I’m glad we all know, then.”

Luna noted the imperceptible look in your eyes. She wasn’t sure if you’d meant what you said.

Really, you weren’t sure, either. On the one hand, you were relieved that you wouldn’t have to retell what had happened to your friend. You weren’t sure you’d manage.

But on the other hand, the fact that other people knew about the bet did not feel particularly comforting—because this was one of the situations that you’d been desperate to avoid: your relationship with Jungkook getting so out of hand that the people around you began to talk about it.

However, you had been thinking a lot in the last few days and you realised that learning about the bet had helped you find some relief, too.

There was something bothering you for weeks now, something that was off in your surroundings, and now you finally knew what it was. It felt like a crooked picture frame on the wall. Like a non-alphabetical arrangement of books on a shelf. Like a bet about your relationship.

And now that you knew, the world had realigned again. You would have been able to breathe easier if you weren’t so embarrassed that other members of your team also knew about it.

“Well, aside from that,” Luna went on, keeping a careful eye on any changes in your expression. “I talked to Jungkook today. And I’m not defending him—”

“If you say ‘but’ next,” you interrupted, “that will negate your point, you know.”

“However,” Luna said instead and you rolled your eyes. “I think the bet is only half the picture. I mean, it’s shit. He fucked up. But I think that he’s been with you because he really wanted to be. Not because of the bet.”

If you had shaken your head any more vigorously, it might have flown off. Luna was slightly annoyed by your adamant rejection of everything she was saying—which made it easier for her to tell you the news.

“He fought Sid,” she said.

You frowned. “So?”

“Knocked his tooth out, I think.”

Your frown turned into shock as your eyebrows shot up nearly all the way to your hairline. When Luna said that they fought, you obviously did not expect it to be a physical altercation.

“They fought?”  you repeated.

“Yeah. Because Sid can’t keep his mouth shut,” she said. “Jungkook loathes the guy. I don’t know what sort of friendship they had before, but there’s none of that left. If I hadn’t walked in, I don’t know—I mean, he—he hates him.” Luna swallowed here, figuring that additional details might make it harder for her to make her point. “But more than that, it looked to me like Jungkook just hates himself. Now, what you want to do next, that’s up to you. I just wanted to tell you what I thought. I talked to him. He was miserable.”

“Well.” You swallowed. “He lost the bet.”

“Not about the bet. He has feelings for you. Real feelings.”

“How—”

“Don’t ask me how I know that,” she cut you off before you could ask exactly that. “These things you can just see. And it’s especially obvious in him. Because, look… Here are the facts. He had the option to keep the bet a secret from you. Or he could have gotten back together with you and won the bet. If not, he could have waited for this to pass, or until his friends told you. But he was the one who told you that he fucked up. That’s got to count for something. It’s okay if it’s not enough. But it—well, it sort of feels like a start. Because he finally got it through his thick head that this is what matters. You. He loves you.”

Your skin shivered—an automatic reaction to these words—but you scoffed. “And knocking out Sid’s tooth is a way to show it.”

Luna groaned and was about to protest, but you stopped her by shaking your head again.

“Luna—I mean—thank you, but… this is the same shit again,” you said. “The exact same shit that made us break up the first time. Except now, there’s so much more at stake. It’s no longer just about us.”

“Is it?” she asked. “Is it, really? I mean, I understand why you would think that, considering your—uh, your job. But it’s… Really, it’s just you. The two of you. As it’s always been.”

You sighed and pulled the sleeves of your turtleneck down until you could hide your fists in them. You kept your gaze on the blanket beneath you—undoubtedly disagreeing with her again—and Luna let out a soft, tired breath.

“I’m—whatever you do next, I’ll be on your side,” she said. “If you walk away, I walk away. It’s simple. I just think it’d do you two good to talk this out. When you’re ready. So that you would know what you’re walking away from.”

You were starting to shake your head again, but stopped abruptly, realising the futility of it. You weren’t actually disagreeing with Luna’s point, after all.

“It would be good,” you said. “But I don’t want to talk to him about this. This was a mistake from the very beginning.”

“So… what, then?” she asked, worried about the burden of even more unresolved feelings that you would have to carry around every day if you allowed this to linger. If this became another thing that you never talked to anyone about. “You think you can just go back to the way things were?”

“No,” you said. “Because I’m still very annoyed. But after that, then yeah. Ideally.”

Luna tried to conceal her skepticism, but it was evident in the way she sucked in her lips and nodded her head. “Okay.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for the optimism?”

She sighed and turned to face you again.

“I get it,” she said. “I understand why you don’t want to see him right now. But I also… kind of understand why he did what he did.”

Your eyebrows rose again. “Why he made the bet?”

“No,” she said, raising her index finger and closing her eyes to emphasise her point. “Not that. That I don’t understand. I meant the fight with Sid. Sid is a big reason why you’re in this situation and Jungkook had no other choice left. He got into that fight because he’s shit at choosing friends, but he loves you.”

You ran your tongue over your lips and looked back down at your blanket. “I don’t know which one of those things outweighs the other one.”

“Yeah, well, think about that,” she said. “Then talk to him.”

You were both aware that giving this advice was much easier than actually following it, and a silent minute passed without either of you looking at each other as you pondered the future.

“Nick texted me,” you said suddenly. You hadn’t realised how much his message weighed on you until you told her. “Just to check in. And, uh, to remind me of his—his offer.”

Luna did not like this, and she was glad you weren’t looking at her and didn’t see the expression on her face.

“What did you tell him?” she asked.

“I told him I’m still thinking about it.”

You felt Luna shifting her weight and fidgeting on the bunk next to you. She was uncomfortable, you could tell.

“You’re, uh… you’re really thinking about this, then?” she asked.

You threw your head back and rested it on the pillow. “I’m thinking about a lot these days.”

“Well, that’s—that’s good. Right?” she said, quietly hoping that your contemplations would eventually lead you to a decision that would cause you less suffering. She didn’t think leaving Rated Riot was that decision. You had made a family here. “Take your time with these things. Really think them through. Avoid everyone for a short while if that’s what you need.”

“Hmm. How can I avoid everyone, though?” you asked dryly. “If Jungkook got into a fight, I need to see him.”

“Ah.” Luna finally looked at you, feeling guilty somehow, as if she was the one who had punched him. “Yeah, that’s probably true. He, um—it’s not a disaster, but he did miss a couple of, uh—”

“Is he bleeding?” you asked, appreciating her effort to convey the situation without causing you alarm, but also without downplaying it.

“Well, not anymore,” she said. “At least, he wasn’t the last time I saw him. There is a, um—a black eye situation, though.”

You groaned and dropped your hands on the mattress in irritation.

“Fuck—you see? He’s doing it again. Leaving me no choice but to—oh, fuck it.” You slapped your hands on your knees and sat up straight. “He’ll have to wait until we arrive at the airport. I’m done jumping at the slightest sound he makes, manager or not.”

“I agree with that,” Luna said. “But I see that you don’t really mean it.”

You closed your eyes. “I have to mean it. I know it’s my job, and I know Jungkook never forced me into anything I didn’t consent to, but he just—this whole time, he acted like he was genuine when he was just doing what he always does. Playing along with Sid’s sick little games. Maybe he deserves to bleed a little for that.”

Luna was about to argue, but only nodded. She was very glad you were talking about this, even though you had dismissed everything she’d told you about Jungkook’s feelings.

She knew that you needed more time. You’d heard her. You just had to be in the right frame of mind to believe her.

She knew you’d get there, just as she knew Jungkook was not going to give up on you.

“Yeah,” Luna finally said. “He can wait. Do you... want to talk about it? About what he did?”

You looked murderous. “Absolutely not.”

She expected as much.

“Well, in that case,” she pulled her phone out, “you want to see something that Crowley did to my mum’s curtains? She took a video to show me.”

Your tension seemed to fade straight away. Luna’s troublemaker cat—named aptly after a Supernatural character with a redemption arc that Crowley, the cat, could only dream about—had never failed to ease your mind.

You needed some time alone. And you were very happy to be alone with her as she stretched out on the mattress next to you and played the video on her phone.

You caught glimpses of Jungkook and his heavy sunglasses on the way to your gate at the airport, but you didn’t have the time to check how bad he looked. The other Rated Riot members had already smacked him on the back of his head after they saw his band-aids, so you decided to wait until you could talk to him in private.

About an hour later, you spotted him going to the men’s room. You waited a few minutes and stood up, too.

The restroom was empty except for the two of you, and you quietly placed your carry-on bag on the ground next to the door. Jungkook hadn’t even noticed you enter.

“There you are,” you announced from the doorway.

Jungkook flinched and splashed himself as he washed his hands in front of the wall-sized mirror.

“You were—were you looking for me?” he asked. The automatic sink stopped and he moved his hands back under the faucet to get the water running again.

“I’ve been informed you have a black eye,” you said, coming closer. “I wanted to check the damage myself.”

The side of his face that was visible to you showed no signs of injury, but when you looked at his reflection in the mirror, you saw the red and purple bruises on the side of his face, concealed by a few persistent band-aids.

Jungkook swallowed and shook his hands several times to dry them. Then, he stepped back, allowing you to examine him. “Well, here I am.”

“Here you are,” you repeated. His gaze remained fixed on yours as you scanned his features. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“Not really,” he said. “Want to tell me if you’re leaving to work with Reconnaissance?”

“Not really.”

He pursed his lips. “Well, then. Can I ask—”

“No,” you said immediately. He stopped speaking and clenched his jaw.

You were contemplating if you should have taken him to the hospital before the flight. You were also thinking about what to do with his bruises tomorrow since he had a performance, and appearing on stage with a black eye did not seem particularly professional.

“Does it hurt?” you asked. “These band-aids—did you change them?”

“No,” he said. It wasn’t clear which question he was responding to, but his answer seemed to fit both.

“You need to change them,” you said. “And clean the wounds properly.”

“I’m not going to a hospital.”

You sighed. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not that bad,” he said.

You looked back at the band-aids on the side of his face. They remained on his skin through the sheer force of will. Cuts and bruises peeked from underneath the dried blood.

“It looks bad with band-aids on,” you said. “I can only imagine what it looks like without.”

“It’s fine,” he insisted. “Luna said so.”

You knew right away that this was impossible; Luna would have known better.

“She said no such thing,” you replied.

“Okay, maybe she didn’t,” he conceded with a quiet groan. “But I’m still not going to the hospital.”

The irony of the moment—and how you’d insisted that you were okay a few days ago, just like he was doing now—was completely lost on you. You felt exhausted.

“Why…” you started to say, then sighed as you brought your fingers over your closed eyes. “Why are you making me do this?”

“Do what?”

“Clean your self-destructive wounds.”

“They’re not self-destructive—”

“Really?” Your eyes shot open, ablaze with agitation. “So, getting punched by Sid was, what? A fight for dominance that you’d planned in advance?”

He cleared his throat with indignation and continued his previous statement, “and I’m not making you clean my wounds. I’m fine.”

“Sit down,” you said, turning to grab your carry-on bag. “You’re not fine.”

Awkwardly swaying in the same spot, Jungkook looked around. “Where do you want me to sit? We’re in a public bathroom.”

“Jesus, Jungkook!” you groaned irritably. You were too tired to think of every little detail, every action, and reaction. You just wanted to take a nap on the plane. “I don’t care. Sit on the floor. Or on the toilet.”

“Neither seems sterile…”

“Good thing you didn’t get punched in the ass, then.”

He huffed but still went into one of the cubicles, lowered the toilet lid with a scrunched nose and sat down on it.

He leaned over to hold the door open with his hand until you entered a few minutes later. Before either of you could grasp how small the space was now that you were in the closed cubicle, you took out the antiseptic spray from your amateur medical kit and grabbed a cotton pad. By that point, Jungkook was too worried about what you’d do to think about how close you were.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

Concerned, he watched you pull a blue latex glove on one of your hands and spray the antiseptic into the air, aiming it at the floor to test it.

“No,” you admitted, taking a step towards him and stopping between his legs. With your gloved hand, you carefully peeled off the heavy band-aids from his face and tossed them into an empty plastic bag you’d brought for this specific purpose. “But neither did you when you picked a fight with Sid, so I think we’re even.”

He grimaced as the exposed lacerations on his skin immediately began to sting. “W-what makes you think I was the one who started that fight?”

“The fact that you won’t tell me what it was about,” you replied, bending your knees slightly to inspect his face. You were willing to help him look after his wounds, but changing the bandages was as far as you’d go—if he needed stitches, you’d drag him to the nearest emergency room.

“You know what it was about,” he mumbled, staring at the floor.

“I don’t.”

He didn’t want to say it. You knew he didn’t want to say it—that was why you were making him do it.

“It started about the bet,” he admitted finally. “But then he… said some things I didn’t like. Not that I liked what he said about the bet, either. But I got myself into that mess, so I—”

“What did he say?” you asked, interrupting his diversion.

You covered his left eye with a cotton pad to protect it, shook the bottle of antiseptic a few times, and sprayed it on the exposed wounds.

Jungkook winced as he felt the stinging pain grow sharper. He clutched the lid of the toilet seat, forgetting all about how he’d avoided touching it before.

“Just… some bullshit about you,” he said through clenched teeth.

Surprised, you pulled back to look at him. “He said something about me?”

“Yeah. So I socked him in the cheek.”

You watched him for a quiet minute.

Honestly, if Sid had said something about you, you probably would have punched him yourself if Jungkook hadn’t. But the way Jungkook phrased this—and this whole situation, in general—was so ridiculous that you had to bite the inside of your cheek to maintain a straight face.

“In the mouth,” you corrected. “Or so I hear.”

Jungkook couldn’t subdue the smile on his lips at the amusement that you tried very hard to hide. So, you knew about Sid’s tooth then.

“That was after he wouldn’t stop talking,” he said.

“Ah. Well,” you returned to work and gently patted his cheek with the cotton pad to remove the excess antiseptic, “I appreciate you defending my honour.”

“You don’t sound like it.”

You scoffed. “What do you want me to do? Jump on your white horse and ride off into the sunset with you?”

The light-hearted tone of your voice suddenly amplified your close proximity—he felt his legs tremble slightly as you stood between them to reach his face better. He wanted to reach out and wrap himself around you, to thank you, and to apologise again.

Instead, he cleared his throat and lowered his gaze.

“Well, that’d be nice,” he muttered. Then, added louder, “or, at the very least, you could stop burning me.”

“I’m disinfecting,” you said as you leaned in again, checking if the spray had absorbed into his bruises yet. His breath caught in his throat. You added, “I think.”

Jungkook didn’t think he’d ever felt a longing so intense that it could overshadow all physical pain.

“You think,” he repeated breathlessly. “Th—that’s reassuring.”

“It’s what my mum used to use when my brother and I would get cuts or scratches, and things like that,” you explained defensively. “Of course, this is hardly a scratch in your case, but I have nothing better to offer.”

He didn’t mean to come across as accusatory. He didn’t know what he was saying at all. You still smelled like apples. He was afraid he would pass out.

“This is fine,” he said.

He knew that you were already doing more than your job description entailed and your personal relationship permitted, and he was grateful for it. He hadn’t meant to cause you any additional problems, and he wanted to inform you of the steps he’d taken to fix the ones he’d already caused.

He waited until you had finished searching through your medical kit before speaking again.

“I, um—I banned Sid from Rated Riot shows,” he said.

You turned to look at him so quickly that a tired muscle in your neck spasmed in protest. “What?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Mick will take care of it if he shows up.”

“Mick—you banned Sid?”

“I banned Sid,” he repeated slowly, giving you a minute to process the news. “It’s done. I don’t—I never should have brought him to Europe with me.”

You straightened and attempted to compose yourself, but your mind was suddenly bombarding you with question marks and software errors every time you tried to form a coherent thought.

“Well, that’s—that’s right,” you finally said, clearing your throat. “And it’s about time you realised that.”

You didn’t know what else to say. Congratulating him right now, considering the repercussions of his last confrontation with Sid, seemed in poor taste.

Not to mention, you were a little confounded. After your last argument outside the bus, you’d expected a lot of drunk nights and a lot of new mayhem that you would have to put back in order. You weren’t expecting mature decisions.

Jungkook didn’t notice the utter shock in your voice, however, because his pulse tried to deafen him with a dreadful paranoia, telling him that this was too little and too late.

Notenough-notenough-notenough, the beat of his heart echoed in his ears.

“I know,” Jungkook said, louder than he’d intended. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

You pulled out a new cotton pad and mumbled something under your breath.

Jungkook gazed up at you as you hovered over him with your medical kit. “Can I—can I ask you something, though?”

You gently wiped the side of his temple where the antiseptic had dripped, all while trying to calm down the chaos in your mind. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Reconnaissance?”

There was a long pause as you returned to your kit—more for the purpose of giving yourself some time to think rather than out of necessity.

“I don’t know,” you finally said. “I wasn’t seriously considering it, and it never came up in a casual conversation.”

“We spent three days in Amsterdam, just the two of us,” he said. “How could it not come up?”

You gave him a look. “Really? You think you can ask me that when you knew—and participated—in the bet for weeks before telling me about it?”

Jungkook looked down. “It wasn’t weeks...”

“Well, fantastic.”

Unsettled by your sarcasm, he added, “and I told you, eventually.”

“No, I actually guessed it before you told me,” you said with one hand on your hip as you gazed at the restroom wall behind him, deep in thought. “I told you that you were only acting like that because of some external force. And you really were doing it to win a—”

“No.” He shook his head so fiercely that you almost worried he’d injure himself more. “The bet gave me a push. But I wanted you all along, and—”

“No,” you disagreed, turning away to throw the used cotton pads into the plastic bag. “You—just—just don’t.”

He already knew that this would be the wrong thing to say before he even said it. He simply couldn’t control himself—but he tried to now.

“I’m just—I’m trying to say that this hurt me, too,” he said slowly. “You’re—you might leave to work with a different band. A-and I was the only one who didn’t know about that.”

“I—”

“I know,” he continued louder, “that this is not the same as what I did. It’s not even close. But I still—I feel like this should have been something you talked to me about.”

You sighed and grabbed a glass bottle of iodine-based ointment from your bag. “It probably was.”

“Are you really considering it?” he asked. “Leaving, I mean.”

So much had changed since you told Maggie and Luna that you’d stay, and repeated the same to Yoongi and Namjoon.

All you could say to Jungkook now was a dejected, “I don’t know.”

The tight grip of pain around his chest did not ease, but he didn’t expect it to. Not yet, at least.

“I’m truly sorry,” he said, lifting his gaze. Both of you quickly averted your eyes as if the eye contact burnt. “For this and… for everything.”

You nodded in acknowledgement of the apology but did not reply to it.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Reconnaissance,” you said instead. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

He nodded back and you continued to work in silence. You were glad that your current task required your full attention, so you did not have to linger on how wounded he looked—not just physically, but somehow intrinsically, too. If you glanced at him, all the tears and cuts and bruises on his heart would have been as visible as they were on his face.

You applied the ointment to his temple now that the antiseptic had dried—and Jungkook clenched his teeth again, keeping the painful hiss contained. The ointment was probably excessive, and it might dye his skin an odd shade of purple, but you didn’t know what else to do.

When you looked closer, his cuts didn’t appear deep enough to require stitches, so all you could do at the moment was ensure they didn’t become infected – and this questionable procedure should have accomplished that.

You pressed some gauze to the more severe wounds and bandaged them—as much as you could. You used smaller band-aids for the less serious cuts. Then, you stepped back to look.

This would need work. He looked like he slammed the side of his head into a wall and a toddler had attempted to provide first aid.

“This should hold for now before I come up with something else,” you said. “I have to go. I’ll need to find a way to incorporate this,” you gestured around his face, “into your look for tomorrow’s show.”

You turned to push the cubicle door open, then stopped short when you felt his cold, tentative fingers wrap around your wrist.

“Wait,” he said, releasing your hand as soon as he noticed you looking down at his grip. “Just… just tell me what’s going to happen.”

“With your face?” you asked with a confused frown. “It’s going to hurt for a while probably, but it—”

“With us,” he cut you off.

You looked away, maintaining your posture even as your heart refused to listen to your mind and proceeded to pound furiously in your chest.

“There’s no ‘us’,” you said.

“You can’t say that.” He stood up and suddenly reduced the empty space between you in the cubicle. “Not after everything that happened.”

‘Everything that happened’ seemed to have a bitter flavour—he could see the distaste on your face as your tongue prodded your cheek.

“It was obviously a mistake,” you said.

You remembered it all, you knew what it meant. But you didn’t want to trust any of the moments in your memory.

Jungkook could taste your bitterness in his own mouth.

You added ruthlessly, “and it’s over.”

“What’s over?” he asked. He tried to place a hand on his hip, but his trembling fingers slid down his hoodie and his hand dropped to his side.

“Whatever this is,” you said, and each of your following words felt like a new scratch deep inside of him. “Whatever you were doing to win your bet, and whatever I was stupidly playing along with.”

There was nothing but a few breaths separating the two of you in this cubicle, yet you may as well have been in a different orbit entirely. Desperate, Jungkook raised his hands to the back of his head and intertwined his fingers.

“I wasn’t—it wasn’t because of the bet,” he protested—not for the first time. With one more shake of your head, you turned around and pushed the door of the cubicle open. “Look, wait! I’m sorr—”

“It’s over, Jungkook,” you said, pausing halfway. “Stop.”

“How can it—I don’t—just—just tell me this one thing, okay? Before you go,” he pleaded, following you out of the cubicle and watching you toss your medical kit into your carry-on.

There was a hint of sadness in your eyes when you looked up. “What?”

“If there was no bet, wou—would you have agreed to be with me again?”

Your pulse reverberated in your mind, shrieking and piercing, as you shook your head and turned away.

“If there was no bet,” you said, “you wouldn’t have even wanted to be with me again.”

For a minute, you both watched the floor in thick, pain-coated silence. It consumed you, this otherworldly quietness—your thoughts stilled, even your bodies seemed to pause and wait.

That wasn’t true, Jungkook wanted to say—and should have said. But he was so tired of saying things and having to defend them, to prove he meant them.

He wondered if there was anything he could say to you from this point on that you would believe. He loved you so much—he’s never loved anyone else, the very idea of it did not seem possible—yet he made you think he wasn’t serious.

He watched you leave—again—and felt his chest shrink to accommodate the slowing of his heartbeat—again, again—as he struggled to inhale, let alone open his mouth—again, again, again—realising, slowly, that there might not be enough words in existence to fix this.

“I love you,” he still tried, but the restroom door had already closed and he wasn’t sure if you’d heard him. Or if it made a difference if you did.

There was something very ironic about the plans you had for the rest of the day once the plane landed in Manchester.

The concert was originally scheduled for tomorrow, but the venue had suffered a flood from a broken pipe a few nights ago, causing everything that the organisers had promised you to be ruined. They tried to fix it, but they needed some more time. You found out on the plane that the concert would have to be postponed until the day after tomorrow.

To make matters worse, Ren, the bassist of Poison Tongue—Rated Riot’s opening act—had broken his foot at the airport (you were afraid to ask how) and was hospitalised, rendering the band incapable of performing. You needed to find a replacement on extremely short notice.

This was a crisis, but only another one of many. You hadn’t slept at all on the plane, but despite your pounding headache, you were grateful for a chance to keep busy, and you had a precise plan of action.

You would find the venue staff and direct them to Seokjin—after checking if Seokjin was even here.

Next, you would make sure the equipment arrived safely and unpacking it at the damaged venue did not pose any risk to your team.

After that, you would seek Maggie’s help with an online ad for a new opening act.

Then, you would call the label and sweet-talk them before the inevitable black-eye pictures.

You would also devise a plan to handle the aforementioned black eye, which, hopefully, will have improved by the time of the concert.

And, most importantly, you would avoid Jungkook.

Really, the plan was almost foolproof. You figured your to-do list would continue to expand, even after you completed certain tasks, so you essentially had no chance of being left alone with your thoughts or accidentally running into him.

But then, on your way out of the band’s dressing room, you noticed that your surroundings were spinning more than usual. It happened occasionally, this abrupt lightheadedness after you stood up too quickly. But this time, it persisted even after you crossed the corridor.

You tried to tell yourself that this wasn’t anything new, you were just overwhelmed. This had to be the stress—you hadn’t slept and you had so much to do that it was normal to feel dizzy.

You kept walking. Until you had to trace your hand along the patterns of the wallpaper on the wall to stay steady. Until the edges of your vision blurred. Until the wet floorboards beneath your feet wobbled. Until the room grew dark.

You thought you could feel yourself leaning against the wall and slowly lowering your body to the floor. You thought you could feel the damp floor under your fingertips. You thought you could hear someone’s voice in the distance.

For a split moment before you collapsed, it occurred to you that you were really very tired. And that Jungkook had warned you about having another fainting spell if you weren’t careful.

But then your heart rate restricted the flow of blood to your brain, and there was not a single conscious thought left in your vacant mind.

As it happened sometimes—coincidences, unless you treated them as signs—Jungkook was the one who found you.

chapter title credits: sleep token, “blood sport”

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[billvsgirl]

the songbird : part one

summary ; reader is a beloved, headstrong singer at a saloon in new mexico. billy is just looking for somewhere to play some poker. it’s a match made in heaven.

warnings ; some heavy insinuation (only above the cut) but aside from that, none yet 👀 i dont know if you can classify this as a slow burn but it is for me because my writing stamina is weak as hell 😇 also i might have accidentally mary sue’d reader but thats my issue

also not beta read (im lazy)

author’s note ; HIII to anyone who’s reading this, i’m sorry in advance, this is my first time writing in a very long while so forgive me. if you have any comments or suggestions please let me know 🙏 i thank @goosita and @billysgun for inspiring me to write for billy (y’all always eat thank you for supplying me with the best billy fics) pls let me know if y’all wanna see more of this series and i’m open to requests !!! okay thats all tyty

—

billy pulled the door closed behind himself ever so carefully, making sure not to alert anyone else who might still be awake in the boarding house.

he turned towards the room to look at you; waiting infront of him expectantly- yet still a bit nervous, akin to a tense game of cards. it was his move now.

you leaned into his touch as he brought a hand up to caress your cheek, stroking gently with his thumb. “my beautiful girl,” he spoke softly, quirking the corners of his lips up into a smile.

“are you sure you’re alright with this, darlin’? we don’t have to.”

but oh, how you so desperately wanted to. because it was him, because it was billy.

-

he had wandered into your life by chance; a raggedy stray appearing in a saloon on a friday night, just looking to make some cash off of a game of poker.

you were there, too, hidden behind a humble stage curtain. you dusted some lint off of your dress and cleared your throat before donning your guitar and revealing yourself to the bar patrons with a confident, nearly sanguine smile.

“why hello there, everyone! d’ya miss me?”

and you had the instant attention of the majority of the tired souls in the saloon, ears and eyes becoming alert. if there weren’t smiles, there were whistles, cheers, claps- and other things inbetween.

there was no argument amongst the patrons that you were special. you held a strong and awfully charismatic persona when you were up on that stage, performing each weekend. when you had first started singing publicly, give or take a year or so ago, it took time for the people there to pay mind to you- but there was only so much they could do before your cadence, your charm, drew them in. and now, the townsfolk always looked forward to your appearances.

“oh please, don’t flatter me! it’ll all go to my head. how’s ‘bout we get to some songs instead, boys?”

a bit of soft laughter could be heard, dispersed throughout the room, before some more scattered claps- and a low chatter returned within the building while you propped yourself onto the stool at the center of the platform.

“learned this one from my father- i hope y’all enjoy it, an’ feel free to sing along if ya’ know it too.”

you began to strum, and the noise in the room lowered at your command. if anyone wasn’t paying attention before, they were now.

“O bury me not,”

and the raggedy stray finally looked up from his hand of cards, sapphire blue eyes taking in your beauty for the first time.

“on the lone prarie.”

your voice was amber honey flowing over a silver spoon, it was devistatingly sweet on the tongue, and all the more addicting. even the most haughty cowboys couldn’t help but lend an ear to you.

“these words came low, and mournfully

from the pallid lips of the youth who lay

on his dying bed at the close of day.”

of course, it didn’t hurt the fact that you were pretty. anyone would agree. but the men there stopped bothering you with crude requests and comments a long time ago- you’d established that it wouldn’t be tolerated, that you weren’t some woman of the night who’d play into the egos of these dogs who assumed they were above everyone else. and what were they to do?

nevertheless, you were alluring. you had a voice that charmed snakes and tempted songbirds to whistle along. so, eventually, they left you be. and that was the way it was.

“he had wasted and pined ‘til o’er his brow,

death’s shades were slowly gathering now

he thought of home and loved ones nigh

as the cowboys gathered to see him die.”

some of the patrons softly sang along to that folk song, including the one that sat a bit further from the stage, who had laid his cards aside later than the others.

he wasn’t fully aware of the small smile etched across face, but he was aware of the way your dress draped gracefully over your legs, the way your hair flowed freely upon your head, the way your eyelashes batted against your skin each time you blinked, the way your hands held your guitar.

he was well aware that he had not seen a lady like you before.

and well after you finished your set, and you had taken time to sit down at the bar and thank the bartender for your drink, he found it in himself to approach you.

and if you were a bit apprehensive, he took mind of that, and kept a small distance whilst lowering his hat from his head.

“hello, ma’am, how are you doin’ tonight?”

you couldn’t help but soften your hardened expression just a bit at the sight of him; eyes that bore right into your heart and pleaded innocence, even though you had heard the chatter throughout the bar that night;

that he had accumulated bounties, that he was a force not to be reckoned with,

that he was ‘dangerous.’

“quite alright, thank ya’, can i help you, cowboy?”

you were curious, but you weren’t downright stupid. you’d certainly dealt with worse, and the demeanor of this man begged that he had no distasteful intentions, but there was further convincing to be done for your guard to come down.

“i just wanted to say- you’ve got a real beautiful voice. it was a nice treat after the day i’ve had, ma’am.”

his voice was soft, and he carried himself well, though you could hear notes of nervousness in the way his breath hitched slightly halfway through his speech. you tilted your head a bit, furrowing your brows.

“you’re william bonney, isn’t that right?”

he shifted his stance, breaking eye contact to look down towards the hat he held in his hands. he cleared his throat and looked back up at you with a coy smile.

“yes’m, so you’ve heard- i’ve heard em’ talkin’ about you too, albeit, for much nicer reasons, miss y/n y/l/n.”

and if the way your name rolled off of his tongue made your cheeks a couple of shades pinker than usual, that was your business and nobody else’s.

he was good looking, that couldn’t be denied. good looking in the kind of way that carried much more depth than anyone you’d seen before. good looking in the way of his strikingly blue eyes, his brown hair that curled up at the ends, the button up shirt and pants that complimented his figure perfectly, his strong, yet softened, demeanor.

“so, s’it true? what they say about you?”

“depends what they’re sayin’, ma’am. maybe, maybe not.”

“well, are you as dangerous as they say you are?”

“only when i need to be, ma’am.”

he was definitely a gentleman- that, or he was putting up a real good act. it wasn’t often that you were approached out of genuine, unsolicited interest. but william- who now insisted you instead call him billy, went silent each time you even looked like you wanted to say something.

and on the two of you went, having conversation through the rest of the night. he didn’t let on about a lot of things, he’d gotten used to being a man of few words. he wanted to know everything about you- as much as you were comfortable saying. and to his delight, you had lots to say.

the both of you were a few drinks in by the time you were sat side by side, filling the near empty saloon with laughter.

“and- and then what?” his smile was sickeningly wide.

“well, my mama always told me i should never let a man use me as a doormat, so i grabbed my saddlebag an’ swatted him right in the groin!”

billy chuckled lightly, imagining that scenario before taking another sip of his whiskey.

“serves ‘m right, the men here know less a’ how to treat women than they do knowin’ when’s appropriate to draw a gun.” he huffed out.

you set your elbow on the counter, resting your head on your hand. “i bet your mama’s real proud a’ you, billy. she raised you just as anyone should.”

he held his smile for just a second before moving to look down at his glass. he remained silent for a few moments, and you followed suit, understanding why.

“m’ sorry, i didn’t know-“

“no, it’s alright,” he looked up at you, offering a smile once again. “i hope that she is. i’m always just trying my best to do what’s right- what’s just. sometimes the law doesn’t wanna paint it that way, but i know what i’ve seen and done.”

and you trusted his word. you had let your guard down like this for the first time possibly ever with anyone who wasn’t family. you and this raggedy stray were both different birds, flying far from the flock. having his company was something new, something exciting. and you hungered to know more.

[358jours]

Yanqing x GN!Reader⎢But I’m so ‘eepy

Word Count⎢1300

Genre/Tags⎢SFW, fluff, Reader is a big introvert and is sleep deprived, shopping dates, PDA, written and posted before game launch⎢Crossposted on AO3

You stifle another yawn as Yanqing drags you around. You’re holding hands, fingers laced together. He walks ahead of you, loud joy in his steps. He’s almost always sporting a smile in public, but the happiness radiating off of him right now is something else. He forced you out of your room today, and though you love his presence, your social battery can only last so long. At this point, you’re practically dead weight he’s carrying on his own.

Yanqing is an energetic young man, extroverted, optimistic, though perhaps a bit naive. He enjoys anything that has to do with swords the most such as taking care of them, training, competitions. He’s also a big spender on his hobbies, always ending up begging his father –or even you– to finance his basic needs. Many people are aware of who he is due to all that, and also the fact he’s the lieutenant. 

You are the opposite. An introverted soul, sleep deprived, fond of staying inside. You tend to stay up far too late into the night, kept up by good video games, and bad decisions. “I can still play, like, fifteen minutes more”, cue three am beeping on your alarm clock after hours passed unnoticed. You could count on one hand those aware of who you are too. First General Jing Yuan, the leader of the Luofu himself, then an unnamed accountant, whose existence only matters for a single reason (your pay), and Yanqing himself. Perhaps Marshal Hua might count as well as she knows about everything, but you never met her personally. 

Yanqing is the only person able to drag you out of your room for more than an hour, and the only person able to drag you out outside at all. Perhaps ‘drag you out’ is too strong a word as you always consent to going out with him, but your mood is a bit sour from your dead social battery and the fatigue in your body. As far as you’re aware, everyone on the Luofu market street has dubbed you “Yanqing’s sleepy partner” (You can’t really blame them, it would be quite awkward to ask “so what’s your name?” while your self-proclaimed knight in shining armor is right by your side). You have a very “cat and dog” personality contrast that makes people laugh, opposites attract or so they say. 

.

Yanqing pulls you forward amidst the crowd. “Finally, we’ve arrived at the Artisanship Commission!”

You take a moment to take in the sight. The sun is high, barely two in the afternoon, and illuminates the red city radiantly, this shop as well. The view is beautiful, yes, but honestly your mind is so jaded, it’s hard to grasp reality. Hopefully this is the last stop for today, Aeons know you won’t survive if you don’t get your afternoon nap. You hear Yanqing's voice and– oh he’s talking to a vendor, nevermind. They seem to know each other, by the way they laugh at least. 

You look over to the swords on display. They’re all impressive, a vast range of different colors and sizes. The one you like best is mainly clear blue and has a yin-yang on its guard, it looks pretty though perhaps a bit heavy for Yanqing? The second one is thinner, it’s mainly black with white and blue accents. It would look good in his hands. The one beside it is ew full-gold yellow, and though the color is less than attractive, the details forged on it are stunning. 

You don’t notice the vendor handing Yanqing a sword. He lifts the hand you’re holding, and looks at you curiously. You let go sheepishly to which he only smiles. The vendor giggles. Ah, embarrassing. 

You space out once more while Yanqing listens with grand attention to the explanations about the ki-controlled attacks the sword can perform. You’re kind of staring at him as he tests the sword through different movements, touching the blade with the tip of his finger. It looks alright, but the swords on display are prettier. He hands it back, the vendor leaves for a moment, and comes back with another. The same happens, and again, and again, and you feel your legs more and more. Trying not to yawn becomes harder and harder.

Your interest is peaked when the vendor brings him the sword with the yin-yang guard. They talk about the features again, he moves it a bit. He hums, does bigger movements, it seems he likes this one too. You rest your head against his shoulder “I like this one.” 

He shifts his head slightly. “Really?” 

“Yeah. It’s pretty and it goes well with your outfit. You should take a dark gray scabbard to go with it.” 

Yanqing hums. He looks at the sword one last time before handing it back. “Alright, I’ll take two, and two dark gray scabbards.” 

The vendor looks very surprised, but happily obliges. They shuffle, occupied in preparing his purchases. Your partner sports a smile on his face, his happiness showing through his proud stance. You don’t fight your yawn this time, and close your eyes. You open them soon after at the sound of a pathetic whine and your name however. Yanqing’s face is contorted in dread. You’re a bit confused about what is wrong, your mind foggy— oh. 

.

His wallet is completely empty. 

You laugh loudly, which makes him even more embarrassed. “Hey, come on! How am I supposed to pay now? And I already said I was taking it home too…” But it only worsens your fit. You grip onto his arm to not fall. The vendor comes back, and Yanqing hastily hides the hollow pouch. He looks at the vendor worriedly as you continue laughing against him. 

“You two are adorable together. Mind repeating your joke?” The vendor smiles at you both. 

“Yeah, thank you. Uh.” Yanqing let out an embarrassed laugh as he scratched the back of his neck. 

You recover enough to hand your credit card to the vendor. “He forgot his money at home.” Yanqing stutters as the vendor snorts. You’re handed back your card, and your partner receives his new swords. He carries them with his left arm while his right hand is occupied, as he refuses not to hold hands with you whenever you are out. 

You walk together for a bit, saying nothing. He’s not dragging you everywhere like before anymore, thankfully. The sun is still high, but at least forty minutes have passed, if not more. Yanqing is the first to break the silence, “You should name it, the sword. But it’s important so you should think deeply about it, yeah?” 

You hum, your mind occupied by other priorities. You pull him in a direction. “Nap time.” 

“What?!” He’s taken aback, clearly confused and in shock. “No way I’ll let you name it that!”

You pull him again and— push him to sit on a bench? He’s still lost, looking at you for clarification. He’s by the far side while you go sit in the middle. He’s about to ask more when you suddenly lay down. Your head goes to rest on his lap. “Nap time, wake me up in one hour or if it starts raining.” 

Yanqing opens his mouth and closes it, still confused although now flustered. “Really? Right here, right now? I thought you disliked being in public.”

You hum a bit, shifting, making yourself comfortable on the hard bench. It would take longer than one hour before getting sunburned right? So this is probably fine. Between the sun high in the sky, the soft breeze, and the comfort of Yanqing, you don’t think you’ll have much trouble resting in public. “Bed is too far, and I’m so ‘eepy.”

He huffs, although there’s a smile on his face. “Alright.” 

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

EWAN MITCHELL PHOTOGRAPHED AND INTERVIEWED FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE.

ABOUT BEING RECOGNIZED

Like most people, Ewan Mitchell is accustomed to anonymity.

So during a recent trip to Manhattan, he was surprised by what a hotel doorman asked when he arrived: “You haven’t packed your eye patch?”

The actor is still getting used to strangers making the connection in public.

“I wouldn’t think people would recognize me, but they do.”

“I think it’s because of my strong chin.”

“When I’m dressed up as Aemond and catch myself in the mirror, he scares even me a little bit.”

When he’s not in character, Mitchell is soft-spoken and occasionally flashes a boyish grin, though he retains much of Aemond’s seriousness and quiet intensity.

He is also very private: He stays off social media and in the past has shied away from sharing much with the public.

“Once you lose the mystery, you can’t really get it back.”

HE KNOWS THAT AEMOND'S KEY ROLE IN S2 MEANS HE MUST ALSO EMBRACE THE SPOTLIGHT:

“There is a point where you have to go, now’s the time to pull back the curtain.”

Like Aemond, Mitchell is a second son.

He grew up in Derby, an industrial town in the middle of England, and his parents expected him to follow his older brother’s footsteps and work at Rolls-Royce (the aerospace and industrial technology company, not the carmaker).

HIS INSPIRATIONS AND BECOME AN ACTOR

Inspired by films like “Citizen Kane” and “Taxi Driver,” Mitchell knew early on he wanted to become an actor.

When he was 13, his teacher asked each student in his class what they wanted to do when they grew up.

“Then it came to me, and I said, ‘I’m going to be an actor,’ and everyone laughed at me.”

His family could not afford tuition for drama school, so Mitchell attended a two-year vocational school, where he studied design and technology while working part-time at a restaurant and in customer service at a local soccer club.

Midway through the program, at 17, he was accepted into the Nottingham Television Workshop, a drama group that trains young people in acting.

Through the Workshop, Mitchell landed a leading role in a 2015 short film called “Fire,” about a young man who leaks fire from his hands.

Once the short was released, Mitchell downloaded it onto a dozen CDs, took the train to London and stopped by the offices of every agent he could find, handing them each a copy.

The one person who called back continues to represent Mitchell.

“By hook or by crook, I wanted to make sure that I was going to be in this business.”

ABOUT BEING CASTED AS AEMOND TARGARYEN

Aemond’s growing prominence in the show requires Mitchell to embrace the spotlight as well.

“There is a point where you have to go, now’s the time to pull back the curtain.”

But being cast as Aemond in “House of the Dragon” has been his biggest professional turning point by far.

“Since landing him, I feel like I’m able to now steer the course of my career.”

Mitchell had been rewatching the classic Hollywood adventure film “The Vikings” (1958) and musing about how he wanted to play a morally dark character similar to the one played by Kirk Douglas when he received an email inviting him to submit a taped audition for Aemond.

When he eventually auditioned in person, he left a lasting impression on Ryan Condal, the showrunner for “House of the Dragon.”

“When Ewan came into the room, he just had this presence to him that I can best describe as unsettling,” Condal said.

“It was kind of quietly terrifying the way he performed it, and it was totally different than everybody else. And then he thanked us very politely and left the room.”

Condal recalls asking Kate Rhodes James, the casting director, “Is he always like that?”

She replied, “Oh no, he’s just a very intense northern boy.”

To prepare for his role, Mitchell did not watch “Game of Thrones.” Instead, he read portions of “Fire & Blood,” the book by George R.R.

Martin that inspired the show, and studied the performances of Michael Fassbender in “Prometheus” and Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia,” each playing a figure who wields power for his own ends.

ABOUT MATT SMITH AND DAEMON TARGARYEN

On his first day on set, Mitchell consulted with Condal and decided that he would avoid interacting with Matt Smith, who plays Aemond’s similarly menacing uncle and rival, Daemon, in order to heighten the tension between the two characters.

Mitchell had grown up admiring Smith’s performance in “Doctor Who.”

But on set Mitchell avoided any eye contact with him, keeping his distance until the climactic scene near the end of the first season when Aemond and Daemon finally face off.

“There’s this addictive kind of quality when you’re in the shoes of a character.”

“When you lose yourself for a moment, it’s almost like a dream.”

ABOUT HIS HOME AND HIS DOGS

When he isn’t acting, Mitchell still lives at his family home in Derby and spends time with his dogs, three whippets named Eva, Bella and Bonnie.

“Now that I’m on it.”

“I’ve just got to stay on the dragon.”