#because a) aforementioned nobody there gave a shit

[you-will-die-with-the-moon]

*lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling with a blank stare and a smile on my face* Micheal Romance

(Huge fucking string of tags, beware, blorbo analysis brain grabbed me in a chokehold)

[lisired]

wish i never

pairing: Jaehyun x (f) reader

genre/warnings: smut, angst, debatable morals, unprotected sex, brother’s worst enemy, forbidden love, mark’s dad is a cop for the sake of plot, mentions of drugs and drug-related death

summary: Your brother, Johnny, hates Jaehyun and has never told you why. Although you intend on leaving it alone, unforeseen events thrust you into a forbidden love affair with Jaehyun. In between hookups and stolen kisses, you have to bury your feelings for Jaehyun around your overprotective older brother.

word count: 27.2k (listen… i don’t know anymore okay)

a/n: this one lowkey kinda hit different for me cause i’ve had a forbidden love and it broke me. you can kinda tell by how long this is lol ya girl went all OUT. as always, feedback is appreciated!

“Absolutely not.”

“Dude, come on,” Mark whined. 

“Hell the fuck no,” Yuta barked firmly, crossing his arms. “The last time we gave you shrooms, you texted Johnny to ask him where your phone was.”

“And?”

“You texted him from your own phone,” Yuta deadpanned. 

You snickered. Your best friend and drugs were an infamously egregious combination. Mark Lee sober was already full of shit, but Mark Lee high on whatever substance he could get his hands on? Indescribably bad. You couldn’t think of a word to even explain it.

Mark gestured over to you. “But you gave her drugs.”

Yuta grimaced. “First of all, don’t say that too loud. Johnny will kill me. Second of all, she can actually handle her shit and what can I say? She's a loyal customer.”

You added, “Plus I’m not doing fucking shrooms. Yuta just deals me weed. If Johnny ever found out I was doing anything else, he would have a fit.”

Mark huffed something under his breath about how shrooms were the softest of soft drugs there were, not that it would’ve helped his case. 

Your lips curled into a grin as you joked, “Why don’t you just chug Jeno’s notorious punch and call it a night? That’s what I’m gonna do.” 

“I’ve actually got plans with a chick who’s been dying to chug my notorious punch. I’ll be back later. Save me a drink, dude,” Mark said, grinning from ear to ear at a text message on his screen. Probably from the aforementioned chick that was begging to blow him, or so he said. 

You pretended to wince, but gave him a high five in celebration. “Aye, aye, captain,” you chirped, saluting him. 

After Mark made a break for the stairs, you abandoned Yuta to make a beeline for the drink bar. There was no such thing as a party with some of your boys without drugs and alcohol. Your brother was an overprotective nuisance, but even he knew it was impossible to keep you away from your shots and the occasional marijuana.

Plus it would've been hypocritical as all hell, so he let it slide. Not that you wanted to press your luck with something harder. On some nights you were a little drunk and a little high, and it brought out the worst in you. You were certain all of Johnny's friends kept blackmail worthy videos of you doing the unspeakable and you were content with never knowing what all those fuckers had on you. The embarrassment would be enough to kill.

You clocked one girl dry-heaving in the corner on the way and it was all the discouragement required to make you reach for a can of beer instead. To your surprise, it seemed like somebody had a similar plan, their hand coincidentally dropping on the same one. 

"Oh, I'm sorry. You can have it…," you trailed, glancing up to make eye contact with nobody less than the devil incarnate.

Ricky looked surprised to see you, though you weren’t sure why. If Jeno was throwing a party, you were bound to be in attendance. “What up, baby? Long time no see.”

“Ricky, you lost the right to call me that the second I caught you with your pants to your ankles in a closet with what's-her-face.”

More importantly, you were frankly surprised to see him there. Your stupid ex was many things, none good, and his audacity? It was out of control. Part of you wanted to commend him, because it took guts to show his face around your side of town after you yanked his trousers down in front of everyone and their mother. 

And yet he took that retort in stride. “Baby, how many times do I have to tell you that I’m sorry? It was a mistake and I’ll never make it again.”

“You’re absolutely right,” you replied, bobbing your head in agreement. “You’re a sorry motherfucker and you’ll never make it again, because we’re done for good.”

But Ricky just couldn’t take the hint that you were so fucking over anything that had to do with him and crept closer, continuing darkly, “Don’t you know you’re nothing without me? Nothing!”

Having surrounded yourself with enough drunk and high people countless times, it was obvious that Ricky was under the influence, which made him extremely capricious. He looked a grand total of two seconds away from reaching out and seizing you by your arm. 

Your eyes darted across the room for anybody you knew, but it was difficult when dancing bodies obscured them from your field of view. Yuta had probably wandered to snag more drug deals, Mark was getting his dick wet, and Johnny and Taeyong were nowhere to be found. 

You were about to resign yourself to the fact that you were positively out of luck until you heard a deep baritone ask from beside you, “Do we have a problem over here?”

It took all of two seconds to recognize its owner. Jeong Jaehyun, sang the little chorus in your head. Your brother’s worst enemy. The beef seemed more than a little one-sided, but you didn’t ask questions. For whatever reason, the mere mention of Jaehyun’s name made your brother tense. 

It was clear that Ricky was sizing Jaehyun up and he snapped with potent venom, “Who the fuck are you?”

“The host’s cousin,” Jaehyun said, looking tall and foreboding, as if he was daring somebody to challenge him. “And you are?”

“The love of her life.”

You didn’t know how he could confidently lie like that, though you wouldn’t be surprised if he wholeheartedly believed it, which was downright terrifying. You learned the hard way that this boy was as self-centered as they came. 

Jaehyun took one look at you, and the glaringly obvious discomfort on your face, and replied, "Yeah, I don't think she wants to be around you. If I were you, I'd get the fuck out of here and never come back."

Ricky chuckled. "And if I don't?"

Jaehyun shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "Fuck around and find out," was all he said. His lips were drawn into a line and his gaze was fixed to your ex's idiotic face with a lethal stare. Not to mention Jaehyun had a couple of inches on him, which made you resist a satisfied little grin.

Obviously, Ricky wanted to stay and claim you as his pretty property, but even the lack of inhibitions didn’t hinder his judgment at that moment. Like any wise person would, he made a beeline for the closest exit. It was common sense that Jeno and his associates were not to be fucked with. 

Your shoulders relaxed when Ricky was gone. If anything, he had gotten off easy. He was lucky that you had no clue where Johnny was. You were positive he would’ve knocked the sense out of him, if he had any, which was debatable. 

“Insufferable prick,” you grumbled under your breath. Then, you glanced up to Jaehyun, who, to your surprise, was already looking at you. “Thanks, Jaehyun. I don’t know what he would’ve done if you weren’t here.”

Jaehyun still looked a little pissed, but your words seemed to make him soften. “You don’t have to thank me for that. It’s basic human decency.”

“And some people don’t even have that,” you replied, intending for it to be a joke, but it came out a little more melancholy. 

If Jaehyun noticed, he said nothing about it.

Before he could even if he wanted to, something stitched your brows together and you mentioned, “Hey, I didn’t know Jeno was your cousin.”

“Me, neither.”

It took a second for that to settle in, but once you finally understood, amusement broke the confusion tensing your face and your lips parted in laughter. Jaehyun joined you. His bold-faced little white lie saved your ass, but ironically, that wasn’t what you were focused on. 

It was those deep, adorable dimples on both of his cheeks that somehow made him even more handsome. 

Instantly, something in you chided, Bitch, don’t check him out. He’s your brother’s worst enemy. You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think you’re getting laid tonight just because he’s playing nice.

“I should go,” you said after a minute, finally grabbing a beer. “Thanks again. I really appreciate it.”

You escaped before Jaehyun could tell you not to thank him. His eyes were fixed to your back, following you until you were obscured completely by partygoers. He knew you were Johnny’s sister, but damn, you were kinda cute. 

At least for now, Jaehyun wouldn’t play with fire. Johnny almost kicked his ass one time and he wasn’t exactly keen on getting his ass handed to him. 

You were half tempted to stop by Jeno’s room to check if any of the guys were passing a blunt around in there, but the last time your curiosity got the better of you, you accidentally walked in on Jeno shirtless with some half-naked girl. Not a sight you wanted to relive, so you kept downstairs. 

Your eyes scanned the living room for any familiar faces, but it was difficult to tell if anybody was there. There was a gigantic crowd dancing to Kiss Me Thru The Phone and you chuckled at a certain memory of Mark drunk-singing along to the lyrics. 

“There you are,” came a familiar voice beside you. Your gaze flitted to Johnny, whose face was stitched with concern. “Taeyong told me that he saw you with Jaehyun. You good?”

“I’m fine,” you hollered over the music. “Just heartbroken that Mark abandoned me to get laid.”

Any other time, Johnny would’ve laughed, but his lips were pressed into a solid line. “Have you had anything?”

You rolled your eyes and exhaled a breath. “Just the beer in my hand, Johnny.”

He studied your face, as if he was attempting to figure out whether or not you were telling the truth, but ultimately decided to believe you. “Listen, I just wanna look out for you. You’re my little sister. If anything were to happen to you...”

“Mom and Dad would kill you and dump your body in the woods for bears to find. Yes, I know,” you groaned exasperatedly, cutting him off. “I get it, Johnny. But I need you to get that I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“If you were a little girl, you wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t give you weed.”

That comment wasn’t even worth a roll of your eyes. You took a sip of beer and ignored it. 

“Why were you around Jaehyun anyways?” Johnny asked. It was obviously the question he was itching to ask. Probably wanted to make sure Jaehyun wasn’t making any advances. 

The memory of your bastard ex getting uncomfortably close to you after reaching for a drink he clearly didn’t need, raising his voice at you in a way no woman should ever accept, made you shudder. “Ricky decided to try and win me back. If you can even call it that.”

Johnny immediately perked up in anger. “What?”

“Relax. Jaehyun already took care of him. That’s why he was there. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“I swear to god, I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch,” Johnny hissed, looking a total of five seconds away from giving someone a piece of his mind. 

“Ricky, or Jaehyun?”

“Does it matter?”

You shrugged. Your lips parted to ask why he hated Jaehyun in the first place, but you cut yourself off. There was a reason why you didn’t ask him months ago. Johnny might’ve been overprotective, but that was because he was your brother and he loved you. When he was ready, he would tell you. 

The night dragged on. This one was a little more boring than usual, but that could’ve been chalked up to you still being shaken up about your encounter with your ex. You almost considered what would’ve happened had Jaehyun not been around to intervene, but your mind dared not wander there. 

Part of you wanted to know where he was camping out at. Surely, he had to be around here somewhere, but you weren’t going to look. Especially not with Johnny on high alert. He was being extra careful, wanting to be there in case your ex was crazy enough to return.

You listed what you knew about Jeong Jaehyun. For one, he was fine as hell. That was undeniable. Secondly, he was lowkey, which was why you essentially knew nothing about him other than the fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous. 

Sure, he made an appearance at these parties every now and then, but most of the time he kept to a tight-knit circle of friends and if they weren’t there, there was no way in hell he was coming. Sometimes his roommates’ threw parties at their house, but he rarely went downstairs, preferring to linger in his room doing fuck knows what. 

You honestly couldn’t blame him. People sucked. Most of them, anyways. 

Only one day later, you were gripping an overlook, peering down at little critters splashing in the lake from the bridge above. For a long time, there was nobody there to join you other than your little nonhuman friends. You liked coming here every now and then to clear your head. It was your safe place, your happy place. 

The sky was cloudy but there was only a nine percent chance of rain this afternoon, thus you weren’t too worried. You needed to go somewhere. Home was too isolating, but everywhere else was too open. 

You could be happy here. There were no entitled assholes or overprotective brothers around to get on your nerves every five seconds. It was only you and the gifts of nature. 

And somebody else. 

“I thought that was you,” said somebody from your side. 

Imagine your shock when you turned and saw Jeong Jaehyun jogging towards you. In the fucking flesh. 

It was harder not to check him out this time. The man was practically drenched head to toe in sweat, his very exposed skin glistening with moisture. The shirt he was wearing hugged his chest and it was all you could do not to salivate. 

Rather than continue to rake your eyes up his frame, you asked playfully, “Are you stalking me, Jeong Jaehyun?”

Jaehyun’s eyes twinkled with mirth. God, how come you never noticed how pretty and brown they were? “Actually, I’m surprised. I was cutting through here instead of my usual jog route. The weather looked pretty bad.”

You snickered, crossing your arms. “You didn’t check the forecast before you left the house? It’s not gonna rain. Probably.”

Jaehyun furrowed a brow. “Probably?”

“That guy on the news is an infamous liar,” you grumbled under your breath. 

Jaehyun chuckled. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, coming closer to the railing where you were, but kept a safe distance between your bodies lest he made you uncomfortable. “I told you why I’m here. What about you?”

Your nose got an instant waft of Jaehyun’s scent and it was godly, which was shocking considering he was literally sweating everywhere. “Oh, you know. I come here from time to time to think, or to not think. Depending on what the situation calls for.”

“Really?”

You bobbed your head. “Yeah. Why?”

Jaehyun shook his head. “Nothing,” was what he said, but in reality, he was thinking about how he passed this bridge nearly every goddamn day and never knew if he took a detour, he’d potentially cross paths with a pretty little thing like you. 

You lifted a brow, but didn’t press. 

“Are you… okay?” Jaehyun reluctantly asked. 

You bobbed your head. “Yup, I’m alright. It’s just that Ricky approaching me has Johnny on edge, so now whenever I go out he and his friends are watching me like a bunch of hawks.” 

Jaehyun winced. “Damn. That must suck.”

“I get he’s doing it from a place of love, but fuck, sometimes I just wanna be left the hell alone, you know?”

Jaehyun nodded. God, did he know. And not only because he was an overwhelmingly introverted dude. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.”

That caught your attention. “You do?”

Jaehyun scratched the back of his head. “I mean, I don’t have an overprotective brother, but I do have an overprotective mother. It’s sweet and all, but do you know what it makes you look like when you’re on a date with a girl and your mom won’t stop calling you?”

Your lips couldn’t help but curl into a grin. “Aw, you’re a Momma’s boy.”

“This is exactly what I mean,” Jaehyun groaned. 

“No, it’s… cute,” you said, but it was impossible to control the giggles falling from your lips. “Most of the guys I know like that are sweethearts. Johnny, Mark. Maybe you.”

Jaehyun found that amusing. “You think I’m a sweetheart?”

You shrugged your shoulders. “Maybe. I don’t know you well enough to decide, but seemingly, sure.”

“Do you want to?”

“Do I want to what?”

“Know me better,” Jaehyun said, tentative. Almost as if he wasn’t sure what he wanted.

That was the million dollar question. On the one hand, Jaehyun was cute and it most likely wouldn’t hurt to spend a little time together, but on the other, there was the Johnny thing. You groaned. “God, Johnny would have a heart attack if he knew I was with you right now. Maybe even an aneurysm.”

Jaehyun snickered with mischief. “Who said that he has to know?”

That response downright shocked you. You weren’t expecting it from somebody like him, though then again, you knew virtually nothing about this boy and it only made you want to sate your curiosity. “Ooh. You’re trouble, Jeong Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun took that in stride. “I’m guessing you like that.”

Taking a step closer, you started to close the gap between you that Jaehyun had created for your sake. “Hm, you know what they say.”

“I don’t think I do.” 

“It’s always the quiet ones that deal the most damage,” you whispered sultrily, glancing into his gentle brown eyes. 

Jaehyun’s eyes flickered. That caught him off-guard.

Then, you backed away and waved him goodbye. “I’ve gotta go. Later, Dimples.”

Dimples? That was new. Jaehyun was pleasantly surprised by the nickname and he was so stunned that it distracted him from his train of thoughts. 

It was only when you were long gone that he realized that you never answered his question. 

You needed time to think, to decide if Jaehyun was worth potentially losing your brother’s trust. You didn’t know why he hated him, but his less than enthusiastic reactions to him said more than enough. Jaehyun was cute, but you could easily find another cute guy whose bones your brother didn’t mention crushing.

But damn, you were curious. And curiosity killed the cat. You knew one thing, though. You were starting to like Jeong Jaehyun. 

You shook your head, ashamed of yourself. This is really what’s it’s come to, huh?

Jaehyun thought about that exchange on the bridge every now and then for the next couple of days and chastised himself for even making moves on you of all people. She’s his baby sister, you asshole. She’s off-limits. 

Not that it would really stop him, if you let him have you. 

It wasn’t like Johnny had to know. Jaehyun could keep a secret and he assumed that you had a handful of your own. People with strict upbringings tended to have a lot of practice with being sneaky and your situation was close enough. 

He sat on his bed and heaved a breath, playing with a lighter. 

Meanwhile, you were with your boys, listening to them chatter about disgusting boy things but lowkey too curious to abandon your spot on the sofa that was too comfortable for its own good. Nobody liked sleeping on sofas, but you swore you wouldn’t mind on this one. Plus sometimes you’d gotten drunk here enough where you almost dozed off. 

You made a gagging noise when Mark started to talk about his nth blowjob of the week. You weren’t counting, but he definitely was. 

“Your dick probably has so much chlamydia that it’ll mutate into a different variant like Covid,” Haechan teased. 

You grimaced, but you definitely agreed. 

“You’re one to talk,” Mark snapped. 

Haechan nodded, grinning proudly. “Of course, I am. I always wear condoms and get tested regularly. I’m clean as a whistle.”

You shook your head in amusement. “I’ve never understood the saying ‘clean as a whistle.’ Like aren’t whistles actually contaminated from being in someone’s mouth? Now, when you combine that logic with your dick…”

Jeno burst into laughter. Yuta obviously found it funny from the smile on his face and Mark would never miss a chance to laugh at his friend’s expense. 

Haechan dramatically rolled his eyes. “And what about you, little miss? How often do you get laid?”

“Definitely not as often as you guys,” you replied, coming to a stand. Not that you wanted to kiss the sofa goodbye. “I’ll be right back. I’ve gotta tinkle.”

Mark’s nose wrinkled. “You didn’t think that was too much information?”

You almost threw the remote at your best friend, but spared him. There was no way this dude was talking about too much information when he was literally giving you all a play-by-play of his sex life. 

“If it burns when you pee, Mark gave you the airborne strand of chlamydia,” Yuta joked dryly. 

You left too quickly to see Mark attempt to murder Yuta and it was a shame that you had to miss it. There was no doubt that Haechan would exaggerate the moment to make you regret not being there, but right now, you were concentrated on finding the bathroom. 

And of course, it was when you finally made it upstairs through the groups of bodies that you realized you didn’t know where it was. 

You groaned, cursing yourself for being so forgetful. You’d only been here a couple of times and never long enough to use the fucking bathroom, apparently. And you really couldn’t fucking hold it. 

You glanced around the set of doors upstairs, incapable of keeping still. Thank god nobody was here except for you. If I was a bathroom, which door would I be behind?

You set eyes on a random door and said, “Fuck it.” You marched right up to it and knocked none too gently, seeping with impatience. 

To your surprise, it was Jaehyun that opened the door, a pair of headphones slung around his neck. And behind him was a bed, not a toilet. 

Jaehyun’s eyes flickered with shock and he said your name. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, um, I was kinda looking for the bathroom. I’m guessing this isn’t it,” you said with a little humor, which was remarkable, all things considered. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here, baby.”

“Oh.” You knew that, so the fact that it slipped your mind meant that you definitely weren’t yourself when you had to pee. 

Jaehyun had the audacity to laugh. He opened his door a little wider. “You can use mine. It’s that door over there.”

“Thank you,” you said in relief, immediately darting for the bathroom. 

You were even more relieved by the time you washed your hands and walked back into his bedroom, no longer fighting to keep still. Jaehyun was sitting on his bed where his headphones were now cast aside. God, how loud did you have to be knocking for him to hear you over those?

“You sure were in a hurry,” Jaehyun teased. 

You rolled your eyes, but a little laugh fell from your lips. You wholeheartedly blamed Jeno and his damn poisonous drinks. Sighing in relief, you glanced around Jaehyun’s room. For a boy, he was exceptionally tidy. He had vinyls organized on a shelf. “No girls in here, I see.”

Jaehyun didn’t know whether to be offended by that or not. “What do you think I am, a pimp?”

You snickered. “Nah. I’m just traumatized. Sue me.”

Jaehyun knew better than to ask questions that he didn’t want to know the answers to, so he left it alone. “You never answered my question the other day.”

“What question?” you asked. Obviously, you were playing dumb. You needed every second to think about what your response would be, although you’d had the past forty-eight hours and then some to contemplate. 

Your damn brother was the only thing that stood between you and Jaehyun. 

Johnny wasn’t around this time for obvious reasons. There was no way in hell that he’d step foot in the house of his mortal enemy. He didn’t want you to be there either, but you assured him that you’d steer clear of all things Jeong Jaehyun. 

And it wasn’t as if you had deliberately lied. It (kind of) wasn’t your fault that you didn’t know where the bathroom was. 

“If you wanted to get to know me better.”

You stepped over to his bed, sitting beside him and sighing. “Jaehyun, you know my brother won’t approve.”

“I guess that’s a ‘no’ then,” Jaehyun muttered. 

Your eyes glanced at his handsome face, then his beautiful, twinkling brown eyes, and finally his soft pink lips. And when they flitted so low, there was no looking back. You leaned in and pressed your lips to Jaehyun’s, waiting for him to kiss back, and when he did without hesitation your heart soared. 

His hands flew to your back, eyes fluttering closed. God, he tasted as good as he smelled, and it was more than a little arousing. You made him fall against his mattress, straddling his hips and kissing him even deeper.

The change was welcome. His heart was racing just from locking lips with you and it took him to the sky. He grabbed a hold of your hips, which fit snugly in his palms, and listened to the soft sighs that slipped from your mouth in between the kisses. 

Mark was probably downstairs wondering, Damn, bitch, how long does it take to piss?

You pulled back when a certain groan of his turned you on a little too much to be safe. Jaehyun was secretly disappointed, but he didn’t complain, taking time to catch his breath. “Is that a maybe?”

You giggled and shook your head. “It’s a yes.”

Jaehyun sat up and grinned. He knew what he was getting himself into, but he didn’t care. There was something about you that made him defy gravity. 

Still straddling his hips, you threaded your fingers through his hair and leaned in to whisper into his ears, “We’re playing with fire.”

“Ironically, I thought the same thing,” Jaehyun deadpanned. 

You chuckled. Well, if you didn’t care, and he didn’t care, nothing more needed to be said. You were really doing this. 

Jaehyun realized that he already really liked holding you. You were warm and soft to the touch, and you fit perfectly in his arms. “Have you been drinking?”

“Nope.”

“Did you do any drugs?”

“Not even a little,” you said, raising a brow at the question. Much to your chagrin, it reminded you of your brother’s incessant worry. “Why?”

Jaehyun said without hesitation, “Because I’ve got weed.”

That was exciting. No wonder Jaehyun never came downstairs during his roommates’ parties. The real party was in his bedroom. “Geez, Dimples. What are you waiting for?”

Jaehyun laughed at your enthusiasm and grabbed his lighter off his nightstand. You were flattered when he let you roll and even more when he praised your technique, which took years to develop. Thank god for your experienced friends. 

The high had you hyper aware of everything. Jaehyun’s whole room smelled like him, to no surprise. As he said, he lived there, fuck’s sake. But it was pleasant and you were honestly forgetting that you even promised to return downstairs.

The guilt and pressure of keeping secrets from Johnny was heavy on your back a few moments ago, but after the marijuana settled in, you relaxed into Jaehyun’s side. He didn’t seem to mind. Maybe it was the tree getting to his brain, but his hands got a little bolder, too. 

And it also only enhanced your curiosity. “Do you do this often, Jaehyun?”

“You mean invite girls into my room to talk and smoke?”

“Yeah.”

Jaehyun took a drag and exhaled into the thick air of his room. “Eh, not really. I’ve had girls in my room before, obviously, but it never really lasts.”

You weren’t surprised. Any girl could see that Jaehyun was handsome as all fucking hell and you didn’t expect him to be a total sexless loser. Matter of fact, if he told you that he was a virgin, you doubted that you’d even believe it. 

“Maybe you haven’t met the right girl then,” you suggested coyly. 

Jaehyun chuckled. “Maybe.”

It was way too soon to ask if he thought you were the right girl, so instead you settled for asking where his interests lay. “What exactly are you looking for?”

Jaehyun knew the answer to that question in perfect detail because he’d thought about it countless times, being his typical hopeless romantic self. This was a boy that dreamed of finding his miss right before he went to bed. He was a simple guy. He wanted picket fences and kids. Perhaps a puppy. 

But maybe it wasn’t all too simple. Jaehyun wasn’t searching for a housewife. He wanted someone to go to random old shops with and look at vintage items together. He wanted someone that didn’t draw a lot of attention, but liked to go outside and explore. Money be damned. Thanks to his mother, he had ample cash, but no one to spend it on. 

Jaehyun hummed, pretending to think about his answer. “Guess.”

You threw him a look. “Are you serious?”

Jaehyun bobbed his head eagerly, lips curling into a mischievous little grin. “I’ll tell you, but I want you to guess first.” 

You sighed and glanced around his bedroom for clues, and fortunately enough, there were plenty. “Vinyls from the nineties. You’re an old soul and you want someone who fits your vibe. You smell like expensive cologne, so maybe you want someone to wine and dine, but you definitely want to be comfortable.”

Jaehyun said nothing, but you could tell that he was listening. 

You looked at the pictures of him and an older woman framed on his nightstand and continued, “You want the type of girl you can take home to your mother. And your mother wants the absolute best for her son, so she raised you to have high standards.”

“You’re good at this,” Jaehyun muttered. 

“I’m nowhere close to being finished,” you said, grinning from ear to ear. “Judging from the souvenirs on your shelf, you like going to different places, so you want someone curious and adventurous in nature. Appreciative and respectful of different peoples' cultures.”

Jaehyun was only smiling at this point. It was kind of funny and spooky being read like this. 

“You’ve searched for love and haven’t found something that feels right, so now you keep girls around for a good time, not a long one. And you love a damsel in distress, I think,” you said, concluding your investigation. 

“Wow,” was all Jaehyun said. 

Though you already knew the answer, you pressed your lips into a smile and asked, “Am I warm?”

“You’re on fire,” he replied, wondering how in the hell you got all that just from looking at his bedroom. “But how did you know?”

“That you love a damsel in distress?”

“That I’ve looked for love and gave up on it.”

You almost rolled your eyes. You couldn’t believe he was seriously asking that question. “No offense, but you scream hopeless romantic. Plus you’re hot. You know your worth and what you want and I doubt it’s meaningless sex.”

Jaehyun had this melancholy look on his face for the briefest of seconds, but it disappeared so quickly you could’ve imagined it being there. 

“I don’t think you gave up, I think you took a little pause. You know she’s out there, and when the time’s right, you’ll know.” Then, you abandoned the sadness and quipped, “But you’re also a guy, and guys want sex.”

Jaehyun chuckled, but you had somehow penetrated his mind. You had part of him figured out and he didn’t know what to do with that. It was too soon to get too deep. 

You exhaled contentedly, but the marijuana had you thinking. You could’ve been wrong about Jaehyun. You had definitely been wrong before. 

There was this tension in the room now that neither of you were equipped to handle. As standard when he was fooling around with a girl, there was a piece of him that wondered if it could be the real thing this time, but he didn’t want to get ahead of himself. 

It wouldn’t have been the first time. 

Jaehyun gave you back the blunt. “What about you - what are you looking for?”

“Who said I was looking?” you asked with obvious amusement. 

That shattered Jaehyun’s former thoughts of possibly wifing you up one day. Of course you didn’t intend on dating the dude your brother hated. It would’ve been a very unconventional relationship. You could keep him around for fun, but it would have to end sooner or later. 

So Jaehyun contentedly resigned himself to the fact that you would pass, just like all the other girls he brought up to his room, and decided he was fine with that. Maybe he had high standards, but you’d forgotten to mention the part that they came with moderate hopes and low expectations.

That way getting hurt was borderline impossible. 

Then, Jaehyun started to grin like an idiot and reminded, “You said that you think I’m hot.”

“I literally said that ten hundred hours ago,” you groaned, exhaling a puff of smoke into the air. 

You cried out in shock when he grabbed your hips and pulled you back onto him again, but instinctively leaned into his shoulder. Jaehyun was (usually) humble, but anyone who thought he didn’t know he was hot was a fool. “Am I hot enough to kiss?”

Your lips tugged into a smile, and rather than directly answer his question, you went in for a kiss, holding the blunt away from his face so that he wouldn’t get burned. Jaehyun effortlessly matched your rhythm and it was dumbfounding how he could be so excellent of a kisser. 

You spent the better half of the night passing a blunt back and forth with Jaehyun, kissing and talking in between (featuring some inappropriate touches). Jaehyun was so fucking easy to talk to, the topics were boundless. Neither of you opened up much outside of your relationship goals and lack thereof, but you still got to know each other a little better. 

Jaehyun loved music from r&b to jazz to soul, though you could’ve guessed how passionate he was after one look at his vinyl collection. He was flirty sometimes, but soft-spoken and very gentleman-like and he never once proposed for the two of you to have sex. Plus he was a bit of a goofball. 

To say nothing of the fact that he could play the guitar. You didn’t know why, but that somehow made him even more delightful. 

It was pleasant to be in the presence of a guy that was simultaneously attractive and respectful.

Because it was far too late for you to drive yourself home when you finally started to get sleepy, he let you steal his bed and slept in the room of one of his roommate’s that was never home, according to Jaehyun. 

Jungkook was what he said his name was. Apparently he basically lived full-time in his girlfriend’s apartment and Jaehyun didn’t know why he still paid rent, but he didn’t complain. It was going to be a sad day for his bank account when Jungkook finally moved out. 

And that left Yugyeom. He was the one that threw all of the parties. You asked Jaehyun last night why he rarely came downstairs during those parties and his response was, “I don’t like the attention.”

Morning had come loudly as ever. Birds chirped outside, singing sweetly. You stretched your arms above your head and yawned, unable to ignore the dark curtains that effectively kept the sunlight out. 

The first thing you did was let a little light in. And the second thing was remember how you spent last night, memories of marijuana and laughter, and flirtatious behavior hitting you all at once. It seemed that Jeong Jaehyun was a promise of fun. 

Grabbing your phone, you headed down the stairs and breathed a little in relief when you saw Jaehyun already awake, waiting by the toaster. “Good morning, Dimples.”

Jaehyun turned when he heard your voice and the smile that spread across his lips was instantaneous. “Good morning, beautiful. How did you sleep?”

“I should’ve known that your bed would be as cool and collected as you are,” you quipped, rubbing your arms. It was colder without Jaehyun’s blankets to help strengthen the temperature. 

Jaehyun shook with mirth and it was a sight you wanted to see more often. 

“I could’ve slept on the sofa,” you said without complaint. “The party was over by the time we called it a night and it’s the most comfortable sofa I’ve ever put my butt on.”

“It goes against everything I believe in to let you sleep on a couch when there’s a perfectly functional bed upstairs.”

“Aw, what a gentleman,” you replied, coming to stand at his side. “I drew the curtains in your room open, by the way. I don’t know how you live like a damn vampire.”

“What’s wrong with living like a vampire? Vampires are cool.”

“I don’t think Vampires need Vitamin D. Humans do,” you retorted, arms crossed. 

Jaehyun’s lips curved into a stupid little smile that reeked of mischief and you instantly knew where his thoughts were before he even said anything. 

You rolled your eyes at his silliness and told him, “Whatever you’re about to say - don’t.”

Bagels popped out of the toaster and the sight of food made Jaehyun forget about his previous shenanigans. He set both bagels on individual plates that already had food and said, “I made you something. It’s not much because I’ve gotta go soon, but I didn’t want you to be hungry.”

“Thank you,” you said with gratitude, accepting the plate he handed to you. Plate in hand, you went to sit at the table, watching Jaehyun bring cups over. 

“You’re welcome,” Jaehyun told you gently. “Next time I’ll make you a real full-course meal as a treat.”

You gawked. “You can cook?”

“A little bit, yeah. Why?”

“You just got so much hotter,” you breathed.

Jaehyun grinned. 

The time you spent together that morning was a duplicate of the night before except there were only the lingering overnight highs instead of the fresh ones. You were sad that you had to leave, but Jaehyun had to work and you needed to go home. 

Sitting in your car, you checked your phone for the first time in hours. There had to be a thousand missed calls and unanswered messages from your friends and Johnny. Though it wasn’t unusual for your phone to be on Do Not Disturb, it was definitely strange to not at least tell your loved ones that you were very much still alive. 

You were just so hooked on Jaehyun that it completely slipped your mind to check your phone. There wasn’t a dull moment upstairs in his bedroom and even when it was silent you were comforted by the sound of a vinyl playing quietly on his record player, which you were stunned that he even had. 

You texted your friends to let them know that you were on the way home and called Johnny to get his usual tantrum out of the way before you got there, but it was safe to say that you weren’t expecting to come back to Johnny and Mark waiting for you in the kitchen like two unhappy parents. 

You reached into the cabinet to grab a glass and deadpanned, “Uh oh. Am I in trouble?”

Mark snickered and he looked like mischief. “Very much so.”

Your gaze flitted towards Johnny, who was clearly the more disgruntled of the two, and asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You look like you had a long night.”

“That’s probably because I did.”

“Did you hook up with anyone?”

You grimaced. “Gross, Johnny. Do I ask you who and what you do with your dick?”

Johnny gave you a look that told you he was serious. 

“No, I didn’t hook up,” you replied, filling your glass with water and hoping to find a way out of this situation so that you could shower and brush your teeth. 

Johnny’s lips were tugged into a frown. This older brother responsibility was far from easy when his little sister made it even harder to check up on her. “I worry about you. Is that a crime?” 

You exhaled a long breath. “You’re right. I should have at least let you know that I was okay and I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I just got… distracted.”

That got Mark’s attention and he butted in dramatically, “Where did you go last night? I was this close to filing a police report, but it hadn’t been twenty-four hours.”

Typical cop father response. That was half the reason why nobody wanted to deal him drugs. Thank goodness he had you to vouch for him. “And what would you do if I was off with a serial killer instead of some hot guy?”

“I wouldn’t be too worried. You’re annoying. They would return you on the front doorstep with a note that said ‘come get your bitch back.’”

You were tempted to roll your eyes, but you noticed Johnny laugh a little and it honestly made you feel somewhat better. He had been painfully uptight lately and you just wanted him to chill for once. 

“I’m gonna go take a shower and brush my teeth,” you announced, discarding your glass in the sink and heading for the stairs. 

Of course, Mark had more insults on deck and didn’t hesitate to ask, “You’re gonna need more than that for all the cum you had to have gargled last night.”

“For the last time, I did not hook up,” you huffed in exasperation, marching up the stairs. “And get the hell out of my house - you don’t even live here!”

You could hear Mark laughing from the overlook. 

A lot of time was spent counting down the hours until you could see Jeong Jaehyun again. You learned that he was not the type of guy to sit around waiting by his phone. This was a busy man with business to take care of and he didn’t have a lot of spare time. 

You didn’t mind, because he spent it talking to you, which was definitely an indicator that he was starting to really like you. With so few hours in a week, let alone a day, it was hard to believe he let just anyone consume the little downtime that remained. 

Jaehyun let you crash some nights at his place when your brother was being a massive thorn in your side. It wasn’t a crime, but it was easy to get away with, all things considered. Yugyeom never bothered either of you and Jungkook was rarely there, so you spent most of the time talking incessantly and getting high. 

Maybe some kisses were shared in between, but nothing more. Jaehyun was content with just getting to know you for now. His usual invitees consisted of one-night stands and girls he hung out with for a couple of weeks, but you were different. You made him think, high or not, and it was rare a girl penetrated his mind so deeply.

And so quickly. It had only been a month, maybe a little longer. He was still afraid of being completely open with you, but the way the two of you touched each other was starting to get riskier and riskier. 

Kisses lasted longer. More than once, he caught himself going after your clothes, but he didn’t want to seem like an animal. You did seem a little eager too, kissing the breath out of him and getting more and more flirtatious, but Jaehyun hated having to guess. 

He wanted you to tell him what you wanted in no uncertain terms. No room for uncertainty. 

Yugyeom knocked on Jaehyun’s bedroom door, which was already cracked ajar, and asked, “Hey, is she coming over tonight?”

“Yes, so please be on your best behavior. No bullshit,” Jaehyun replied, getting a whiff of the trouble that was Yugyeom and wrinkling his nose. 

“Have you guys… you know?”

“That’s a personal question.”

“So you haven’t.” Yugyeom pressed, “Man, when are you gonna tell her you’ve got the hots for her? You know what, I’ll clear the house and leave a bottle of wine out. Light one of your expensive candles. Girls like that shit.”

Like hell Jaehyun needed advice on how to set the mood, from Yugyeom much less. Plus he was none too pleased at being interrupted, especially because now he was thinking about having sex with you and it was doing things to him down there. “I think I know what girls like.”

“Then what’s the problem? And don’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it. We’re both dudes, man. That’s bullshit.”

“There isn’t one,” Jaehyun replied to his roommate honestly. Of course, he had thought about having sex with you. He might’ve been respectful, but like Yugyeom said, he was still a dude. Hell, the words had come out of your own mouth. 

Yugyeom prodded, “Then?”

“I just don’t wanna rush into it.”

Now that Yugyeom could buy. Jaehyun was sentimental like that. When he really liked a girl, evaluating her worth took priority over getting laid. Jaehyun had this wall of ice put up that even Yugyeom had to steadily break through. Ironically, sometimes it felt like he was still on the outside. 

But he put two and two together. If Jaehyun liked you - as in really, really liked you - then that made shit even more complicated. It was no secret that Johnny had it out for Jaehyun and he obviously came to the same conclusion that Jaehyun had; shit getting serious with you was dangerous. 

So Yugyeom left it alone. 

Like clockwork, you were pulling into Jaehyun’s driveway only a few hours later. You discerned that the lot was empty save for your car and Jaehyun’s which more than likely implied that the two of you would be completely alone in the house together. 

Slipping the spare key from under the mat, you unlocked the door and sang after locking it behind yourself, “Darling, I’m home!”

“I’m upstairs,” Jaehyun called out from the second floor, his room door obviously open for once. The benefits of having the house to himself. 

You didn’t hesitate to make your way upstairs, not failing to clock the bottle of expensive wine on the counter when you passed by the kitchen, but you thought little of it when you came through the hallway and slipped into Jaehyun’s comfortable bedroom. “Hey, Dimples,” you greeted. 

Jaehyun smiled at you and waved. His room was dimly lit. The overhead lights were turned off, but the candles on his nightstand were ablaze and there was an old school classic going on in the background. 

The second you came in, Jaehyun set his book aside, giving you his undivided attention. “Come here.”

You wasted no time doing as told, advancing towards the bed and giggling when he snatched you into his open arms for a handful of kisses. Your whole body was soothed from his slightest of touches, at ease in his arms. Jaehyun had quickly become your second safe place. 

God, you had been waiting for this moment all week. Johnny wasn’t on your ass any more than usual, but it got lonely in that house and it was even worse when you found yourself only craving Jaehyun’s company. There was something happening to you and you couldn’t tell if you liked it or not. 

Jaehyun drew back after a minute, taking a moment to breathe and brush a loose strand of hair behind your ears. “Things okay at home?”

“New topic,” you groaned. 

Jaehyun winced. That couldn’t have been too good. 

“You smell good,” you purred, breathing in his scent. 

“You always say that.”

“Because you always smell good.” 

“I just got out of the shower.”

“Without me?”

“You sound like a guy,” Jaehyun said in disapproval. 

You snickered. You had definitely gotten that comment from a boy before.

Jaehyun’s eyes were fixed to your face, taking in how beautiful you were. Damn, it was like every time he saw you, you looked even more breathtaking. 

You couldn’t help but stare back. Jaehyun’s visuals were out of this damn universe and it was borderline maddening he could be this fucking fine. But deeper than that, sometimes you couldn’t help but stare into his dark eyes and wonder what all he was hiding back there. 

It was plain as day that Jaehyun wasn’t the type to wear his heart on his sleeve, especially not when his romantic feelings were involved. In the time that you’d spent together, you had gotten to learn some things about him, but there was plenty that he filtered out as a defense mechanism. 

When you wanted to get closer, Jaehyun shut down, which was totally ironic, because he was the one that asked if you wanted to get to know him. Now you had to fight for it?

Maybe he meant get to know his body and you were oblivious - and you wouldn’t have minded one bit - but if that was the case, you should’ve already had sex and been out of the picture. Yet he was keeping you twice as long as most girls lasted and for no apparent reason.

Sex made things more complicated. If you had sex with Jaehyun right now, and it was good, there was absolutely no telling how that would shift the trajectory of your entire life. But the way he was looking at you right now tempted you to risk it all. 

Your lips found Jaehyun’s again, but the kiss was different this time. It was needier, desperate. It sent heat stretching through every bone in your body and straight between your thighs, and you felt like you were levitating. Your body scorched with desire, hands running down his chest. 

Jaehyun kept up with your reckless kissing very well, but he couldn’t ignore the nature of it and it made him ask himself questions. You were kissing him like you wanted him. Tired of wondering, he pulled back and asked forthrightly, “Do you want to have sex with me?” 

“Isn’t it obvious?” you countered, quickly seizing the opportunity to return your lips to his.

All of this beating around the bush was getting on his nerves and Jaehyun took matters into his own hands. Literally. You gasped when he pushed you onto your back, pinning you onto his bed, and locked your wrists above your head. “I want to hear you say it.”

Now that was sexy as hell and your thighs involuntarily pressed together. “I want to have sex with you.”

That was all Jaehyun needed to hear. He was quick to catch your lip in between his teeth and seal your lips in another heated kiss, taking in your every trembling exhale. You moaned into his mouth, a little too enamored with how good it felt beneath him. 

His hands released your wrists in favor of your waist, testing the waters. You were reactive to Jaehyun’s touches, hyper aware of his hands steadily falling lower, but not daring to touch you too intimately yet. Like he was waiting for something to happen. 

Jaehyun’s eyes sank to your empty neck and something deep in the pit of his gut was set on fire. “Are marks okay?”

Making quick work of his shirt and tossing it over his shoulders, you nodded your head. “Yeah. Johnny will notice, but he’ll never assume they’re from you.” 

It took absolutely nothing else for Jaehyun to connect his lips to your throat hungrily, leaving mark after mark on your skin in an effort to stake his claim to you. And all it did was turn you on further. There was a thudding between your legs, arousal spilling over. 

Little soft sighs and curses slipped from your lips and you could feel the bedroom get hotter and hotter. It wasn’t as if you and Jaehyun had agreed to be exclusive, but you hadn’t been with anyone else in the time that the two of you had been hanging out, meaning it had been over a month since you’d last had sex. 

And it fucking showed. You were aching for more, on top of your natural desire for Jaehyun. If you didn’t fuck his brains out right now you were going to self-destruct.

“Jaehyun, fuck me,” you groaned impatiently. 

Instead, he grinned, too fond of the neediness in your voice and on your pretty face. Jaehyun looked you plain in the eye and said, “I want you to beg.”

You were too gone to roll your eyes, but not too out of it to retort, “Make me.”

“I’m gonna make you beg, alright,” Jaehyun said without question. He made a move for your shorts and tugged them off your ankles, repeating the gesture with your panties. 

The only thing that kept you from being totally naked was your top but Jaehyun didn’t look too concerned with getting rid of it yet. Instead, he focused his undivided attention between your legs, entranced by your glistening core and his mouth going dry with the desire to have a taste. 

You watched the enthrallment on his face with satisfaction. Funny how his ability to conceal his emotions went out the window when pussy was involved. His eyes were dark as ever and Jaehyun’s voice somehow got deeper when he asked, “Will you let me taste you?” 

“Fuck,” you mumbled, sensing that he was about to wreck the living hell out of you. “Uh, yeah. Yes.”

No room for uncertainty. Now that he had your consent, Jaehyun gathered your legs in his hands, tossed them over his broad shoulders, and went to town. You gasped aloud at the first pass of his tongue at your clit and it couldn’t have been further from tentative. 

Of course this man went straight for your sensitive bundle of nerves instead of your slick folds, he knew better. Given how exciting the thought of Jaehyun dicking you down had been, you were already throbbing, but now you were tense and unstill.

There was something about the feeling of his lips sucking and licking at your cunt that made you squirm and cry out in an overwhelming bolt of pleasure. Jaehyun clamped his big hands onto your thighs to keep you pliant, holding them right where he wanted them, and kept eating you out. 

It made zero sense how hot you found every little thing that he did. 

“Jesus, fuck,” was basically all that you could say. With how vigorously Jaehyun was sucking at your bundle of nerves, it was getting borderline impossible to think. 

Jaehyun sure didn’t seem timid. Matter of fact, the way he refused to shy away from in between your pair of legs, doing everything in his power to keep them separated at both sides of his head, said loud and clear that he was a man on a mission to make you unravel. 

Not to mention that he was doing a damn good job. Your ears were hardly even working, the whole world fading to static, the only audible sound being the incessant throb of your pulse quickening by the minute. 

The sheer opposite was true for Jaehyun. His ears were on full alert and he could hear everything from the increasing volume and speed of your breaths plus your soft moans to the gentle rustling of the trees' leaves outside his open window. 

Jaehyun peered up at you, noticed the euphoria tensing your beautiful features, and his lips broke into a wide grin. “How are you doing up there?”

No words would come. It took twice as long to even process the ones that left his mouth. Your eyes were drooping and misty, damp with moisture, and all that escaped you was a befuddled, “Fuck.”

Jaehyun snickered. That was answer enough. “It sounds to me like you’re having a fun time,” he started. “Do you want to cum?”

You obviously heard that and hissed, “Don’t ask stupid questions.” 

“If you want to cum, then beg me for it,” Jaehyun growled darkly. You appreciated the brief lull of peace, but of fucking course, it was that moment Jaehyun chose to press a long pair of fingers into your dripping pussy.

Your back arched and your soft cries filled the air. It felt like somebody had given Jaehyun the blueprints to your body with how he excelled at satisfying you in ways literally nobody had previously. 

The answer was obvious. Jaehyun wanted you to beg? Fuck it. You would beg. 

“Please,” you said, your voice raising a few pitches. “Oh, god. Please make me cum, Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun didn’t make a sound but you could feel his mouth on your cunt again and knew that he was about to take you there.  

And then it came. The mind-numbing orgasm engulfed you in its fury and you were scarred with burns from head to toe, most of it pivoting towards your core. 

Your hands desperately grasped locks of Jaehyun’s soft fluffy hair in an attempt to anchor yourself and you didn’t release him from your clutches until every tremble faded. Jaehyun got so aroused watching you shudder with release that he swore his own mind went blank. 

It took a good minute and a half at the least for your mind to start to clear itself and you sighed pleasantly as the wrath of your orgasm slowly began to die out. You peered down at Jaehyun, blinking a couple of times, and slackened your grip when you realized how tightly your hands were latched to him.

Jaehyun didn’t seem to mind, contentedly watching you try to gather your bearings. “Are you back to earth?”

“Barely,” you rasped, still unable to feel your thighs. 

“Do you want to stop?”

You gawked. “Are you kidding? I still wanna fuck you. If you still wanna fuck me.”

“I still want to fuck you,” Jaehyun said, pulling you in for another hot but reassuring kiss. It was hard to breathe, but so worth it. You slipped your tongue into his mouth and tasted yourself on his. 

Kissing you made Jaehyun feel like he was ascending, but right now it also made his dick ascend and his patience was steadily dissipating into thin air. You could feel his hard-on against your naked thigh and it sent shock waves to your brain. 

I think that’s the best head I’ve ever had, you admitted to yourself, but not aloud. Your dating history wasn’t top secret but you spoke little of it to Jaehyun. Did it matter that all of your exes were scumbags and rarely bothered to get you off?

Except for one. The sex was good, but it wasn’t a fair trade-off for your heart. No man nor his cock was worth your sanity and you told that to yourself every time you engaged with one. 

Plus you just got this weird feeling where nothing or nobody else mattered when you and Jaehyun were alone together. You didn’t think of the various roots of the stresses in your life and calmness was finally an option. 

You didn’t want to ruin that, so you didn’t get too deep. 

But you were hoping Jaehyun was packing enough to be deep inside of you. Fuck that, you had felt it against your thigh. You knew that he was and it was exciting. 

Your voice was weighed down by the thickness of your breaths. “Do you have condoms?”

“Always,” Jaehyun replied, pulling a drawer open on his nightstand to retrieve one.

That was a relief. You had never done it raw before and though you liked Jaehyun, you weren’t sure where his dick had been and what all it had seen. You’d rather be safe.

Jaehyun gently pushed you back onto the mattress and crawled over you, drawing the condom between his teeth while he tossed your shirt and bra halfway across his bedroom, then whispered, “Tell me how you want it.”

“Hard and deep. Deep and hard,” you confessed sultrily, looking him dead in the eye. 

Jaehyun smirked. “That can be arranged.”

You watched Jaehyun shuffle out of his pants and put the condom on, but the bulk of your attention was set on that thick, girthy cock. Your mouth was watering. Maybe some other time you could suck him off, but right now getting it between your thighs was all you wanted. 

It didn’t seem as if he glanced up, but Jaehyun said, “You’re staring.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Jaehyun said. 

You giggled. “No, I’m not.”

The sound faded when you spread your legs apart invitingly and he penetrated you at an excruciatingly slow pace, sinking deeper inch by fucking inch. 

You and Jaehyun made a sound in harmony when he finally filled you to the hilt, grasping your waist and using it as anchor like he was at risk of going dangerously deep if he made one wrong move and never returning to the surface. 

Good thing it was only the two of you. You, keeping quiet when he was this good with his hands and presumably even better with his thick cock? There was no way in hell. 

“Oh my god…,” you whispered, obsessed with the sensation of being filled. 

Whatever you were thinking right now, Jaehyun wholeheartedly agreed. You made his brain grind to a halt and stutter. “Does that feel okay?”

“More than okay,” you told him, because it was the truth. Somehow the pleasure was only spiking. The ecstasy continued to build. 

You looked so beautiful beneath the golden-yellow hue of his lamplight and Jaehyun knew he would be fantasizing about how your face tensed with pleasure for weeks, if not months.

Jaehyun especially liked the way you were tightening around his cock, gripping it for dear life as if letting go simply wasn’t an option. You wound your legs around his hips and helped draw him into yours in spite of knowing it could ruin you, a telltale sign that your desire for more outweighed any rational thinking. 

It just felt so good that it had to be illegal and though you knew that it wasn’t, it was damn near close. 

There was still music playing from the vinyl player in the background that soothed any and all nerves that you could’ve ever had. You took a moment and inhaled deeply, breathing in the musk of Jaehyun and the scent of the candles. 

Your eyes fluttered closed. It was ironic that you were on a raging high even though you hadn’t even gotten around to having your usual fill of marijuana. In legal terms, you were far from inebriated. But according to yourself? You were fiending for Jaehyun and found him lethally intoxicating. 

His weight on top of you. His deep, guttural grunts in your ear between his jagged breaths. His perfect thrusts and the way he stroked you exactly how you wanted, all the while reaping his pleasure from your body. 

It was fucking mind-blowing. 

Jaehyun had a similar thought and it tore a noise out of him. His intentions in inviting you over tonight weren’t to have sex, in spite of his roommate’s attempts at getting him to get laid when he was only trying to break you in, but it was an unregrettable decision. 

“You take it so good, baby,” Jaehyun said tenderly, but it barely scratched the tip of the iceberg of praises he had in storage especially for you. 

Fuck, you wanted to hate how easy it was for him to kindle these rash flames inside of you, but your attraction to Jaehyun became undeniable the second you initiated the first rendezvous. 

You were peering into Jaehyun’s soul, searching his whole face without knowing what you were looking for, and saw the euphoria fluttering his eyes closed and spreading his lips apart just enough for those heavenly sounds to slip through. 

You guessed you found it then, because the tightening in the pit of your gut was at an all-time high and it wasn’t skipping out on the extremes. 

Combing your hands through his hair, you whimpered, “I’m so close.”

Jaehyun accelerated his pace, wanting to take you to the ends of the earth and back. You noticed, because you could feel his hard dick slapping against your hips with a purpose, and you swore to god your eyes rolled somewhere black. 

The end was creeping up on you from behind. You could feel it. Jaehyun could feel it himself, the telltale twitch of his cock indicating that he was pushing his limits. 

“I want you to cum,” Jaehyun growled in no uncertain terms, his tone dominant. “Nice and hard. Can you do that for me, baby?”

“Yes,” you choked out. 

If you were being frank, he didn’t even have to ask. It was impossible to hide the evidence of your impending orgasm, the heightened tremors in your voice and the shakiness in your body were more than enough proof. 

All you could think about was how restlessly you were going after this orgasm and how terribly you needed it like it would fix every little thing going wrong in your life.

Your hands slipped from Jaehyun’s hair to his shoulders to finally his back, raking your nails down the flesh in a set of ministrations that were bound to leave red lines, and you rasped breathlessly, “Finish me.”

The hoarseness of your voice alone could’ve broken Jaehyun but he hung on for your sake, fingertips flitting to your sensitive, swollen clit again because he knew he wouldn’t last very much longer. 

You were even more restless than before and it wasn’t long until Jaehyun granted your wish, your lips parting in a scream and your vision going totally black. Your toes curled into tight bends as you grinded your hips into Jaehyun, milking your release for every damn dime.

Jaehyun could feel you clenching rapidly and repeatedly around his cock and merely seconds after that it was game over. He came with the deepest, sexiest groan you had ever heard before in your life, hips stuttering as his cum filled the condom, and all you could think about was how this could not be a one-time thing. 

The next few minutes were a blur. You only recalled Jaehyun peeling off you to dispose of the condom, the layers of sweat on your naked bodies keeping you connected, and returning to your side briefly. 

Jaehyun scanned you for any signs of obvious discomfort. “Are you okay?”

Your mouth was hanging open, aggressive pants falling from your lips, but Jaehyun’s attention was no longer focused on your heaving chest - it was on you. “No, more like incredible.”

That had Jaehyun in the first half, but he snickered in amusement and relief when you wrapped up your sentence. “Do you wanna shower with me?”

“That’s kinda intimate,” you said, as if that was actually going to stop you. “Hell yeah, I do.”

Jaehyun rolled his eyes, but there was a smile plain as day on his face. You cried out in surprise when he hauled you into his burly arms, hooking one of them under your knees, and carried you into his bathroom. 

Your own individual toothbrush was in there on the sink counter squarely beside Jaehyun’s. It was only right that he let you keep one there, given how many late Friday nights you spent at his house instead of your own. 

Plus some of your clothes were there, tucked into his drawers, but when you returned to his bedroom, you donned one of his shirts that was unsurprisingly oversized on you. 

You sat on Jaehyun’s bed, memories of what you’d just done on his sheets still fresh, and watched him rifling through his vinyl catalog, but because he was shirtless you quickly got distracted by the view you had of his back. 

At least until he turned around after setting the vinyl on his record player, apparently oblivious, and coming to sit at your side. 

There was mischief on your face and you were struggling to stifle a giggle. It was obvious, and Jaehyun furrowed his brows. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Jaehyun didn’t believe you at all, but he didn’t press. 

You sighed contentedly, leaning into his naked chest. The little voice in your brain was thinking about how he smelled so clean and fresh, and good. Well, duh, she snapped. If you somehow weren’t paying attention, he just got out of the shower. 

But you were definitely paying attention, maybe a little more than you should’ve. It wasn’t your fault he looked like the leading role of every romance book ever. This was a man out of every little girls’ childhood dreams and, more importantly, every grown woman’s wet ones. 

As Jaehyun held you in his arms, you couldn’t help but think, spotting little items in his room that screamed, I come from money. “Jaehyun, is it okay if I ask you a question?”

Jaehyun hummed. You figured he might’ve been close to dozing off, but in reality, he was just captivated by the smell of your hair and hoping it lingered on his pillows. 

“You’re pretty well-off, but you live with two other guys. You’re technically always alone, but you don’t live alone. Why?”

Now that wasn’t what Jaehyun was expecting you to ask him, but you were full of surprises. He took a moment to ponder his answer, finding himself reflecting. “It’s because of how I grew up, I guess. I was the only child, so it was just me and my parents in the house. I guess I kind of wanted to know what it's like to have brothers.”

You made a noise of content. “You’re close then.”

“Yup.” 

You could feel Jaehyun playing with your hair and it made you smile gently.

“What about you and your friends?”

“What about them?”

“What’s the relationship like? Have you fucked Mark?”

You were taken aback, though rather than be affronted, the ridiculousness of that question made you laugh. “No way. I prefer my vagina itch-free,” you quipped. 

Jaehyun chuckled. It was a shock that that kid got around town the way he did, but that was why Jaehyun had to respect the hustle. 

Then, out of nowhere, you got a little sober. “On a serious note, Mark is my bestie and he’s what I imagine having a little brother is like. Johnny really likes him too, so sometimes I’ll walk in on them hanging out without me.”

You didn’t notice the way Jaehyun’s head bobbed along, but he was listening. It was believable. Mark was a social butterfly and impossible to dislike, no matter how irritating. 

And he was only irritating to some. Those who didn’t find him to be a thorn in their side probably wanted him a number of inches deep in their guts. 

You continued, “Yuta is more Johnny’s friend than he is mine, but he’s laidback. Haechan is a little shit but he’s funny as fuck. And you know Jeno is chaotic as ever.”

You were fond of your circles of friends. Most folks assumed it must’ve been suffocating to be the only girl amongst a group of insufferable horny dudes, but it wasn’t half bad. Jeno had tried to get into your pants before, but when you turned him down he took the rejection coolly. 

Mark, like you said, was like a sibling to you and that went both ways. When somebody suggested the two of you hook up, his knee-jerk reaction was to hiss, “Ew!”

Haechan was a slut like all of them but he knew better than to slut himself out to you and Yuta, though you already couldn’t have been further from his type, was one of your older brother’s closest friends. According to Yuta himself, the thought of being in a relationship with you was hilarious. 

Never mind the fact that he admitted he’d actually do it, but strictly for fun. Pissing off Johnny was his full-time job and dating his younger sister? It would’ve been the easiest way. 

You and Jaehyun chatted until you couldn’t ignore each other’s incessant yawns and made the mutual agreement to crawl under the sheets together. A rare Jungkook appearance one weekend forced you into bed with each other and ever since that was how you’d slept. 

Side by side, skin to skin. 

The sun was brighter than ever when you woke up some hours later. You noticed that the curtains were open. And they had been since you likened Jaehyun to a vampire.

Speaking of Jaehyun, he was still sleeping like a rock beside you, completely still other than the gentle heave of his chest as he snored quietly. You crawled gingerly out of bed so as not to disturb his rest, the sight of him still asleep when you stood making you sigh out in relief. 

After a quick wash-up in the bathroom, you headed downstairs for a snack. Your stomach was rumbling and you realized that you hadn’t eaten since you left home. 

What you didn’t expect was to see Yugyeom half-naked in the kitchen though. 

You weren’t sure why. It was his house and if he wanted to walk around like he just went skinny dipping, then he had that right. Fortunately, he was wearing sweatpants, so you were spared from that unsightly picture. 

Yugyeom heard your footsteps and turned. “Oh, hey. Sleep good?”

“I only slept for a few hours,” you confessed, though you felt like you were quite well-rested. “But yeah, I slept pretty good.”

Yugyeom chuckled. “I bet.”

You said nothing else. Yugyeom wasn’t a total stranger, even before you started crashing at his house, but you weren’t close by any means. 

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” you said after a pause, straddling a barstool. 

“I mean, I do live here. Who do you think pays most of the bills?”

“Jaehyun,” you chirped. 

“Okay, that’s fair. Who do you think pays the second most of the bills?”

“You and Jungkook, but it wasn’t always that way.”

Yugyeom threw in the towel, realizing Jaehyun had most definitely had this discussion with you at some point. Then, he started to laugh. Jaehyun was discussing their finances with you? There was no way in living hell. 

I’ll be damned. Yugyeomed sighed in amusement. “You know, you’re the first girl I’ve seen last this long with Jaehyun.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not saying he’s a player, but I thought I’d stop seeing you around here, like, two weeks ago. For a girl to survive a month with him, she has to really crank up his brain. And Jaehyun isn’t easily impressed,” Yugyeom said. 

It was obvious what he was implying and you knew exactly where this was heading. “I’m sure, but Jaehyun and I are just vibing.”

“I didn’t say that you weren’t.”

“Yes, but you think that we aren’t,” you replied, rubbing your arms. It was always cold the mornings after. 

Yugyeom laughed. “No, I don’t. Not right now. I didn't even crack Jaehyun that soon. All I’m saying is Jaehyun is a real gem and I think that you have a solid chance.”

“And you want me to take it?”

Yugyeom was strategically bouncing around, going from subtly planting ideas in your head to making them seem as if they were your own. “Whatever you do with that information is out of my hands and none of my business.”

Your lips parted to speak, but you were fortunately saved by the bell. Footsteps were heard from the hall and Jaehyun emerged from around the corner, voice deep from sleep, “What are you two talking about?”

Yugyeom lied without hesitation, “How handsome you are, of course.”

Jaehyun didn’t believe it for a second, but he stole the barstool beside you and gently nudged your elbow. “You think I’m handsome?”

“Oh, the handsomest,” you deadpanned, but rested your head onto his shoulder. 

Jaehyun let you. At least for a little while, but then he pulled you into his chest and mumbled groggily, “You left me.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, your hands tangled into his dark hair. “I’ll stay next time.”

“Good.”

Yugyeom was peering into the fridge, shaking his head, wondering if he was the only one that saw your fate. 

The whole weekend was spent in Jaehyun’s arms, restless. If you weren’t getting high on marijuana and chatting about whatever came to mind, you were dancing to one of his vinyls. If you weren’t kissing each other breathless, you were fucking each other senseless. 

It was two days of whimsical fun, ignoring the world and its insignificant little woes. In many ways, Jaehyun was like your oasis.

You were starting to hate Mondays. They were the days where you realized that nothing was forever, every time without fail. The days you had to finally face the world after a weekend of neglecting its existence. 

Plus you didn’t get a lot of Jaehyun during the other five days of the week, and though you understood your conflicting schedules, it was getting less and less easy to cope. 

Finals week thankfully gave you less time to think about whatever the hell was blossoming between you and Jaehyun. You didn’t want to think about it, because you were well aware that it wouldn’t last. As perfectly as Jaehyun molded into you, there was no piece of him that fit the bigger picture. 

But of course, you were pacing down your school’s courtyard with a bag slung over your shoulder when you noticed Mark’s footsteps catching up to you. “Wanna tell me why Johnny asked me if you’ve been going out with somebody lately?” he asked.

You pretended to be oblivious, keeping your head straight and your steps quick. “Why would he ask you that?”

“Because I’m your best friend and you tell me everything, or so I thought,” Mark hissed.

You groaned, weighing your options. You could keep this private love affair to yourself and let the guilt and pressure split you down the middle, or you could confide in your best friend and hope it took the edge off. 

Pulling Mark behind a tree and scanning your surroundings for unwanted bystanders, you exhaled roughly and said, “Don’t freak out, but I may or may not be sleeping with Jeong Jaehyun on the weekends.”

Mark was understandably dumbfounded by that information and screeched aloud, “What the fuck, dude?”

“I just said don’t freak out!”

Mark shook his head, the total opposite of cool and collected. There was no way in hell he wasn’t going to freak out. “Are you kidding? Johnny literally wants to kill him.”

“God, I know,” you bemoaned, pressing a palm to your forehead. This whole situation combined with the stress of finals was giving you a splitting headache. 

The shock was still evident on Mark’s face, but he seemed to be cooling off. “Shit, dude. This is crazy. Is the sex at least good?”

Your mind was fluttering with memories and it was hard to resist a smile. Getting laid right now would probably fix you. “Jeong Jaehyun may be a scoundrel for whatever reason, but I can reassure you he is not lacking in the sex department.”

Or any department. It was strange that in the weeks the two of you had spent bonding and the like, you had yet to identify a single red flag of Jaehyun’s. Apparently, the weirdest thing about this boy was the amount of pictures he kept of his toes. 

“Oh my god,” Mark gasped. 

“What?”

“That night you went upstairs to pee and didn’t come back,” Mark started, finally connecting the dots and displeased he hadn’t seen the hints earlier. “You were off screwing Jaehyun, weren’t you?”

“Actually, no. I was with him, yes, but we weren’t hooking up then.”

Mark was baffled to very fucking his core. That had to be half a decade ago. This whole time, you were spending your spare time on Jaehyun and nobody knew?

Gripping Mark by the shoulders, you stared into his eyes and said sternly, “Listen. You can’t tell Johnny.”

Your best friend made a face of disapproval, but nodded his head. “Alright. Fine.”

“I’m serious. You have to promise.”

Mark groaned, “Dude, I’m not gonna tell Johnny that you’re fucking Jaehyun. No matter how bizarre and borderline batshit insane that is to say aloud. I promise your secret is safe with me.”

You released his shoulders and a shaky breath, relenting. “Okay.”

“But that doesn’t mean that I approve.”

“Understandable. I can live with that.”

“I don’t see how,” Mark grumbled under his breath. 

You frowned. 

Months flew by. Christmas and News Year were a blur, two events you and Jaehyun spent at separate locations. Your parents were rarely home, but the winter holidays were a period of time that they always made sure to be around for. And Jaehyun paid his family a visit that week. 

But then it was February, and the national holiday that was Jaehyun’s birthday came of nowhere. 

“No way you were born on Valentine’s day,” you remembered telling him a few months back after asking him about his birthday. Jaehyun had groaned, more than accustomed to how this conversation played out. This was far from his first rodeo. 

Though it was rare that a girl made it to actually celebrate his birthday with him. 

Idiotically, you found yourself scorching with nerves that afternoon, overwhelmingly anxious. Your whole body was tense and you paced around your room antsily for hours until it was time to get in your car and head out to Jaehyun’s house. 

You had gotten him a gift and you weren’t sure whether he would like it or not. Then again, you had spent weeks planning what you would give him based on every second of every little conversation you’d shared and you were half confident, half uncertain. 

Jungkook opened the door to leave at the same moment you were preparing yourself to go inside, most likely heading to his girlfriend’s place after spending the morning celebrating his friend’s birthday, and held the door open for you. “Uh, do you need a minute?”

“No. Thank you,” you replied bashfully, catching the door and finally turning inside. 

You took one more deep breath and paced upstairs while gripping the box in your hands so tightly it might’ve broken. 

Jaehyun was sitting on his bed, his guitar in his hands instead of standing upright in the corner of his bedroom as typical, and glanced up when he heard your footsteps. “Hi.”

“Hi, birthday boy,” you greeted. 

Jaehyun was smiling. You had already wished him a happy birthday at midnight on the dot which was a sweet gesture in itself. 

“I, uh, got you something,” you said, mentally cursing yourself for sounding so nervous. 

“I can see that.” Jaehyun set his guitar aside. There was curiosity in his stare, but he whispered, “You didn’t have to.”

“But I wanted to. You’re my… friend,” you told him awkwardly, handing over the gift before it made you say something stupid. “I didn’t know what to get a guy who has literally everything he wants, but I tried.”

Jaehyun accepted the gift box graciously, peeling off the wrap, and said, “Whatever you got me is more than enough, baby.”

You sure hoped so. You didn’t spend the past few weeks stressing over this very moment for nothing. You wanted to give him something thoughtful and memorable. 

Anticipation made your heart sound like thunder. You fidgeted, twiddling your thumbs as Jaehyun slowly opened the box, retrieving a guitar strap alongside a couple of other items. The awe that tensed Jaehyun’s features was authentic and your heart was taut with giddiness when his lips tugged into a beaming smile. 

A few words scribbled onto the guitar strap caught Jaehyun’s attention and he unhesitatingly pulled them closer to his face to get a better look. It was like a little note, but words only you would say. Play me till the end. 

“Wow,” Jaehyun whispered, feeling a thumping inside of his ribcage. “You… I literally mentioned that I wanted one of these in passing.”

“When you talk, I listen.”

Jaehyun’s eyes met yours. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” you murmured, straddling his lap and tossing your arms around his neck. “Happy birthday, baby.”

Jaehyun set his hands at your hips and kissed you restlessly, restraint taking the backseat as he absorbed every bit of your warmth and used it to fuel his fire. Your lips took him to the other side but your hands kept him grounded. 

Things felt different now. Kissing Jaehyun had never not been spellbinding, but right now? The feeling in your chest was indescribably hot. 

But it was dangerous and terrifying. It defied everything you told yourself to be true, and every principle you had laid out. This was deeper than building a relationship with the enemy. It was the intimacy that accompanied trusting another guy with your heart, and fighting the unshakable doubts. 

You had built something of a friendship with Jaehyun. Friends that occasionally kissed and felt each other up and had hooked up more than once. 

But what if you wanted more? What if you were really two star-crossed lovers that couldn’t have each other? What if?

Jaehyun wondered if your feelings had gotten as tense as his were. Months ago, he was telling himself not to get too close to you because of who your brother was and your clear lack of romantic intentions, but no amount of walls he put up could’ve prevented his feelings from getting this deep. 

You wouldn’t tell him even if they had. What good would it have done for him to know that you loved him, but you couldn’t have him? 

When Jaehyun pulled back, he stared into your eyes, not at your lips. “Let’s go make hot cocoa,” he said after a pause.

You blinked in surprise, but Jaehyun was already tugging you along before you could even think. 

The time in the kitchen together was a beautiful mess. You liked randomly bursting out into song and Jaehyun liked dancing, which ultimately turned into him tenderly cradling you there in his arms and mumbling into your ear, the hot cocoa all but forgotten. 

You especially liked the toasty smell of a hot, creamy mug of hot chocolate. It was very Jaehyun-like. The winter seasons in general were reminiscent of his personality, not because he was cold (like some people assumed), but the sheer opposite. 

Jaehyun was the warmest guy that you had ever met, in a way. Anyone who said otherwise didn’t have the privilege of knowing him, but you? You liked to think that you had him all figured out.

Maybe there was a chance you did to an extent. Getting to know him over the course of these long months had definitely shifted your previous perspective. Jaehyun kept to himself because he was afraid of his vulnerability being used as a weapon, but when you broke those stubborn barriers, you saw that Jaehyun was just a guy that wanted a home. 

He had one, metaphorically speaking, but no one to share it between. That was why you used to think he was shy, and why others thought he was cold. Jaehyun wanted to protect the home he’d built for himself and was reluctant to let others in, because he wanted it to be sturdy for the ones he would let stay.  

A hopeless romantic to his core. 

After making sure the kitchen was tidy, Jaehyun led you away to the infamous white couch that stretched along his living room wall. Your favorite spot in the whole house. Aside from his bedroom, of course.

Jaehyun, on the other hand, couldn’t decide. Half of it was littered in a slew of memories of you and his whole bedroom smelled more like you than it did himself now. Picking a favorite would be an impossible choice. 

There was a lull of silence as the two of you sipped from your mugs, but it wasn’t an issue. The silence was always comfortable with Jaehyun, as well as literally everything else about him. 

Though you didn’t notice, the weird thing now was that Jaehyun was less secure. He didn’t make it obvious, but he was remarkably nervous. Jaehyun tried to cloak his nerves when he said, “I kind of got you something, too.”

Your eyes went wide with shock. “You got me something… for your birthday?”

“I mean, yeah. It’s also Valentine’s day and you’re… important to me,” Jaehyun confessed softly, a tiny smile breaking out onto his lips. 

“I am?”

“You are,” he whispered, hurriedly reaching into his pockets for something. Imagine your surprise when he dropped a USB drive into the palm of your hand. “Stick it into your computer when you get home.”

You nodded obediently, sitting it on the coffee table so that it wouldn’t be crushed in your jeans, but your innate curiosity was never satisfied and you asked, “What’s on it?”

“A surprise,” was all Jaehhyun said. 

You hummed. If Jaehyun didn’t want to tell you, you knew it would be pointless to press. 

But you would be lying if you said that it wasn’t killing you. 

Jaehyun knew that. He knew you were a curious individual, because he was drawn to your insatiable need to know. But he didn’t want to be there to see your reaction. Just looking at you made his chest taut and rejection’s brutal fangs still ripped him to shreds. 

At least you couldn’t tell by looking at him. Jaehyun had made sure of that. “Talk to me,” he said, squeezing your hand. 

You smiled, because his hands were warm from the hot cocoa. “About what?”

“Tell me more about yourself. It’s been months, but I feel like there’s still more to know about you. Talk to me about what you love. Your hopes and dreams.”

A little sigh left you. “Where do I even begin?” That was what you said, but you’d already continued without affording yourself any time to pause. “I want to be an orthopedic surgeon. I’m obsessed with anatomy and how our bodies function. That’s why I’ve been busting my ass for grad school.”

That much was obvious. Anybody that saw you on the party scene might’ve assumed you were merely another hopeless college student who only knew hooking up and getting shit-faced drunk, but Jaehyun’s first time seeing you was in the back of a library with a laptop and a heap of textbooks. 

You were a hard-worker and no hangover stood a chance between you and your goals. But you were also just a normal girl who wanted to let loose sometimes. It was the perfect balance. 

Jaehyun was a keen listener. “That sounds tough.”

You fought a groan. “God, yes. But it’s so worth it. It’s my senior year and I’ve been waiting my whole life for med school.”

“You’ve wanted to be a surgeon for that long?”

“I’ve always known who I wanted to be,” you exhaled contentedly. And for that you were endlessly grateful. “What about you?”

Jaehyun shook his head. “No. Not always. First, I guess I had to leave home and do the whole ‘finding yourself’ thing.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s rare that people are born with an innate sense of who they are. We deserve to live life through trial and error. That’s freedom,” you said.

Jaehyun wholeheartedly agreed. Leaving home to explore his identity might’ve been the toughest decision he ever made, but also the best one. “What about love?”

“What about it?”

“Did you ever dream of that, too?”

You should’ve figured he would go there. It was the essential question. The world of trauma beyond your control. “I used to,” you admitted, somber. “I just haven’t had a ton of faith in it lately. That’s what happens when you grow up, I think. You realize life’s not like the movies.”

Funny how I call you a hopeless romantic when hopeless romantics are anything but hopeless. In spite of the pain and the betrayal, they refuse to accept that they might die alone one day. If anything, I’m the hopeless one. I’ve fallen in love with the one boy I could never make mine. 

Jaehyun frowned for a split second, but recovered quickly. “Yeah, I know.”

You wondered who had hurt him, but chose not to ask. If he wanted to tell you, then he already would’ve. 

“You didn’t ask me,” Jaehyun started. 

You glanced up at him. 

“About my pain,” he continued shortly. “About her.”

“I didn’t think you were ready.”

“Do you want to know?”

“I mean, yeah. Of course, I want to know who hurt you and how that made you who you are. I want to understand you. But only as much as you want me to,” you told him. The truth was that as curious as you were, you were afraid of overstepping. The same way that Jaehyun was terrified of oversharing. 

He replied with total certainty, “I want you to know.”

You swallowed, feeling a lump form in your throat and unsure why. It was his deep, dark secrets being revealed, not yours. Plus you were positive there wasn’t a single person in the county who didn’t know your history with your one and only ex. “Okay. Take your time.”

Jaehyun heaved a shaky breath, preparing himself to share something that he’d never specifically told anyone. “Back home in Seoul, I dated a girl. I was naive and I thought she was the one. But she wasn’t. She only wanted a guy handsome enough to impress her parents.”

You maintained eye contact to let Jaehyun know you were listening. 

Jaehyun continued, “I guess we had different desires in life. She wanted a boy to show off and I wanted a girl who was my best friend at the foundation. We only talked about surface things. I couldn’t be myself around her.”

You nodded. That sounded like the Jaehyun you knew. 

“Then, I found out she was cheating on me,” Jaehyun added calmly, but he still recalled the trembles of anger that wrecked through his body. “And I left her then and there. I dipped. I might’ve been a naive idiot, but I knew my worth. She was my first and my last.”

You were shocked. That you shared the same pain - an unfaithful partner - and that Jaehyun hadn’t had nearly as many other partners as you thought he would’ve. “You’ve only dated once?”

“For me, once was enough to figure out what I wanted in a relationship, and it wasn’t a girl who I could barely trust or be myself with,” Jaehyun said. “I talked to other girls, but like I said before, nothing lasted, and I’ve obviously hooked up.”

Ironically, I’ve been hurt more by girls I never had than a girl that was supposed to belong to me. 

“I harbored resentment for a long time, but what lasted longer was the leftover fear of trusting someone again. I only let people see what I want them to see. And because of that, I’m a little lonely sometimes, but it’s okay.”

“Does it get sad?” you asked quietly. 

Jaehyun shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, but it’s better than being heartbroken. Anyways, I’ve gotten better about inviting people into my life and having good judgment. Time makes it easier.”

You make it easier, was what he meant, but Jaehyun wasn’t that bold yet. He might have been the one to approach you and attempt to initiate this private affair, but you sticking around was the last thing he expected. And that opened the door for the possibility that relationships didn’t have expiration dates. 

Reading between the lines, you were hoping that somewhere along them he wasn’t hinting about a potential future with you. Jaehyun’s head was in the clouds, but you were grounded below the surface. Because you had already resigned yourself to the fact that you didn’t have a future together.

But of course, that never stopped you from letting him undress you. 

You were hyper aware of Jaehyun’s eyes staring into yours and it was beginning to unnerve you a little. “Is there hot cocoa on my face?”

Jaehyun shook his head with a cute laugh and finally leaned into you for a kiss, obviously done speaking and prepared to show. You let him take you down onto the couch, laid defenseless beneath him, on the edge of surrender. 

You giggled into his lips, pleased at how silly it was that he tasted like the hot drink you’d shared. Your hands were wound through his hair and tugging him closer to you, wanting to be inseparable. You wouldn’t be sated till his soul was tied to yours. 

When it came to your body, you were more than inclined to let Jaehyun dominate you. But your heart was more than you had bargained for. 

Jaehyun yanked at the waistband of your sweatpants and you swore you could sense your heart swelling with the exhilaration of getting laid by the only guy you wanted. You raised your hips, letting him take them and your underwear from underneath you. 

You gasped loudly when his fingers ghosted along the insides of your thighs and unhurriedly traveled to your core, which was throbbing at the barest of touches. Jaehyun made you ache. Your body neglected every thought that didn’t concern him when it longed for him to use it until you were sore. 

Jaehyun sucked a slick pair of fingers into his mouth fleetingly before inserting them inside your pussy, making you verbally respond to the contact with a soft whimper, and stole the sound right from your lips with a hot wet kiss. You only tightened around his digits when he pressed his lips to you and it made his head spin quicker than ever. 

You pulled back and panted, “So, you won’t let me sleep on the couch, but you’ll fuck me on it?”

“It’s seen worse days,” Jaehyun said, muting the sound of his own chuckle when he pressed his mouth to your neck. 

You were torn between a laugh and a moan and the final sound was a breathy whimper of Jaehyun’s name. His mouth felt too good on your neck and you couldn’t forget his hands between your parted legs. Gentleman in the streets, but a beast in the sheets. 

Jaehyun was touching you impatiently. Your exhales were loud and jagged when he pulled back from your stained throat, and Jaehyun couldn’t help but imagine the noises you would make when he was finally seated deeply inside of your pussy that was clenching around his long slender digits. 

Deciding you were wet enough to take his cock, Jaehyun recouped his hand from between your thighs and asked, “You ready for me, baby?”

“More than,” you whispered, disgruntled with the emptiness but consoled by the knowledge that you would be full of him momentarily. 

Jaehyun stepped out of his clothes without hesitation and got a hold of your naked legs, dragging you toward him and leaving no room for empty space. The two of you locked eyes when he finally started to penetrate you and he looked at you with need. But you glanced away. You couldn’t stare into his soul as he captured yours. You couldn’t do it. 

You moaned when he pushed the head of his cock through your entrance and again when it went as deeply as it could enter. The stretch was so mad, but so good. You never knew how closely the pain could be interlocked to pleasure before Jaehyun took you for a spin on his big cock.

Jaehyun pulled out with a disgruntled groan, stealing the pleasure before you could really soak in the sensation. 

You winced your eyes open and asked confusedly, “Why did you do that?”

“I forgot a condom,” Jaehyun admitted bashfully, a timid little glint in his stare. 

“Gee, you sure chose a fantastic time to remember,” you deadpanned. 

Jaehyun looked like he was a little ashamed and it amused the hell out of you. In the heat of your vice-like cunt, he’d lost track of all thoughts other than getting his cock inside. 

You gawked when he stood and you caught an eyeful of his cute butt when he turned for the stairs. “Where are you going?”

Like it was the most obvious thing in the whole world, Jaehyun replied nonchalantly, “To get a condom.”

“Sit your cute ass down,” you told him a bit too assertively. “You can have me raw.” 

Jaehyun looked like his brain short-circuited. “For real?”

You nodded. “Yes, for real, you dummy. Just pull out.”

Jaehyun combed his fingers through his hair and groaned, “That’s one hell of a responsibility, woman.”

You purred teasingly, “Are you scared you won’t be able to do it, or are you scared that you’ll bust too fast?”

Jaehyun’s eyes fell to your gorgeous, spread legs, thickly swallowing the lump in his throat at the mouth-watering sight of you laid bare and exposed as you waited for him to take you. Fuck. Maybe both.

You snickered to yourself. Unbeknownst to Jaehyun, you were on birth control. And you had no intention of telling him right now. You wanted to gauge his restraint. 

Jaehyun didn’t reply, but he did return to the couch to slip between your folds again, and that was even better. Your pussy throbbed tirelessly, missing the way his thick cock stretched you out, and it drew deep grunts from the very back edge of Jaehyun’s throat. 

You could feel every inch of him pressed deep inside your pulsing walls, flush against you. All of him. There was literally nothing to separate the two of you, exactly as you had wanted, only the heat and tightness of your cunt suffocating his cock relentlessly. 

Jaehyun loved how you took him like a fucking champ. You sucked his cock back in like you needed it, like you needed him just as badly as he needed you. Your eyes winced closed and your lips parted as you sang his name in a shrill whimper. 

You were rapt with ecstasy at his long, deep thrusts that took you to the moon. The pain and guilty thoughts disappeared into his slow yet steady rhythm, as if Jaehyun wanted to make sure you could feel every bit of himself that he had to offer. 

Like he was making love to you.

“You’re so beautiful. I’m in love with your body,” Jaehyun whispered gently into your ear, hooked on you.

You moaned, oblivious to the fact that he really meant he was in love with you. When your naked bodies were bursting with heat and satisfaction, meeting each other in a wet collision, all else ceased to matter. 

Jaehyun kissed you again. You swore he stole the pulse right from your chest in that very moment, your heart open to him. His hands were everywhere, tenderly cupping your breasts and thumbing your stiff nipples. This was pleasure. This was elysian. This was all yours.

You were breathless when the two of you separated and the minutes of your lips tangled together felt like mere seconds. God, Jaehyun made you insatiable. As you did to him. The two of you couldn’t get enough, not of the sex and not of each other. It was lethally dangerous to want something as badly as you both wanted one another. 

But you knew that when you laid eyes on him, when you indulged him. You knew that he was endless trouble and yet you crept into his arms anyway like a moth to the flame. 

“God, fuck,” you rasped, throat hoarse from how you were screeching his name. “You make me feel so good.”

Jaehyun was so gentle and affectionate with you, tickling kisses down every bit of your soft skin his lips could access. It was times like these, when he completed you perfectly, where you welcomed the thought that you were made for each other. And only for each other. 

Your mouth was dry, open with every halfway cry of Jaehyun’s name that you could manage. Your skin was damp and sticky with moisture, a thin layer of sweat keeping his skin adhering to yours. Of course, there was a similar glistening sheen dripping down Jaehyun, beading at his forehead and neck. 

It made you lick your chapped lips. This man was abundantly mouth-watering. You wanted to give him anything he wanted and in this sex-induced haze, you knew that you would have. 

Jaehyun noticed your eyes fixated on literally anywhere but his face and it made him chuckle smugly. He craned his head downwards to nibble beneath your ear and groan praises about how perfect and tight you were around his cock. 

You tangled your hands in his hair again, desperate to ground yourself, before sitting them at his handsome broad shoulders. He had no business being this good at touching and fucking you. You were downright ashamed of the noises that left your lips but made no attempts to block the pleasure causing them to slip into the dense air. 

“Like that. Fuck, I’m gonna cum, Jay,” you whimpered, squeezing his shoulders. 

The thought of you releasing around his bare cock made a shudder shoot through Jaehyun and he almost couldn’t take it. You sensed his pace getting a little rougher, as if he was out to get you. Out to finish you. “Look at me,” he growled. 

You did. You didn’t have any other options. Not when it was him bleeding you dry, making your body dependent on his touches.

Looking into his dark eyes, everything stopped. The whole world was set on pause. You almost couldn’t breathe. This was how it felt to fall with no anchor.

“I want you to cum on my cock,” Jaehyun said lowly, rutting into you at a dangerous pace. 

You nodded. You were completely submissive to his desires.

There was a throbbing pressure in your gut that only got harsher with every wet smack of Jaehyun’s hips into yours. You wound your legs around his waist and pulled him into you, wanting to fuse together your limbs. 

Your body felt as if it were on fire. The sweat cooling down your neck, the lack of oxygen in the air. The breaths Jaehyun snatched plain from your lips. It was more than enough to take you out. 

Jaehyun watched as your orgasm finally seized you in its open arms, taking you by surprise. Your abs tensed viciously and you arched into Jaehyun with pleasure, sensing your eyes roll to the very back of your head and your toes curl into taut knots. 

You were still sensitive from your climax but Jaehyun’s pace was absolutely unforgiving, rutting into you mercilessly through your release. The tightness of your pussy drew a thick groan out of his mouth, but he still wasn’t done with you yet. And you were very keen on letting him use your body until he finished. 

Jaehyun relented when you finally started to calm down after coming undone, kissing your cheeks and the corner of your lips as you went almost entirely slack. The only motion in you was the aggressive heave of your chest as you panted for breath. 

You let Jaehyun thrust in and out of you, fighting the overstimulation for his sake. You were content to feel him brushing against your slick walls and hear those breathy grunts. 

Smoothing your hands up and down his burly arms, you whispered, “Jay, baby, keep going. I don’t care how long it takes. Fuck me until you’re done.”

Jaehyun bit his lip to veil a pathetic moan at those words. After he took care of your needs, you were letting him ply you for his own pleasure. You were his vice, his ruining. Your fingers grazed across his back, gathering the droplets of moisture that were beading at the surface. 

You could feel how hot his skin was, burning up in the heat of you. 

Abruptly, Jaehyun pulled out of you and tore you upright, holding his desperate cock in the palm of his hand as he groaned, “Get on your knees.” 

You obeyed without hesitation, meek. Crawling onto the carpet floor, you took him in your palms and stroked his thick girthy cock gingerly, careful not to be too rough. He was victimless in your warm hands, needy and at your mercy, leaving you with total control. 

Then it was game over for Jaehyun when you finally took him between your soft lips, gently easing him to the back of your throat. God, it was a struggle to fit his big cock completely into your mouth, but you somehow managed. You kept your cheeks hollowed, opening them for him to thrust. 

“Fuck,” Jaehyun moaned, head thrown back and eyes winced closed. You knew exactly what needed to be done to finish him off. 

You liked playing with his cock, obviously, but you loved having it in your mouth way more. There was nothing like driving Jaehyun to the cusp of insanity, teasing him with your tongue and hot mouth, plucking those beautiful sounds out of his lips. He lost himself whenever he was inside your throat. 

Jaehyun was in total bliss. Your mouth was no less impressive than your sheathlike cunt for all he knew, your lips wrapping around his stiff cock feverishly without a doubt in your mind that you could make him lose his own, and he almost didn’t want to orgasm yet. He only knew you, and what you did to him. And he was too greedy to want it to end. 

You had this boy all to yourself, wrapped tightly around your fingers with nowhere to hide. And you didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with him, or yourself. 

Aside from pleasuring each other in bed, or on the couch in this case. You were exceptionally gifted at getting him off.

Jaehyun could feel himself approaching the threshold of release and he did everything in his power to fight it off, to keep it at bay, but it was basically useless. He couldn’t even help but fuck your mouth. You were working him too good and he was coming whether he liked it or not. 

You were impressed that he had even lasted this long. Normally, when you let a guy hit it raw, they could barely resist emptying their load into you at the peak of climax. 

Jaehyun ultimately couldn’t control himself anymore and his jaw slacked with a deep, lethal groan as his hips came to a total standstill, painting the back of your throat with a streak of cum. Fuck, it was the sexiest noise you’d ever heard, and it aroused a throbbing between your legs. 

You managed to gulp him down and it was the hottest thing Jaehyun had ever seen watching you swallow his cum like that. He pulled back, a misty gleam in his dark soulless eyes as he collapsed onto the couch, breathless. There was a layer of dew at your lashes and you dabbed at your eyes to wipe them clear. 

Jaehyun looked like he’d just had the ground ripped from underneath him. “You just blew my mind,” he said through jagged breaths. 

You didn’t miss a beat. “I just blew you.”

Jaehyun laughed, shaking the hair out of his face. 

After both of you found your clothes and redressed yourselves, you decided to mention slyly, “By the way, I’m on birth control.”

Jaehyun’s mouth gaped open. “Are you serious? I was scared you might get pregnant.”

“That didn’t stop you from fucking me though, now did it?” you replied, crossing your arms. 

“I wasn’t that scared.”

You snickered. This idiot was a man you wanted to protect with your life, but you knew that you lacked the arsenal. “Besides, at least our baby would’ve had the world’s finest father.”

“And the world’s finest mother. They would’ve been beautiful,” Jaehyun flirted. 

Your cheeks flushed with heat at the compliment and his obvious flirtatious behavior. “I meant that you would’ve been a good dad, but sure. That works too.”

Jaehyun’s eyes flickered in shock. “Why do you think that?”

You shrugged, not thinking too hard about it. You didn’t need to when the answer was right at the tip of your tongue. “Because love itself is your passion. You’re selfless, patient. Protective. And you fight for what you love.”

Jaehyun said nothing. He was mulling over your confession, suspiciously quiet the whole time, but you were so tired that you hardly noticed. Your body was spent and you wanted to go upstairs and climb into his bed. 

You stretched your arms over your head and stood to collect the cocoa-stained dishes in your arms. Jaehyun blinked at the action, and would’ve stopped you to do it himself, but you were already halfway to the kitchen by the time he noticed. 

Jaehyun walked over and pressed himself behind you, draping his arms around your hips and resting his chin on your shoulder. You giggled, enamored with how it felt to be skin-to-skin with him, and when you finished with the two mugs, he reached over your head to set them down in the cabinets. 

You dragged Jaehyun upstairs by his arm to his own bedroom and slipped beneath his silk sheets, but invited him to drape himself above you and rest his head on your chest like you were his fluffy pillow and he was the thick, cozy blankets. 

It was comfortable that way. You liked Jaehyun’s weight on you, so close to you, crushed beneath the pressure. His arms would tangle around you and leave you little room to escape. But you wouldn’t want to leave. 

That was how you woke up sometimes. You used to be afraid that you’d accidentally rouse him and disturb his beauty slumber, but Jaehyun always slept like a ton of bricks. This boy could probably sleep through a hurricane and wake up wondering what happened to his roof. 

You sighed, whisking your fingers through his dark hair and staring at his face. You expected his eyes to be closed when you looked at him, but they were watching you. The ache in your chest was unignorable, unbearable. 

Those long nights and shorter mornings with Jaehyun were all you had, but you wanted something of permanence and you were finally admitting it to yourself. You knew these moments couldn’t last forever and didn’t attempt to deny it, but you were hoping and wishing. 

Smoothing your thumb down Jaehyun’s cheek, you felt a piece of your heart crumble. I can’t have you and I don’t even know why. 

“Jay?” you whispered. 

“Hm?”

You hesitated, brimming with reluctance. A few months ago, you would’ve thought it wasn’t your place to ask, but dammit Johnny was your brother and Jaehyun… meant something to you. This was officially your business. “Why does my brother hate you?” you asked. 

Jaehyun sat up abruptly, surprised. You matched the shock in his eyes, startled by his sudden movements. “You don’t know?”

You shook your head. “No. Johnny never told me. I assumed he would when he was ready, but it’s killing me and I need to know.” Because I can’t make sense of why we can’t be together, but ironically, it makes it easier to justify being here with you right now.

Jaehyun ran his fingers through his hair, looking particularly perturbed. No wonder it was so easy for you to climb into bed with him. Night after night, weekend after weekend. 

You were almost afraid to ask, “Is this going to change my perspective on you?”

“It shouldn’t if you believe me,” Jaehyun said, but the truth was that he wasn’t too confident that you’d take his side. 

You peered up at him expectantly, resting your hand on his back while he sat beside you. You were partly terrified to know the truth, watching him nervously, but god, you were exhausted of being kept in the dark. 

Jaehyun exhaled deeply. He didn’t want to lose you, not before he truly had you, but he knew what he was, and more importantly, he knew what he wasn’t. “You knew Mike, right?”

You bobbed your head, lips parting in surprise at the mention of Johnny’s friend, but let him continue. 

Jaehyun explained, “I’m sure you know, but he was addicted to drugs and it was fucking up his whole life. I tried to help him get clean before he fucked around and killed himself. And he was, I think. That’s what he said.”

You recognized this story. Johnny had said something similar, but it was about his own efforts. You somehow never realized that Jaehyun and Mike were friends. “But?”

“But then he wasn’t clean anymore,” Jaehyun said in the tiniest voice ever. “Last year, at one of Xiaojun’s parties. It came out of nowhere. He overdosed on fent and coke.”

You knew that too. And you hated that Mike was gone so soon, taken by a poison he couldn’t stop once he’d gotten his hands on it. It was heartbreaking. 

“Then some people started to say that I did it, that I gave him the drugs. And I was at the party only a room away when he OD’d, but I swear to god it wasn’t me. But they ran with it anyway.”

You frowned, pausing your hands’ consolations at his back in shock. It was starting to add up now, why Johnny hated Jaehyun. Because he thought he was complicit in the death of one of his closest friends. 

That was when he started to become a tad too overprotective of you and it didn’t take a genius to piece together why, but you never knew it was the reason he loathed Jaehyun and didn’t want you anywhere near him. There were so many nights where you went to parties at Jaehyun’s house and Johnny would ask if you’d done any drugs. 

Because of Jaehyun. 

“God, to this day, I want to punch the bastard that gave Mike that stuff. And if I knew who he was, I’d kick his ass. So, I can understand why Johnny wants to kick mine. But it wasn’t me,” Jaehyun said, sounding broken. 

You blinked, taking it all in silently. You were at a crossroads. 

Though he was hesitant, Jaehyun glanced into your eyes, unsure of what your silence meant. It was killing him. “Please tell me you believe me.”

“I believe you,” you said, because you did. You had no reason to doubt Jaehyun. Plus you hadn’t known him to press his luck with anything other than weed in the time that you’d known each other. 

“Thank god,” Jaehyun sighed in relief. “Does this change things between us?”

You shook your head. “No. I thought you were a good guy before and I still think you’re a good guy now. Nothing is new.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

Jaehyun rested his head on your shoulder and mumbled with obvious melancholy, “Trusting me.”

You laced your fingers through Jaehyun’s, squeezing his hand. “I’ll always trust you.”

That warmed Jaehyun’s heart and he sat there wondering what he had done to deserve you. It felt like there was a burden lifted from his shoulders. 

The day went on, bleeding into night. You expected Jaehyun to want to go somewhere to celebrate his birthday, but he reassured you that he was more than content to spend it indoors with you.

Still, it made you a little sad and you tried your best to cloak your gloomy emotions with your affections. You didn’t want Jaehyun to know, but you were thinking about how nice it would’ve been to do something as simple as go out together. 

Reasonably, you were shocked when Jaehyun said, “I want to try out this Japanese restaurant with you next weekend.”

You blinked. “You want to go out… with me?” you asked, making sure you weren’t mistaken. 

Jaehyun nodded, enthusiastic. “Is that a bad idea?”

“What if we get caught together?”

Jaehyun shrugged. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“Of course it is. You don’t have anything to lose,” you said, but your tone was humorous.

Jaehyun replied without hesitation, “I have you to lose.”

You were sold. Those five words were all you needed to hear.

There was a ginormous beaming smile on your face when you both finally decided to call it a night and you fell asleep with a certain soreness in your cheeks. 

Jaehyun stayed up a little later than you had. Not on purpose, but it was impossible to rest his eyes when he was distracted by your sleep patterns. Your soft snores and the way your hand curled over his stomach. 

It was the sheer opposite of annoying. It was intoxicating. 

He was the one clinging to you when you roused from bed after sunrise. You felt bad for slipping away like a thief in the night, but in your defense, it was daytime and you had to be in your professor’s classroom for attendance. 

After washing up and tossing on a spare outfit you had in Jaehyun’s room for events like these, you scribbled an apologetic note that he would surely find on his nightstand and quietly crept downstairs with a sadness weighing on you now that you had to leave. 

And surely enough, Jaehyun woke up to the note and smiled like a dumbass when he rubbed his eyes and read it to himself. 

Good morning, sleeping handsome. I’m gonna miss you today, but I have an early afternoon class that I have to pass to graduate. You sleep like deadweight, by the way. I had to fight out of your arms and you didn’t notice. See you next weekend. Call me. 

Jaehyun crawled out of bed and headed to the bathroom for a shower, but he could tell that you’d obviously already taken one with a single simple glance, and he was wishing you had invited him to join you. 

Now he sounded like a guy. Which was fair, because he was one. 

You raced home after class ended. Though you had more than enough exams that it would’ve been a good idea to study for, the main thing on your mind was plugging in the flash drive Jaehyun had gifted you, because you still were dying to know what was on it. 

It was safe to say that a song was the last thing you were expecting. 

You froze on your bed, unsure of how to feel. Everything hit you hard. The wistful yet romantic lyrics, the softness of his voice. Jaehyun was pouring his heart out to you, opening up to you about his feelings the best way he knew how. 

There was a ripple of emotions bursting through you. The lyrics were a little too sentimental for you to attempt to convince yourself that this wasn’t Jaehyun’s idea of a love confession. Maybe you’d known all along, but you didn’t want to accept it, because you knew that it wasn’t written in the stars. 

Now you had no choice. 

You sat there and cried. God, it was a beautiful song and that only made the tears drip even harder. You were bemused and overwhelmed. Bemused that he had obviously taken a lot of time out of his busy life to sit there and record a song for you, and overwhelmed by everything else. 

Jaehyun loves me. Jaehyun really loves me, you thought, admitting it to yourself. And it scared you to death, because you loved him too. 

Then the day came for you to hang out at the restaurant. It was the first time you and Jaehyun actually spent time together outside of his house. The meetup on the bridge and the incident at Jeno’s house didn’t count. Those were merely instances you’d happened to cross paths. 

When Jaehyun came up behind you in a back hug while you were waiting for him (you were embarrassingly early), you didn’t jolt or startle, relaxing into his touch without sparing him a glance first. Nobody else would be wearing his sexy ass cologne. 

You didn’t mention the song or acknowledge the obvious romantic tension between you at all, much to Jaehyun’s disappointment. But he knew you definitely took the flash drive back home. It wasn’t on the coffee table when he went downstairs, meaning you had grabbed it on your way out.   

He couldn’t help but wonder if you had listened to it and vividly pictured your reaction, but Jaehyun knew it would be pointless obsessing over the thought if he wasn’t going to ask. 

The truth was that you were conflicted. Your heart wanted Jaehyun, but you were rational and knew it was ridiculous. There was no point in setting yourselves up for more useless heartbreak. 

But you had fun with Jaehyun in that restaurant. You didn’t want to admit it, but it was the closest thing to a date you would ever have with him. You talked and held hands underneath the table like the pair of lovers you hoped you were in another life. 

Your insatiable lovesick heart was aching for more. And the worst part was that Jaehyun was oftentimes right there in your arms but had never felt further. 

It wasn’t until you were unfortunately back home and walking through the front door that you read aloud the text you’d received from Johnny. We need to talk. I’ll be home in an hour. “Well, that cannot be good,” you mumbled to yourself. 

“It isn’t.”

You jolted in alarm. You didn’t know Johnny was home, though it had most definitely been well over an hour. Jaehyun was too interesting for you to even think about touching your phone once. 

Given the familiar less than content glare on Johnny’s face, you fought a groan, wondering what you could’ve possibly done now when you’d been on your best behavior lately. You lilted in the usual tone you used when you wanted to get out of trouble, “Hi, my handsome big brother that I love dearly.”

Johnny, obviously not in the mood, snapped, “Taeyong saw you with Jaehyun today. You wanna explain that to me?”

That was the last thing you expected him to say and the shock was plain on your face. “What?”

Johnny shook his head, unsurprised that you were acting clueless, and though he was furious he tried not to raise his voice. “Don’t play dumb. Are you dating him - fucking him?”

“I’m not dating him, we’re just…,” you trailed in frustration, realizing that you’d been caught. “Shit, yeah. I’ve fucked him and we’re hanging out.”

Johnny blew out a long, exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe this. God, my own sister.”

Tears threatened. At this point, you were desperate. Your whole world was crashing down without warning. You wished you would’ve at least seen the text and braced yourself. “Johnny, please. If you gave him a chance, I think you two would really like each other!”

“I could never like him,” Johnny replied viciously, face tensing in fury as if the suggestion was an affront to his entire existence.  

You approached Johnny, somehow mustering the courage to come near him. “Please listen to me, alright? He didn’t do it, Johnny. It wasn’t him!”

Johnny gawked. He couldn’t believe you were defending Jaehyun and took a gigantic step back, wanting to be nowhere near you. He hissed, “Of course that’s what the bastard told you. Did he give you proof?”

Frantic, you shook your head, and it came to you that you only had trust to back Jaehyun’s claims. “No, but...”

Johnny grabbed his keys and interjected, “Stop. Just stop. I don’t even want to see your face right now.”

Your lips were agape when Johnny stormed towards the garage, full of purebred rage and disappointment. 

After a few minutes, the shock started to dull away and you temporarily regained the ability to function, racing upstairs to your bedroom to be inert. You hated the brutal sting splitting you in half. While your thoughts were on pause and you were consumed by emptiness, it was the one thing keeping you from dissociating. 

Sitting there on your bed, knees pressed to your chest and your arms curled around yourself, you couldn’t even cry. It would come, but right now you were trying to process the pain. And in the meantime, you realized what needed to be done.

Two long days later, you were meeting Jaehyun at the bridge one final time. It took nearly forty-eight hours of gathering the courage to pick up your phone, but you had to let him know it was over. That this was goodbye. 

You ran your fingers across the wooden overlook, taking in nature, but even the peaceful noise of your surroundings failed to soothe your heartbreak. 

The sound of tentative footsteps barely drew you from your own head, and you didn’t want to face your visitor. You knew it was Jaehyun. For more reasons than one. 

Though you couldn’t see, Jaehyun had his hands in his pockets. “Am I late?”

“No, you’re perfectly on time. I got here early. I needed time to think,” you replied with a fleeting glance at your watch. 

Jaehyun watched you with unease, a perturbed thud in his heart making it challenging to breathe. This was bad, he knew, and for whatever reason, that fear that he was doomed was unshakable. “What happened?”

“Johnny knows,” you began, finally whipping around. It was the least you could do, knowing you had to break his heart. “Taeyong saw us together. He snitched. Now Johnny wants nothing to do with me.”

Jaehyun’s heart sank. No wonder you hadn’t texted or called him in two days. Aside from inviting him here, that is. “What now?”

“I can’t see you anymore. Johnny already hates me now. If I keep seeing you behind his back, I won’t have a brother anymore. I can’t live with that guilt. That’s why I’ve been running from it for months,” you said quietly. 

Jaehyun stiffened, like a boulder. “We’re giving up? That’s insane! Don’t let him stop us from being together.”

You recoiled, surprised. “Are you asking me to choose you over my brother?”

“No, of course not,” Jaehyun sighed, combing his hands through his hands as he searched for the right words. 

You desperately wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, but you couldn’t bring yourself to move. “You should be with someone who can treat you the way you deserve to be treated. Someone you can hold and kiss outside without any worries. I can’t give you that, Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun shook his head. “None of that matters to me. I want to be with you. I don’t care what compromises I have to make.”

“Well, I do,” you whispered sullenly, reminding yourself of everything you had to lose. “It was never going to work. You had to know this. We aren’t Shakespeare characters. Hell, even they don’t get to be happy!”

Jaehyun’s chest was taut with pain. It was usually him that had to tell people the brutal reality of unfortunate situations. And this was how it felt to be on the other side?

Fighting the oncoming threat of tears, you continued, “I’ve enjoyed these past months with you and we’ve made special, unforgettable memories together. But enough is enough. We were gonna have to face the truth one day, and that day is today. It was inevitable. I hope that somehow we can still be friends.”

Jaehyun spat, “I don’t want to be just friends. I can’t be just friends with you. Why don’t you understand that?”

Oh, you did. You really, really did. This was hurting you in ways unimaginable and nothing could’ve prepared you for the moment where you had to set Jaehyun free. 

Not even knowing this day would come. 

“I love you,” Jaehyun confessed for the first time, taking some steps closer to you. The gleam in his eyes killed you. 

Those words were like ice in your veins. Your heart stopped beating. For half a minute, the whole world ceased. You shook your head, sensing a vicious pain returning to you. “You can’t love me.”

Jaehyun switched on a dime and hissed, “You can’t tell me how to feel.”

Denial still crept through your blood. Apparently, it was one of your many talents. Jaehyun’s too. “You’re in love with the idea of me. You just want somebody to love again and maybe I made you realize that, but you don’t love me.”

Jaehyun was trembling. You were trying to diagnose him and he wouldn’t stand for it. “Saying that doesn’t make it true.”

You were defiant. You needed it to be true. There had to be some way to get him to let you go and move on. You didn’t want to resort to cruel methods, but you would if you were rendered optionless. 

Jaehyun continued, “You did make me realize that I wanted love again. But I also realized that I could have it all in you.”

Finally pushed past your limits, you shattered and screamed, “Goddammit, Jaehyun - you can’t have me!”

You turned away, hoping he would let you leave. You didn’t want things to end on even worse terms than they already were. 

But you should’ve known Jaehyun would be relentless. He was a fighter. You were what he wanted, what he loved, and he’d damned if he surrendered without a fight. “So, that’s it? You’re just going to walk away?” 

You rooted in place and exhaled loudly, bristling with frustration. “The fuck do you want me to do, Jay? It’s out of my hands.”

“Talk to Johnny - you know that I didn’t do anything!”

“No, I don’t know anything,” you grumbled, crossing your arms tightly. 

That stunned Jaehyun. You didn’t trust him anymore?

Jaehyun laughed, but it was humorless. Needless to say, he was pissed. “Wow. You gave up the fight before it started, before it was over. You never gave us a chance.”

You walked away. You didn’t have the strength. 

Jaehyun kept prodding. You were unbelievable and he couldn’t stand you right now. “I bet this isn’t just about Johnny. I bet him being your brother is just a cop-out so that you don’t have to trust another guy again.”

Now that stung deep. He was hitting you where it hurt, making sure you understood how badly you had wounded him, and you realized there was a chance he was right and you hadn’t even considered it. You whipped around, snapping, “Fuck you. I wish I never met you.”

Jaehyun watched you disappear behind the thick branches, simmering where he stood. God, he resented the fuck out of you right now. You were accepting defeat, throwing in the towel, and he hated you because of it. 

The seemingly endless months of ignorant bliss were washed down the drain all because you didn’t want to be a little more optimistic. You could’ve had it all together, had you not resigned yourself to being unhappy. You were so hell-bent on being realistic that you closed the door on other possibilities. 

Almost the second you burst through the front door, your tears fell after what felt like an eternity of fighting them back. Johnny and your parents turned to face you with alarm when you paraded through the living room, but you ignored your mother’s questions and made a beeline for your bed. 

Johnny didn’t ask. He already knew, and he was only somewhat satisfied that you had done what should’ve never needed to happen in the first place. 

The days of the week started to bleed into each other. You didn’t talk to Jaehyun for obvious reasons. Johnny, the man whose shoulders you thought would always be there for you to lean on, was ironically giving you the cold shoulder. And  Mark wouldn’t understand even if you explained, though you knew he was available. 

Never had you felt so alone. You had no one to escape to. No one who could comprehend or justify the moral dilemma you forced yourself into. I’ve truly outdone myself. I’ve betrayed my brother, baffled my best friend, and lost my lover back to back. That has to be a world record. 

Seven days marked the longest time you had gone without speaking with Jaehyun since the onset of this private love affair. He didn’t call or text you either, which was understandable. Plus it was what you wanted, or at least that was what you used to think. 

You weren’t sure anymore. Cutting him off was the whole purpose of meeting him, but why did it make you feel so isolated?

It wasn’t that long ago that you did it because you thought it was the right choice, or maybe because you thought it would make things better. But it hadn’t. Now that you had effectively shielded yourself from the universe, you were less free and more lonely. 

And time continued to fly by, days of leaving the house only to attend class and coming back to your room only to collapse into sorrow. 

Johnny felt bad. At night, there were a couple of times where he hovered near your door and heard you sobbing, but he was too petty and spiteful to knock or check up on you. You had stung him too. 

The difference was that when Mike died, you did everything in your power to console Johnny. You gave him the space he needed, of course, but you opened the door for him to talk to you if he wanted and lent him a shoulder to cry on. You bought all his favorite snacks and encouraged him to go outside, even if it was just the backyard. 

Now, you were suffering your own loss, one of many but in a different manner. It wasn’t like you were a bereaved wife, but the agony wasn’t any less excruciating. 

Mark came over whenever he had the extra time to spare every week to check up on you, reminding you that you weren’t as alone as you thought you were, but you still didn’t want to confide in him about your emotions. You were afraid he would unintentionally make you feel more stupid. 

You were a little verklempt. Maybe more than. They said time was the healer of all wounds, but with every week spent without Jaehyun’s familiar musk in the air and dreamy voice in your ear, you felt less and less whole.   

What could you have done to keep him close to you, even if it was just for a little while longer? Maybe if you hadn’t ended on such cold, distant terms, moving on would be easier and you would be happier. You could’ve contentedly looked back on the memories of your last time together knowing you had done everything in your control to make it better. 

But you were worried that that was false. You were worried that Jaehyun was right and this ending was premature. 

It doesn’t matter, premature or not. It was going to end either way. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable, you reassured yourself in what you once believed was aggressively honest consolation, but you were starting to question how you could be so certain. 

You told yourself that with the burden of your immoral secrets weighing you down, you and Jaehyun could’ve never been a pair. You knew it wouldn’t last forever. You’d always known. You didn’t expect things to make it this far, but dammit you didn’t expect to have your fun cut short so soon either. 

It wasn’t fair. 

Sometimes you dreamt of what it would be like to hold Jaehyun in your arms without worries, without stolen touches and kisses when nobody was paying attention. 

You sat in the nook at your window, curled up into yourself, thinking only about Jaehyun. If it wasn’t for the stupid secret that unraveled far too damn quickly, maybe none of this would’ve ever happened. Maybe I would have you, with nothing to lose. Nothing to fear.

Fuck, you should’ve been happy. Given how unlucky in love you were, you doubted that you were intended to ever be happy. You hadn’t smiled in an eternity. But Jaehyun made you feel your peak of happiness, as if you had never been more euphoric with anybody else. 

More than once, you had been in love, but never like how you were in love with Jaehyun. Why did things have to become so complicated for the both of us? Why did reality hit like a fucking freight train?

If only you never fell for Jaehyun, never even gave him the time of day, then you wouldn’t be hurting. Your heart was being tortured. 

It took another day of stumbling into the kitchen with dark eye bags after yet another sleepless night of sobbing into your pillows, and Johnny ignoring your existence altogether while he poured himself a mug of coffee, but it finally occurred to you that you couldn’t relive this agonizing cycle over and over. 

You were sick of the pain and the dread. The insufferably cold distance when his bedroom was right down the hall from yours. You were sick of sniveling until you had no more tears left to weep, until you felt totally empty. 

Something had to give. 

To your surprise, and luck, Mark called you a few minutes after you strolled back into your room wordlessly, devising a plan you loathed yourself for not thinking of earlier. “Hey, bestie. Talk to me,” he said. “How you feeling?”

“Like judgment day came early for me, I guess,” you mumbled into the phone, collapsing onto your sheets. 

Mark sighed roughly. “Damn. I was hoping you would feel a little better this week. Johnny said you’re the world’s biggest hermit and it’s kinda depressing.”

That shocked you to your core, but you tried to play it off. “Oh, Johnny’s been talking about me?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve obviously been checking up on the both of you on the regular, and neither of you really wanna open up to me, but Johnny has less of an issue talking about you. Man, he still cares. He’s your brother.”

Your heart was sore. You wished he would tell you that himself. In your own home, to your own brother, you felt like a stranger. 

Tears burned your eyes, but you fought them and lilted playfully, “Oh, my beloved bestie…”

Mark knew that tone and interjected, “Fuck.”

You fought a tiny laugh and continued, “Would you mind doing your best friend a teeny tiny little favor?”

The suggestion alone sounded like bad news and Mark was questioning what he was about to get himself into, because no matter what came out his mouth first, you were his best friend. Of course, he was going to tell you “yes.”

Mark huffed, “Jesus. Ease up on the mischief. Johnny still wants to beat my ass too, you know? He asked me if I knew you were boning Jaehyun and of course I couldn’t lie. I’m a man of God.”

Because you didn’t feel like disputing that statement, you ignored his speech entirely and asked knowingly, “Your dad’s a cop, isn’t he?”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

Your voice was maybe a little hopeful. “Is there a way that he can look into the investigation of Mike’s overdose?”

Mark knew exactly why you were asking and even he was ashamed he hadn’t thought of the little plan. There was a brief pause before he said, “I’ll call you back.” And then he hung up. 

You were a little tense sitting there on your bed waiting around for a phone call. Not because you were worried about Mark not doing it, which would be ridiculous because you both wanted what was best for Johnny. It was because you were scared of not having a solution.

Deciding it would be useless to sit around antsily, you took a well-deserved nap after a restless twenty-four hours of no sleep. It would only do you good. Even if Mark didn’t have the answers you wanted, your grades would thank you.

Sleep came easy. Though they weren’t Jaehyun’s, it was nice and peaceful bunched beneath your blankets. You flipped your pillow over to the side that wasn’t stained with tears and let darkness take the wheel. 

Johnny peeked inside your room after an hour or two, wanting to talk to you, but when he saw you comfortably snoozing in your bed and obliviously clinging onto a spare pillow for dear life, he backed away and shut the door. He knew you needed the rest. 

You jolted awake when your phone started to ring vehemently beside your head, cursing yourself for not turning on Do Not Disturb before immediately remembering why you didn’t, and quickly lifting the phone to answer gruffly, “Hello?”

“Good news,” Mark started, sounding suspiciously chipper. “I had my dad pull some strings. And you’re gonna wanna hear this.”

Sitting up, you exclaimed in an impatient whisper, “Well?”

“Jeong Jaehyun is not a suspect, for one. There were witnesses that confirmed him giving Mike his fix was impossible. But for two, the case reopened a few months ago and they’re literally about to bust the guy that did it. They’re waiting on a warrant. You’ve got great timing,” Mark said. 

You rubbed your eyes in disbelief. “What the hell?”

“Isn’t this good news?”

“Yeah, it is,” you whispered, too shocked to know how to feel. You didn’t think the stupid plan would really work. “Thank you, Mark.”

Mark was quick to reassure you, “You don’t need to thank me. You’re my best friend and Johnny is like my brother-in-law in some weird way. See, that sounds weird. Anyways, when do you plan on telling him?”

You laughed at his rambling, but hummed when you thought about his question. “Uh, would today be a bad time?”

“The sooner the better.”

You sighed in relief. Then, you donned the loveliest tone you could muster, and asked sweetly, “Will you come with me please? I think your presence will really help.”

Mark retorted, “Should I bring the entire police force too?”

You rolled your eyes and begged, “Come on, Mark. You’re my bestie and I need you. He’s more mad with me than he is with you and plus you have the benefit of a credible father.”

“I was already on my way,” Mark chirped, jiggling his keys loudly before hanging up. 

You giggled. What would you do without that boy? He was your ride or die. 

Fifteen minutes later, Mark was pulling into your driveway and hopping out of the car. You let him in, locking the door behind your best friend and embracing him in the biggest hug of his life. You needed the comfort to wean off your nerves. 

The last thing you expected was for Johnny to come trudging down the stairs within the very next minute. 

You released Mark, turning to your brother, and you and Johnny said in unison, “Hey, I really need to talk to you.”

Johnny blinked in surprise. It almost seemed like he was mirroring you. Mark snickered to himself, mumbling something about you two obviously being related, but Johnny was chill and said, “You can go first.”

You heaved a breath. It was a shock that Johnny deliberately chose to speak to you for the first time, presumably without the intervening influence of your parents’ rebuttal on your behalf. “I don’t know how to say this, but first I wanted to tell you that I’m really sorry for sneaking around with Jaehyun behind your back. It was a really shitty thing for me to do.”

Johnny nodded along, listening. 

“But I fell in love with him,” you said without hesitation. “And I’m not going to ask you to accept us or anything. That’s your choice. But I thought there was something you should know that’s bigger than Jaehyun and I.”

Johnny looked tense, but he encouraged you to go on. “Okay.”

It felt like the whole world was watching you with Johnny’s eyes carefully set on your face, but you didn’t let it stop you from continuing, “It really wasn’t him that gave Mike his supply, and yes we have proof. Mark’s dad not only confirmed it wasn’t him, but they’re working on getting him into custody.”

Mark nodded, standing right behind you. Like he was vouching for you the same way you’d vouched for him all these years. “It’s true, Johnny. It wasn’t Jaehyun. It was some random shady dealer that preys on addicts at these parties. He has a track record.”

Johnny’s eyes flickered. “It really wasn’t Jaehyun?”

Mark shook his head. “He’s innocent, dude.”

Johnny fell silent for a long time. You could see him stiffening, penitent. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered. “I feel like shit now.”

You snorted. “Don’t do that to yourself. Please. I’ve felt like shit enough these past few weeks for the both of us.”

“About that,” Johnny began, getting whiplash. The look on his face was gentle, remorseful, and he hated himself for being anything else to his sister. To the last person that deserved his misplaced frustration. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for freezing you out.”

“Johnny…,” you trailed. 

Johnny shook his head. He needed you to let him say this. “I know you’ve had a rough few weeks, and though I haven’t exactly been pleased with you, you’re still my sister. The least I could’ve done was ask you ‘how are you doing?’ but I couldn’t even be bothered.”

You sighed loudly. That was true. And you’d be lying if you said it didn’t rub salt in the wounds. 

“I haven’t done a good job at showing it, but I care for you. You’re my only sibling and let’s be honest, I don’t think I’ll be getting another one,” Johnny said lightheartedly. 

You snickered. Damn right. You knew your parents would vehemently agree if they were here. They couldn’t be happier that all of their kids were adults. Well, maybe if you moved out. 

Johnny breathed in some air. A lot of mistakes had obviously been made on both parts and he was ready to put it all behind him. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I forgot to do what was more important. Be your brother. And I’ll apologize for the rest of my life until you forgive me.”

“No need. I forgive you right now,” you whispered, simpering. 

Johnny stood there like a dumbass, hesitant. He didn’t feel like he deserved your forgiveness and would be spending the next weeks repairing his relationship with you, doing whatever it took. 

You took the lead, starting reluctantly, “Listen. I know Mike’s passing has been hard on you, Johnny. That’s why you want to protect me and everything else you love in your life, but I’m an adult. You need to let me take care of me.” 

A cloud of melancholy hung over Johnny and it wouldn’t leave. The grief was still fresh, as if Mike had died yesterday. 

You stepped forward, placing a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “And you’re my big brother. I’ll obviously still give you a call when I’m going through a rough time. But you have to respect that I’m my own person.”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry about all that too. I’ll be better.”

“I will too,” you said, because the truth was that it was time the two of you started making efforts. 

Johnny grabbed you in his arms and pulled you into a gigantic bear hug. You wrapped your arms around him, pulling him close, and breathed easier in relief as weeks worth of wounds vanished. 

Wincing your eyes closed, you let yourself be content in your brother’s loving embrace for the first time in a while. You needed this. 

You could barely feel yourself breathe when Johnny started to hug you so tightly you thought he might accidentally squeeze the life out of you. “Alright, chill, Johnny. I think I might die,” you wheezed.

Johnny released you with a chuckle. You gasped for breath, shaking your head. Though the bone-crushing hug was appreciated nonetheless. 

Mark was content to be in the background and cheered in awe, “I’m so proud of you guys. You overcame your differences and reunited like real siblings. I knew it would happen eventually, but dude, this is refreshing to see.”

You nodded in agreement. One less broken relationship. But you had another one to salvage before it was too late. 

Then, Mark remembered Johnny was none too thrilled that he was complicit in you getting away with your sneaky little secret and asked, “Yo, Johnny, are we good?”

“No.”

Mark gawked. 

“I’m kidding,” Johnny said with a teasing lilt. “We’re good, man.”

Mark exhaled in relief. “Thank god.”

You smiled to yourself. You were happy, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing from your life. 

Johnny clamped a hand onto your shoulder and said, “Go get him.”

You gasped, but you didn’t question how he knew. He just did. It was a sibling thing. “You mean it?”

“Yes. You said it yourself. You love him, and I have no reason to come between that anymore. You deserve to be happy after dating asshole after asshole,” Johnny told you (sort of) kindly. 

You snickered, and grabbed your keys from your pockets. “Pray for me. He’s not gonna be thrilled.”

Johnny shook his head, disagreeing. “Yeah, he will. Tell him that I’m very sorry, but the threat to kick his ass still stands if he fucks with you.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know,” you deadpanned, heading for the door. 

The drive to Jaehyun’s house was inexplicably anxious. You could still think, but every thought went by at the speed of a thousand miles per second. And it didn’t help that you were overthinking the entire situation, dreading the endless amount of “what ifs.”

For fuck’s sake, you didn’t even know if he would be there. You were showing up unannounced, uninvited. What if he had already found another woman to keep him company in your forgettable absence?

Then, you were at his front doorstep. And you had no time to vividly imagine every possible scenario, because Jungkook answered your knocks and you could only barely see inside. 

You politely greeted him in a small voice and asked, “Can I come inside?”

Jungkook’s eyes narrowed and he didn’t waste any time in snapping, “Why should I let you in after you broke my friend’s heart?”

“Because I’m sorry and I want to set things right with him,” you said, matching his lack of hesitation. 

Yugyeom hurried over and took the lead, widening the door for you to enter and whining dramatically, “Oh, god. Please come in. Fix him. Do your womanly magic and bring him back to life. I’m sick of his brooding ass.”

You wanted to laugh, but you hated the thought of causing Jaehyun all this suffering. If it was anything like the kind you’d been through lately, you knew he was in a tough spot. 

Thanking Yugyeom, you made a beeline for the stairs, rushing up them like Jaehyun would somehow know it was you approaching them and slip away before you could get the chance to apologize. 

You knocked on Jaehyun’s door, but you guessed he really wasn’t expecting you to come over, because he shouted exasperatedly, “Jesus, Yugyeom. Fuck off.”

“It’s not Yugyeom,” you called back. “It’s me.”

All you could hear was silence. Then there was a shuffle, and a few moments later the door clicked unlocked and Jaehyun was standing before you in all his glory. “What are you doing here?”

“I walked to talk,” you replied timidly, struggling to maintain eye contact. 

Irritated, Jaehyun huffed, “We already had a conversation.” Though the truth was that he was glad you were here, standing in front of him again. He was borderline miserable without you in his life. 

The reminder of your final exchange with Jaehyun made you wince in shame. “I know, but I wanted to apologize. Won’t you at least hear me out?”

Jaehyun turned to return to his bed, reminding sharply, “You’re the one that walked away. I was willing to at least try to make us work, but you didn’t even want to do that.”

“Because I thought it would be useless,” you admitted, giving chase and shutting the door behind yourself. “But I don’t anymore. You were right. I should’ve fought for us and I regret not doing it earlier.”

Jaehyun might’ve acted like he wasn’t listening, being totally dismissive, but he definitely noticed your specific use of language. “You said ‘earlier.’ What do you mean?”

You had a beaming smile on your face as you admitted, “I mean, I talked to Johnny about us. I managed to get him to listen to me and proved your innocence. Thank god Mark’s father is a cop.”

Jaehyun softened. “You did all that? Why?”

“Because you’re worth fighting for,” you whispered tenderly, looking at Jaehyun like he was your entire universe. 

Jaehyun was so close to accepting that he would never have anyone look at him that way again. After a heartbreak, the feeling of being unlovable always loomed over his head and you were no different. But dammit if he wasn’t tired of the doubts. 

Tentatively, you came towards Jaehyun completely, sitting beside him on his mattress that you missed almost as much as you missed him. “I didn’t mean it, when I said I wish I never met you.”

Jaehyun almost laughed. That was the least hurtful thing to leave your lips. “I know. You were upset. And you had every right to be.”

You frowned, suspicious of how calm he was. You half expected him to lash out. “Stop being understanding.” 

“If you’re expecting me to be angry, I can’t do anything for you. I’ve already spent the past few weeks in that stage of grief.”

You blinked. It was as if he could read your mind. “Where are you at now?”

Jaehyun was totally indifferent when he told you, “Bargaining.”

“Funny. Me too,” you sighed. If only you had been more open-minded, you could have spared you and Jaehyun all this worthless misery. 

You noticed that Jaehyun said nothing, but he looked a little in his head. And he was somewhere up there, scolding himself for letting him be a fool for you, then thinking, I couldn’t resist loving you. Sue me. 

The emotion was finally surfacing on his face. You could see all of it now. The distress and the love and the heartache. You smirked, thinking to yourself, He’s my little damsel now. 

The grin on your lips was fleeting and it disappeared by the time you grabbed Jaehyun’s hands in yours and he peered down at you in surprise. “I’m sorry,” you told him softly. “I thought you were crazy and hopeless for thinking we could be together. Now, I see that you didn’t want to quit until you’d exhausted your resources. And I forced your hand. I’m sorry.”

Jaehyun squeezed your hand. “It’s okay. I understand where you were coming from. You were trying to make things as painless as possible because you genuinely thought we didn’t stand a chance against fate.”

“And somehow I made shit ten times more painful,” you murmured, ashamed. 

“Like I said, I understand where you were coming from,” Jaehyun said, being gentler than he should’ve. 

You shook your head. That meant nothing. “But do you forgive me?”

Jaehyun gazed into your pained eyes. It still broke him, but he was starting to lick the wound clean. Things were changing. “Yes. I forgive you, baby.”

Your heart softened at the pet name. You never expected to fall for Jaehyun. Not Jaehyun or his precious smile and adorable face. Not the little things he’d say that made you feel as if you would burst with love. 

But you did fall for him, and all those little things that made him himself. And you didn’t want to be without them ever again. 

“I’m tired of loving each other behind closed doors. I want to be seen with you. I want to go to museums and look at really abstract paintings that you’ll tell me are meaningful for whatever reason. I want to explore the city with you and visit shops I’d never think to go to otherwise.”

Jaehyun was sporting a beaming smile. “You said you love me.”

“I haven’t said it before?”

Jaehyun huffed, “No. Not even once.”

You held his face, cradling it just shy of yours, and confessed, “Then, I love you. I love you. I love you so much, Jaehyun. I don’t know what to do without you.”

“I love you too,” Jaehyun said, leaning in to mumble the tiny confession into your neck, and reminded of how desperately he craved the warmth of your skin. 

You were grinning so hard your cheeks were hurting. 

“Don’t leave me ever again. Don’t ever let me go. Never,” Jaehyun instructed you sharply, and although it was partly muffled, you heard him loud and clear.

“I won’t,” you told him, kissing his forehead. “If you play me that song you made me on your guitar.”

Jaehyun blinked up at you in surprise. “You liked it?”

“I think I’ve cried to it, like, a million times,” you admitted unabashedly. 

Jaehyun’s jaw went slack for only a split second, then he quickly recovered and leapt up to grab his guitar from its resting position in the corner of his room. 

A smile danced onto your lips as he held the guitar, strumming to the beautiful song he’d written with only his insurmountable adoration for you in mind, and the pining nature of the lyrics made you realize that the yearning was over. You were Jaehyun’s. And Jaehyun was yours. 

Losing Jaehyun, one of the few people you loved depthlessly, was like losing the last person you had. You didn’t know how to be without him. And you didn’t have to learn, because you never would be without him again. 

You watched him attentively, beaming from ear to ear, taking in his beautiful smile and soft voice, and familiar heady cologne. And you thought to yourself, There’s nothing to dislike about this guy. 

[ebongawk]

Eddie and Chrissy have a big fight/argument/misunderstanding (but with a happy resolution please 🥺). Just for hurt/comfort sake.

Eddie couldn't wrap his head around it.

Reconnecting with Chrissy Cunningham (yeah, that Chrissy Cunningham) five years after leaving Hawkins to snap at his heels while he went out and made a name for himself had, at the time, seemed like an act of fate. He'd just gotten out of a year-long situationship that ended when their mutually agreed upon exclusivity had, apparently, been too exclusive for her.

Eddie wasn't heartbroken or anything. He didn't really let his attachments take up that much space in his chest, but it was disappointing to realize that, yet again, he was deemed not enough by a person with whom he'd expended so much time and effort.

But, whatever, right? Who gave a shit. Rockstars weren't supposed to dip their fingers into one honeypot at a time, anyway, so to speak. And Eddie was kinda in a place where he should have wanted to explore that.

(He didn't, but that seemed secondary.)

Then, in aforementioned act of fate, Chrissy Cunningham showed up at his signing booth at the end of a show, and all that space in his chest he hadn't allowed another person to occupy was suddenly pitched with a For Sale sign, paperwork drawn up and just waiting for her to take out the mortgage.

Wonder of wonders, she fucking did.

They'd just celebrated a year together by buying an adorable little three-bed townhouse in Carlsbad. It was kinda dated – the wallpaper had definitely been picked out by someone's grandma – but it was theirs, and Eddie fucking loved it. Chrissy did, too, if all the squealing was anything to go by.

Producers called up about a week later to let him know they were going on tour for four months, and Eddie and Chrissy were torn between elation and devastation, since she could only go with him for the first month before she had to be back at work.

Which was fine. They made it work. Eddie called whenever he had a chance and Chrissy had sent him off with polaroids and a letter about how much she loved him and the stuffed frog he'd won her at the San Diego County Fair and it was fine.

Except, recently, shit had been weird.

Like, weird weird.

Like, Chrissy could only talk for a few minutes weird. Like she'd missed his nightly phone call a few days ago because she'd been "out", and when he'd called her last night, he swore he heard a man's voice on the other end of the line.

He asked, and Chrissy explained that she forgot to mute the TV, but that was completely unlike her. Chrissy never forgot that kind of stuff because she always lamented that it was impossible to focus on their conversation if she had distractions in her periphery.

It hit him like a goddamn ton of bricks.

She's cheating on me.

And it didn't make sense, but then it did, because who the fuck wanted to wait around for some asshole guitarist in a band that barely had name recognition? For four fucking months? She was a publicist, for fuck's sake, she made plenty of money to support herself and Eddie was just the dead goddamn weight that nobody wanted––

He didn't want to believe it. But she knew he was getting home the following day, so Eddie did what any sane person would do. He boarded a plane twelve hours earlier than was originally planned, took a taxi to their new house, and was going to catch her in the fucking act.

Even if it ripped his heart to shreds with fucking dragon claws and made it impossible for him to ever love anyone else. That was just the fucking price he'd have to pay for trusting someone, he supposed.

The entire trip home (six hours), all he could think about was what he was going to say when he found her in bed with someone else. And he kept choking on his own tongue to keep the bile from coming up his throat.

Unlocking the door, Eddie set his duffel bag and guitar in the foyer, automatically toeing off his Reeboks (Chrissy was adamant about no shoes in the house) and walking down the hallway toward the kitchen.

It was empty.

Then, from up the stairs, a soft, continuous banging noise. Like a hammer tapping against a nail or––

Or a fucking bedpost hitting the wall.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Eddie rounded the corner and practically barged into their bedroom, shoulders heaving and fists clenched.

Empty.

A blink, then two, and Eddie looked around. There was something different about the room. Like, yeah, okay, it'd been a while since he'd been home, but the walls were... definitely not green when he left. Because they were covered in that awful wallpaper.

Right?

And... did they always have those built-in bookshelves around the picture window? And that window seat?

He nearly went to investigate, but then the banging started up again, and Eddie whirled around, looking at the ajar door of the empty guest room down the hall. Heart in his throat, he approached and cursed his own fingers for trembling like that.

(Didn't these hinges used to squeak?)

The room was not empty like it'd been when he left it.

In the middle, beneath a clear tarp, was a huge desk that was stacked with boxes. He couldn't make out everything hidden within them, but his synth pedal and headphones were spilling out over the cardboard tops.

Chrissy was standing on a stepladder in the corner, holding a hammer as she hung up... was that soundproofing?

Standing beside her was a man. A man Eddie immediately recognized as his uncle, given the bald head and set of shoulders. And, in the opposite corner of the room, Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler were screwing things around the pieces of soundproof that were already hung.

Things like...

A guitar mount.

Jonathan looked up, his eyes widening as he let out a loud, "Oh, shit," at the unexpected ghost haunting the doorway. His statement made the other three pairs of eyes turn on him, each of them widening with shock.

"Eddie!" Chrissy shouted, nearly toppling off the stepladder in her haste to get down. Wayne's arms automatically stretched to catch her, but she was halfway across the room, practically leaping into Eddie's surprised embrace. "You're early!"

"Uh," he said, his voice breaking as his mind struggled to comprehend what was happening. "Y-Yeah. Just, uh, caught an earlier flight."

Chrissy's pointy little chin dug into his chest, her grin broad and her eyes glimmering in the sunlight still streaming through the window. "Well. I can't even be mad that you ruined your own surprise, I guess. I'm too happy to see you!"

Eddie's hands were still trembling.

"Surprise?"

"Yeah!" she said, still giddy with excitement. Not quite leaving his uncertain embrace, Chrissy turned, broadly motioning toward the room. "I was building you a studio! For, um, for songwriting and stuff. Because I know you have to make appointments to go to the recording studio. So, we took down all the drywall and double-insulated in here, and we're just finishing up the soundproofing tiles!"

Fuck, she was still grinning. Looking up at him with bright, expectant eyes as she waited for his response.

Before he could formulate one, she bounced, her eyes widening again. "Oh, and! And! Look what I did to the bedroom!"

She grabbed his hand, walking him back toward the room he'd already seen and whipping the door open with a flourish.

"Ta-da!" she exclaimed, motioning toward the walls, the shelves, the window seat. "That wallpaper was awful, so it was the first thing to go. Then, Wayne came down a couple weeks ago and helped me fit these shelves in, so we'd have somewhere for all our books! Isn't it lovely?" She gave a dreamy sigh, leaning her head against his chest and wrapping her arms around his midsection.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck.

She was–– Jesus Christ, he'd been so fucking convinced that Chrissy was cheating, and she'd been... She'd been rebuilding their goddamn house from the inside out. Creating a home for them, where they'd just been living in a place they liked.

She wanted him to come back to a home he could love.

"Not," he rasped, trying to blink away the sudden buildup of moisture in his eyes. "Not–– Not cheating?"

Chrissy's brow furrowed, her grin growing confused as she shook her head. "No?" she said, giving a little giggle. Then, she looked at him for a long moment, her smile gradually falling as understanding lifted the shades from her eyes. As the furrow in her brow creased from misunderstanding to complete heartbreak. "No," she repeated, more sure, more broken, and Eddie felt, all at once, like the world's biggest asshole.

She unwrapped her arms from around him, stepping back.

"Chrissy––"

"I'll, um," she interrupted, backing out of the room. "You can explore, I'll just... I have some stuff to finish up, okay?"

"Wait, Chrissy––"

But she was slipping out the bedroom and down the stairs, making Eddie feel fucking awful for assuming the worst. Because he knew her – of course he knew her. And of course Chrissy would never do something like that. She–– God, she was so fucking good, way too good for him, and he couldn't reconcile that so he made her the villain?

Old insecurities were fucking impossible to shed.

Their three guests were still in the guest bedroom – the studio – and Wayne gave him a smile as he finished up his wall of soundproofing.

"Crazy, huh?" he laughed, joining Eddie in the hallway when Eddie couldn't bring himself to enter the room. "She was a gosh darn dictator, trying to get all this finished before you made it back. I think even Miss Wheeler in there was impressed." Wayne chuckled.

He just looked at his uncle, lost, and said, "Wayne, I think I fucked up."

(to be continued)

[atsadi-shenanigans]

Feeding Alligators 43 - The Proposition

Astarion makes a proposition.

Warning: that shitty feeling when you're demisexual (with purity culture trauma) and someone you thought of as a friend propositions you with sex and you realize, in a survival situation, your choices are sex, or losing this friend and possible support. There's a happy ending eventually, but both of these people have serious issues.

On AO3.

“That went well,” Astarion says. He sits nearby on the unshattered stairs leading to the front door, hair dripping from the quick wash he’d given himself.

The air stinks of smoke and char and some nauseating, roast meat reek you refuse to think about. Everybody calmed down (Karlach) and most got their wounds treated. Shadowheart had conjured up a rain to put out a fire (with a fucking arrow in her hand), leaving the tollhouse a fire-gutted wreck. Fucker ain’t structurally sound in the slightest; you’ll ask Gale to thunderwave it before y’all leave to make sure no unsuspecting travelers try to take shelter and get crushed when the roof finally caves in.

Literally everybody got hurt except you. Lae’zel tore ligaments in her knee. Gale’s hands and half his face are mildly burned. Shadowheart actually got hit in the face with shrapnel in addition to the aforementioned arrow-through-the-hand. And Wyll is gashed down his side to his ribs.

Karlach is still burning too hot to be near anybody—she sits over in the road with her teddy bear.

And Astarion, who doesn’t need to breathe, inhaled smoke right after Harvey Dent gashed his head. You gave him a healing potion to help his lungs—he don’t need air to live, but he does need it to talk—because Shadowheart is triaging the magic she got left.

“They’re dead and we’re not, darling, and that is what matters,” Astarion says. He wipes his blades down again, having already inspected his bow (and found no damage).

He’s right. Y’all did what y’all had to. Karlach don’t got hunters on her tail no more, and none of the injuries are more than y’all’s resources can handle.

Except you are completely fine and none of the others are.

Astarion finishes up and slips his daggers back into the sheathes on his belt.

“We’re probably staying here for the night, huh?” you say.

“I can’t imagine the others will want to go far.” He looks to the rotting carcasses. “But I also don’t anticipate anyone, even the gith, wanting to linger amongst all this.”

You nod. You can help set up camp. That can be your contribution; you should really ask Gale for cooking lessons. Nobody fucks with the camp cook.

“Well, my dear,” Astarion says. “Shall we see what items might be left in that ruin? I’m rather sure I saw a basement.”

Bringing back presents also boosts morale.

“We probably shouldn’t go alone,” you say, and completely miss his smile turn sour. “Hey Karlach! You wanna see if they got shit in the basement?”

In the road, Karlach perks up. Woman has such golden retriever vibes.

***

Karlach ends up taking an ax to the charred hatch cover that does, indeed, lead to a basement. And then to the big doors Astarion can’t jimmy open—you let him search the ripe body y’all find down there. Must’ve been the toll collector. You got a sneaking feeling it wasn’t them dead gnolls outside that got him. Might be the way his gut is cleaved damn near in two, like some Harvey Dent motherfucker and his overcompensation sword nailed the guy.

Most of the boxes in that first room are empty, save some salvageable rags, which you stuff into your bag like there’s gonna be a shortage (you got maybe six or seven days until shark week, you suspect). Find a couple of broken weapons, a pair of frayed sandals, and not much else. But as you start into the second room, stepping over splintered wood, Astarion grabs your elbow.

“Careful darling,” he says. “There are traps about. Stay next to me, hmm?”

Circular grates dot the floor. A lot of them.

“Can you disarm these?” you say.

“Oh, I got it,” Karlach says, flexing her biceps unnecessarily (but not unappreciated). She skirts the first one, hefts up a heavy looking jar that comes up to your ribcage, and sets it over the grate. “There. Fucker can’t spew if it’s blocked, yeah?”

“Indeed,” Astarion says. “Why don’t you be a dear and go handle the others?”

“Aww, what’s a matter, Fangs?” she says, and if he were a cat, his ears would be plastered to his skull. “Can’t do a bit of heavy lifting?”

“I’d rather not dirty my hands, if it’s all the same to you,” he says, despite the fact that 1. he's wearing gloves and 2. he's still got dried blood crusted in the creases down the front of his armor.

Karlach looks at him for a second, and the both of them make weird facial expressions. Then she grins. And there’s something odd in that grin. And in the way she glances over to you.

“Gotcha,” she says. And saunters off to find more huge-ass pottery.

You start rummaging through the first box you see. Old clothes. Not moldy or covered in mildew or crusted bodily fluids, so into the pack they go. Move on to the next.

It’s quiet as you work. Karlach shuffles over to the corner, secures that vent, and starts rummaging herself.

Two boxes later and Astarion sighs. You look up, find him about where you left him, but leaning on a shelf with an arched brow.

He…hasn’t been looting?

“You alright?” you say. He don’t look injured. His arms are folded and you catch the barest flicker as he apparently resists the urge to roll his eyes.

Then he pastes on the smarm again. “I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you. That was quite the plan, back there. Very effective.”

“Uh huh.”

He’s angling for something. And he seems to know that you know, and he leans into it. “Are all your plans going to be so vicious?”

“I’m not…it’s not on purpose. I’m not trying to cause…mayhem.”

“And yet you’re rather good at it.”

It’s still not a comfortable thought, that part of you. It’s keeping your ass alive, but if (when) you get home, you ain’t sure you’ll be able to cram it back into the box you took it out of.

“I don’t know how to fight and I can’t use magic,” you say. “If you don’t hit hard and hit first, you give them a chance to hit back and you get your ass handed to you. We cannot afford that.”

But no disgust wrinkles his face. No frown draws his brows together the way most people in this situation would.

“You know, my dear, some people might call that cowardice,” he says.

This time you get to roll your eyes. “Bet you those people die young.”

He barks out a laugh. Doesn’t seem to mean to, but his eyes are wide and sparkling in the dim torchlight. Karlach pauses her rummaging, and then begins again in earnest.

“I like you,” Astarion says. “It’s refreshing to talk to someone with a modicum of sense, for a change.”

Insulting the entire rest of the group. There’s a tactic that should work to do…whatever he’s trying to do here.

“Neat,” you drawl, using that extra second to try to get a fucking read on him.

“Honestly,” he says, and his voice drops. “I’m beginning to like the whole package. And you clearly like me, too, so…?”

You stare. After a moment, you realize he’s waiting for a response and you’re just standing there. You should probably put on a facial expression. You’re doing the blank face thing again and that tends to piss people off (you look like an idiot, you stupid girl, ohh I’m a stoic Indian hey-ya-huh-huh). You should really stop. You should stop right now.

You can’t stop.

“…so?” you finally manage.

“Come now,” Astarion says, expression dripping smarm. “Don’t be coy. Your body’s already given you away.”

What in the fuck is he talking about? What is this? The man flirts literally more than he breathes. He’s fucking with you, somehow, trying to get a reaction. You’re just not sure which one.

But his eyes widen in what really looks like a genuine smile. No malicious smirk, no smug, just…a man smiling at you.

“I could feel it, you know. As I was getting…” He steps towards you and you ain’t sure when he got that close. His gloved fingertips brush down your neck where he bit you, so featherlight, you ain’t even sure he actually touches you. “Getting lost in your neck. Your little shakes of excitement. You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”

He is entirely too close. You can smell iron on his breath. That strange, almost electric charge that hugs his skin crackles against yours.

“Um,” you say.

He was this close when he bit you. His soft lips on your neck. His fucking tongue. And the noises he made slurping on your wrist. You ain’t never heard those kinds of noises outta someone before.

It’s his spit. It’s that memory effected by his goddamn vampire spit. Of course you had a physical reaction. That was normal.

But you barely know the man and having a chemically induced reaction like that don’t mean you want what you think he’s alluding to.

“I…I was trying to help, is all,” you say.

Thank fuck he steps back. Only to throw out his arms to show himself off. “And look how well it’s worked. I’ve never felt better, all thanks to you. So let me repay you for your noble sacrifice.”

Is it just you, or does his voice take on Wyll’s cadence over that last bit? (Yes, much better. Analyze that and not the situation unfolding here. So much better.)

But then he leans in again, lids all heavy.

“We could take an evening to ourselves,” he says, voice low and…and melty. “Get away from camp—get some privacy. I know somewhere quiet. Somewhere…intimate. Somewhere we can indulge in each other.”

He waits. You stare. Cause it sounds like he’s suggesting…?

He sighs. “And I do mean sex, to be clear.”

…no. No. He’s not. He can’t be. It ain’t the first time somebody joked like that with you (against you, using you as a prop to make their buddies laugh). But he don’t got no audience to play to. And he ain’t never took the joking this far. The others wouldn’t find that funny, would they? You want to look over to Karlach—suspiciously loud in her searching—but don’t think you can break his eye contact.

“You really don’t owe me for that,” you say. “I’d do it for anybody.”

He lets out that soft, high giggle. “But you didn’t do it for just anyone, darling. You did it for me. And that’s hardly the only reason. It’s more of an excuse, if anything. Assuming…you want that too, of course?”

Your chance to get the fuck out of this. But then he tilts his head down and what you suspect might be actual lust (might have been this whole time, oh god, you didn’t see, you never see until it’s too late, until it’s printed on a big, plastic sign some high school kid twirls over his head outside a roadside sandwich shop).

“But we both know you do,” he purrs.

Oh god. Oh sweet jesus.

You been friendly. You shoulda known better. People—men especially—always take it wrong. Why do they always take it wrong. Why is he targeting you for—

Oh.

Yes. That makes sense, don’t it.

A pile of lovers. That’s what he’d told Shadowheart he had. Man likes sex. Nothing wrong with that, but now he’s stuck out here with all y’all and who is the easiest target? Who has no backup? It’s the same reason he picked you to bite in the first place. You look as you do, so he probably pegged you from day one as the most desperate. The easiest prey. He wants a quick, no-strings lay, and who better than the fat girl with no connections to anybody?

You can say no. Logically, you know this. You don’t think he’s the type to hurt you for refusing (none of them ever seem like they would in all those crime stories, do they?). And Karlach stands right there. You’ve refused people before (it’s all you ever done).

But that was back home. You had a stable job and a couple of hundred bucks in a savings account and your own, one-bedroom apartment. You could stand on your own, two feet back then. Back there. If anybody tried to give you shit, you could call dad’s side or Sasha (who carried a baseball bat in the trunk of her car).

Here?

You’ll die without Gale’s blood potion—and it needs all of them to make. You can’t even ask for help without the dirt potion. You got a brainworm, and your best chance of not turning into a space monster is a band of people you keep leading into danger while you sit your fat ass in the background and take not a single fucking scratch.

What happens when you make a bad call? What happens when they get sick of covering for you? Coddling you? You are wholly dependent on their good will for food and a…and a fucking allowance.

You been trying not to think of that for a week. Of just how defenseless you are. How you worked so hard, and yet you are right back where you started, poor and helpless and vulnerable and staring down the barrel of fucking someone you don’t know.

Except you ain’t some twenty-year-old kid this time. Now you know what’s happening to you. Your body is on the market, and there’s no Sasha to swoop in with her pickup truck and whisk you away into the night.

“You’re…you’re not joking?” you rasp, throat drier than a salt flat.

Astarion blinks. “Darling, I would never about this.”

He wants to fuck you. Whatever reasoning (easiest prey, the lamed deer) he actually wants to fuck you.

You can’t feel your hands.

You’re not…possessive of your “virginity.” It ain’t some commodity (Mother). You know, intellectually, it’s an activity just like any other: riding in a hot air balloon, scuba diving, eating one of them lollipops with a bug inside (crickets actually don’t taste too bad, once you get over the leg barbs dragging on your tongue). You ain’t opposed to trying sex sometime.

It’s just…you barely know this man. You barely know any of them.

God, you’re being fucking precious. It’s just sex. People have sex all the time. They been having sex they weren’t enthusiastic about for thousands and thousands of years and they all survived just fine. This ain’t no different. And you can use this, right? Forge a…a…

(Relationship, and your stomach clenches.)

An alliance with him. That’s just good interpersonal insurance, right? He’s damn good with those knives. He’s even pretty—not that that part really matters to you; it’s the same category as “his shirt is white” and “his hair is white” and “his face is symmetrical and he’s got fangs.” Just an observation.

He watches you. Waiting. He expects an answer. He expects a yes. Possibly a gushing “oh me oh my, lowering yourself to offer me??”

It probably won’t be bad? Somebody with a pile of lovers in the city has to know what he’s doing? Orgasms feel great and other people really like sex. It’s just an activity. You were probably gonna do it at some point, anyway. This is just sooner than you anticipated. It probably won’t even last all that long, right?

It’s the smart move.

“I, um, yeah,” you say and now you can’t feel your face.

“Wonderful,” Astarion says, lighting up. “Once we have a chance, I promise you a night of passion you’ll never forget.”

You certainly won’t be forgetting your first time, you’re sure.

You can’t throw up on then man’s shoes. That would be the height of rudeness. God, you’re such a mess. Your body is wigging out for no reason. It’s not that big of a deal; there’s no reason you should be this light-headed.

“Oi! You two!” Karlach pops her head out of an aisle. “Think I found a secret door!”

Oh thank fuck. You want to hug Karlach. Swoon into her arms. Except she’s still on fire and you just told Astarion you’d have sex with him.

Astarion lifts his eyebrows and makes an intrigued noise. He starts past you, but pauses and leans in to whisper, “See you later, lover.”

Your heart lurches. It’s not a good feeling. The pit in your stomach only grows when Karlach—behind Astarion’s back—catches your eye and gives you a grin and two thumbs up.

She knows. Oh sweet christ.

You smile back and hope it doesn’t look as weak as it feels.

***

Notes:

Next chapter will contain trigger warnings. Saturday's update: Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight

[redux-iterum]

Dullard Participates in the Book Club and Actually Intends to Continue? Impossible.

So, first book of Wings of Fire read.

Honestly?

Didn’t hate it. Rather liked it, actually.

I’m just gunna go over what stuck out to me the most, because there is a good deal to talk about with this book and I don’t want to go on a ramble about timelines and worldbuilding and all that. I’ll leave that to Lynx, the fucking nerd that she is.

The dialog is my favorite part, which should surprise nobody who knows about my love of banter. It feels very different from other HC book series like Warriors or Survivors – it’s comedic and witty, more casually spoken than attempting to sound cool. There’s very little in the way of contrived conversation, if you get what I mean; characters interact authentically instead of to move the story forward or backward. Dialog spoken by villains and general antagonists can be pretty cliché, but those characters are pretty cliché in general, so it still feels about right for them.

The worst part, for me, are those aforementioned villains and antagonists. I get that this is a kid’s series, so you have to make who the bad guy is more obvious for the sake of ease of understanding. I just found them cartoony compared to the more organic-feeling protagonists. Granted, the protagonists are also a little tropey, but I would argue their tropes work together very well to create a natural, nuanced character, with the side benefit of mixing beautifully with the other protagonists’ personalities. Clay is the Big Guy, but he’s also sweet-natured and meek, having had his true power emotionally beaten out of him, which gave him a lot of self-worth issues and doubts as to his competence that left him unable to really fulfill the Big Guy role. All of the heroes are like this (Tsunami is fucking amazing, by the way), and the characters we’re supposed to like have similar thought put into them.

Perhaps that’s not the right way to put it. The villains do have thought put into them as well. It’s just that the thoughts all centered around finding the clearest ways to make someone evil. There’s no real nuance to them; if they have multiple traits, it’s to further vilify them. Scarlet is the worst of the bunch, which sucks, because she’s the main villain of this book. I can enjoy a solely-evil, card-carrying villain, but she was just cliché as hell and I didn’t like it. She could have been more interesting, is all.

Slightly related, the names are not the best. Again, kid’s series, so the names are bound to be simpler, but man. Scarlet for an orange dragon? There’s not a lot of cohesion in them either – which, to be fair, illustrates the difference between the tribes of dragons (earthy names for MudWings, for example, and it seems like NightWings like to do two-part names like Morrowseer and Starflight). I don’t think the names overall work, though, either in differences or in cohesion. The main heroes’ names could afford to sound better together, is what I’m saying.

Final thought to close this on: god DAMN are these books violent. Like, I know Warriors is violent, but this book has beheadings and melting faces and burning people to death just mentioned as an aside! I wouldn't go so far as to call this book dark, because this aspect of the story is part of the action and excitement, not there to just pound on how bleak and depressing everything is. It just shocked the hell out of me that this shit got past the editors and higher-ups. They had a lot of faith in this series if they allowed this level of violence.

That’s about all my main takeaways from this first book. I do plan to read the second book, since this one was quite promising. I hope I’ll have more to talk about when the end of December comes and the second book is over.

[wuzhere75]

More goofy idiots; high school musical edition. Also yeah I probably just could have gotten away with Kinkajou (also yes both her and Qibil’s names are misspelled AF in the image I’m not fixing it right now) plus the actual protags but I need to practice for Arc 3 which aparently has like several dozen pseudo-protagonists, which I’m probably going to do in a slightly different style because I like the idea of trying sketchy line art with the procreate brush pen.

Okay now time for the actual headcanons

-I originally was going to give Moon a way different design (her horns where going to be long and curved like ibex horns/crescent moons but I couldn’t get that to work in the sketch; she was going to have a split color design, like one side of her body was going to be light and the other dark like a half moon), but then my brain went “albino=white/pink with red eyes, that’s moon-y because the moon looks white from earth sometimes and blood moons are a thing so red”. I do like the sketch I came up with. I still think I could have gone harder with the wrinkly skin and underbite, since I imagine it those are details frequently found on Nightwings from the volcano.

-I think Moon being a twist villain, or at least an untrustworthy character, would be kind of interesting. Like if she had been the final POV character instead and she’d been kind of this ambiguous, somewhat suspicious guide to the Darkstalker stuff.

-The entire modern Icewing royal family is considered somewhat strange looking by that tribes standards; unusually short horns, typically no fur, and oddly dark and saturated colors. I’m not from a place that gets snowy, white winters that often. More “everything dies back and it gets muddy, foggy, and frosty”, thus Winter’s color palette.

-I have a headcanon that firescales/fireless twin sets are technically identical (Sky being NB), it’s just due to the presences of no/too much fire, their features develop differently. Peril has far richer and saturated colors than Sky, but their actual patterns are identical. Due to her fire, Peril’s feathers never properly grew in (she’s like the sphinx cat equivalent of a Skywing), while Sky by comparison is very floofy. However if you peeled Sky (shaved off their feathers), they would have the exact same body shapes and features as their sister. Also the aforementioned color patterns are based of the American Kestrel.

-I have a couple of old Turtle designs kicking around my Procreate; I originally was going to use one of them (which I might post at some point to embarrass myself), to inspire this one. However, I ended up creating something entirely new. My original design had him as a lot more solid, gross yellow-y shade of green, with no tan underbelly or needle. However I discovered that the underbelly and needle would give him some nice resemblance to his sister Tsunami. Also I was using mata-mata turtles as one of my primary design references and damn those bois got schnoze.

-Turtle also would have been an interesting twist villain. Like if we got faked out like “he’s too suspicious to be the bad guy” and then he just is.

-Funny thing about Qibil; I always mis-remembered Qibils earring as having a black diamond earring rather than an “orange sunstone” one. Perhaps I was confusing his drip with Blister’s. He gets both as a treat. Also the reason why he has the classic fan depiction head sail strandy-thingy because of the scar his mom gave him. The sail behind the scar grew back all delicate and long; he’s let it grow out to see how long it can get.

-The little unneeded spite for the series/fandom I have for some reason built up on Qibil for some reason. Maybe because seemingly the rest of the fandom worships the little guy. I’d probably like him if I actually read the books, but I have developed a stupid re-write of him where he is sort of like the annoying little brother of the Jade Winglet and Jade Moutain as a general who thinks he is hotter shit than he is that nobody dares talk down to for fear of bringing mama Thorn or big sister Sunny down on their asses. He’s tried to flirt with everybody in his winglet and they’ve all pushed him away with some degree of gentleness.

-IDK who was the first fan artist to do magenta-yellow-cyan Kinkajou but it sure as hell works. I have a headcanon that younger Rainwing dragonets tend to have brighter, saturated comfort colors (image the “crayola water marker base pack” color palette). However as Rainwings mature, they tend to “mild” out their comfort colors with more varied hues. Thus, she used to have the neon pink-yellow color palette when she was younger. Also she kind of ended up looking kind of like a lychee or rambutan and I love it.

-I didn’t have too many thoughts on Umber. I mostly just focused on making him look different enough from Clay while still making him look like a possible sibling.

-I thought I was going to put more effort into Carnelians design, but I ended up just yeeting something together based off the real world carnelian stone.

-I know Anenome is described as being pink and blue/white in the books, but where I live we have neat little pink tipped green anemones so that’s her color palette. Also I imagine she wears a lot more jewelry when she’s at home but she just took a few things with her to school.

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

Talkin' about Russia 'cause Nobody Wants To

So...why the railroad?

Forced labor was extremely common in Soviet prisons. Their railroad system at the time of the 80s was one of the most utilized in the world. That Hopper's prison would be working on a railroad is not unrealistic in the slightest. But why is this prison (a secret prison, mind you) working on a railroad? Why is there a railroad located right by a secret prison? A secret prison devoted to secret research related to a secret dimension?

Well.

Where'd all this shit come from? How are they transporting all of the demogorgons here? How did they acquire them to begin with? Where did they acquire them?

And where the fuck is this?

This is from the first scene of season 3, when Alexei and co are trying to open the gate in Russia. We see his superiors go outside and then a shot of the Russian flag, but there's no location cue popping up on screen to let us know where specifically this is in Russia. Alexei tells us later that they moved the operation to Hawkins because the gate had already been opened and the barrier was therefore weaker.

So what happened to the lab in Russia? What else is going on at this huge base? Why is the research in Russia with the demogorgons and the particles now taking place at a secret prison in Kamchatka?

Kamchatka is a peninsula, FYI. Not a town.

So it's completely possible that the wumbo base featured in the season 3 premier is, in fact, also in Kamchatka. Or, if not, is at least reachable by rail.

I feel like it's safe to assume that something is still happening at that base. Because you cannot possibly convince me that they relocated from aforementioned base here:

Not a chance. As a relocation, this makes no sense at all. As a second operation, however, absolutely. We know that one of the reasons the demogorgons are at the prison is to keep them fed and (in Hopper's words) "entertained." We also see them being studied.

That means the location at the prison is convenient to provide fodder/dinner while the scientists study the creatures. But the Russians never got the gate in Hawkins all the way open, so they can't have taken the demogorgons from there. We also don't know how the Russians found out about the UD in the first place, motivating them to seek to open a gate.

This is the machine in Suzie, Do You Copy? It malfunctioned and damaged all the equipment in the room, including itself. The likelihood of the Russians dismantling the machine, transporting the parts to Indiana, and rebuilding the machine with those same damaged parts seems slim. So perhaps while Alexei's team was rebuilding a new machine in Hawkins, another team was repairing this one here. Because we still have a crack in the world.

Not a gate, but a crack is there. Season 3 takes place a year after this. Season 4 takes place eight months after that. After the machine at Starcourt was destroyed, you cannot convince me they gave up. If they had been working on BOTH machines in the year before the "mall fire," and then spent another eight months after that on this one, it is completely possible they managed to open it enough to get a demogorgon or particles through.

Here's a theory I'm just chucking out there. What if the Russian gate doesn't lead to the Upside Down?

What if it leads to Dimension X? Why give them the same color scheme? And show us explicitly that there are demodogs in Dimension X?

Another question: who is them?

It's implied that the answer is the demogorgons. But this is never outright stated. The prison officer dies before he's able to answer the question (typical) and then they look at the cameras and go "oh them of course!" But what if it wasn't the demogorgons? Or what if it was but killing them didn't kill the particles? Could there be Flayed in Russia? Are the particles even from the same place as the demogorgons?

If the demogorgons are from the Russian gate and the particles are from the Hawkins gate, the particles entering the demogorgons would connect them to the UD hive mind where before they would not have been, therefore allowing Murray's flamethrower extravaganza to affect Vecna, the demobats, and the vines in the UD Creel House. Maybe the particles were essential in order to allow this success while still allowing the demogorgons to be from another dimension and therefore a separate hive mind.

And MAYBE I'm full of shit. But I find the coloring of Dimension X and the demotanks extremely suspicious.

[raysletters]

Fanfic Friday!

Rules: share a fic you wrote (or fan art or gif) that you are proud of! Moodboard optional!

Oh would you look at that? nobody actually tagged me, but im really proud of this fic and will forever be my precious baby and my first non canon compliant or canon adjacent fic.

peace by raysletters

"give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart. there's so much of you"

4 times Henry gives himself away, and the 1 time Alex shows him how much there is of him.

lightly inspired in it's nice to have a friend and peace by taylor swift

(alternatively called: the superhero au)

this was written thanks to a prompt from @inexplicablymine for @thebrownstone anniversary exchange and ive never had so much fun writing something ever. it was in the middle of a writers block and i spent SO long thinking about it (mainly bc i cant stand the movie or a certain actress on it) before i remembered my aforementioned hyperfixations on both the bright sessions and the flash (at some point i hope somebody makes a tbs x rwrb fic before i end up caving in and do it myself, even though it would be very similar to this fic, now that i think about it).

(break where i give little information about this bc the research was long and incredibly fun)

after all of that, it was so long that i spent on a google rabbit hole of researching superpowers and thinking how would it fit each person (i KNEW before anything else that i was going to give bea music powers, and after that the rest followed) so it is funny how all of their powers correlate between family and stuff and i need everyone to know about this bc i really spent so long thinking of it.

you have the mountchristen line, that has the "mind powers", starting with mary (psyren) that has the powers to manipulate minds, but it is more like suggestions, so that's why alex and bea could shrug it off and how henry would be able to after fighting his usual response of like going along whatever mary said; then you have catherine (vis) that has telekinesis, aka manipulation of objects through her mind (dont ask me about the name this one was very much just thrown out there when i looked it up suggestions on google). thats where arthur (foxglove) comes in with his ecokinesis (this is more like controlling plants but not really with his mind but like hes in TUNE with the planet and nature ala poison ivy kinda thing(?) (also yes ofc i found out there is a PLANT called FOX-GLOVE and gave it as a name for arthur. that is something he 100% would do and i dont receive criticism for it) and starts the fox-mountchristen line with philip (no i didnt think of his superhero name bc even though he is a bit redeemed here, he doesnt deserve it) and his MANIPULATION OF THE LIGHT WITH HIS MIND. and yes its cool and all, but i just want to emphasize that i wanted them to be able to MANIPULATE PARTS OF NATURE WITH THEIR MINDS BC ITS A MIX OF BOTH CATH AND ARTHUR (sjfnakdjfkahdmfhansbfmahdm im sorry i thought of it while still blocked and thought it was absolutely genius 💀💀). then there comes beautiful gorgeous bea who doesnt have a pseudonym bc she's actually part of the agency trying to control that superheroes dont do crazy stuff (yes bc of mary) and shes a badass agent and also has a band on the side bc she CAN MANIPULATE SOUND AHFNSJHSSJDJABHSNSHAJS. and lastly theres henry with his empathy and this is something not implied but more like a nod to tbs bc henry's actual powers are the manipulation of emotions which MEANS HENRY IS BASICALLY INCREDIBLY FUCKING POWERFUL but since he really doesnt like all that superhero shit, he doesnt care about it. at some point in time, he might discover hes even able to push emotions into other people, but again, since that was a nod to tbs, thats just something for them to discover in the future and thats it.

on the other hand, you have the claremont-díaz line that is messy as fuck, because in this universe, ellen enlisted in the army like her father and she ended up becoming a super soldier, along the lines of captain america, and was called "lometa longshot" bc yes ofc i had to. so you see how she doesnt have actual powers but instead she just has everything ENHANCED????; then you have oscar, who has the ability to fly, (which, fun fact, was actually the last power i thought of bc the idea of it is that oscar had some power of MOVEMENT), and bc you have impossible movement and enhancement, you get beautiful june with her powers of teletransportation that allow her to be a badass reporter and always get exclusives bc of how fast she can get somewhere; and you get alex with his undiagnosed adhd and the fire under his ass for no good reason and then there was absolutely no other choice but to give him super speed (and has nothing to do with the fact that he, like barry allen, is a very intelligent but very chaotic bisexual with undiagnosed adhd).

nora is there vibing, being a tecnopath and having actual numbers on her brain while also planning to conquer the world and also become kind of an iron-woman(? in that she makes gadgets for superheroes and for herself. pez is also vibing and being so cool they even have two powers, being able to shapeshift AND mimic the powers of ppl near them. hes the actual threat in that if they wanted, they could absolutely conquer the world.

ANOTHER FUN FACT: this is fairly obvious but in the us the school is called sky high and in uk the school is called wonder school bc i couldnt think of anything else and my reference for names of schools in the uk is that wizardry school from that horrible book so like,,,,, yeah.

LAST FUN FACT I SWEAR: theres a list of classes and their kind of equivalents that showed up after i decided alex would absolutely never stand this hero/sidekick bullshit shsksjsksjsksjsksjsksjs it was fun even though im yet to grasp the concept of american education(????? (listen im dumb so like if you were expecting too much from me, thats on you)

Math → Strategy

Language Arts → Heroism (morality and stuff)

Science → Mad Science

Social Studies → World History

Foreign Language → Technology (Hacking and entering 💀)

Physical Education → Combat

Electives → Save the citizen, Enhancement (like practice your own powers and stuff), Origins (of superheroes and superpowers), Teamwork (something both Alex and Henry definitely didn't take 💀), Alter-ego Management

(im not kidding when i say i pasted it verbatim to what i had in my docs, bc theres nothing more chaotic than my outlines and ramblings on any of my gdocs)

im not tagging anyone bc i just noticed it is decidedly not friday anymore but i got too excited talking about this fic akdbdksjsksjAbssjakajsncjbsksdhdjsj anyway, go and read it if you havent shkssjkssjsksjsksjs

[grimm-the-tiger]

My current DnD party is completely fucking nuts, and here’s why. For context, I should introduce our characters: 

Skadi Larkin - questionably human artificer (me), has no memories or sense of self-preservation. Somehow still alive. 

Aeran Farwatcher - druid of an unknown species (pretty sure she’s an elf), only halfway sane person in the party, which is not saying much 

Olaf - changeling jester and the absolute worst 

Ouros - Olaf’s backup, an asshole barbarian; currently a bow 

Tracer Main - (probably) human ranger 

John Smith - human artificer, acts sane but really isn’t 

John Cubed - John Smith RPing as Slimecicle 

Bill Durr - John Smith RPing as an extended pun 

Kijo - paladin??, based on Sun Wukong for some idea of how fucked up this character is. Kind of a munchkin 

Chair - chair 

Now, as for our actual shenanigans, we’re currently in the Land of Fae in order to do...something. I’m not sure what anymore; at this point, I think our only task is to give the fairies a bad time. This is just context for all the shit described below: 

I snuck us into a carnival by shouting “FIRE!!” and scaring off the crowd. 

Olaf lost a lung entering a portal to the Land of Fae. 

As soon as we entered the Land of Fae, Tracer Main walked off a crumbling bridge and fell face-first into the mud. We had to pull her out with a blanket and a stick. 

John Smith crossed the aforementioned bridge by jumping across a 20-foot gap. Keep in mind that he’s a normal human artificer. 

And then I, Aeran, and Tracer Main fucked up crossing the bridge and fell back into the mud - again. 

We tortured a friendly dragon for no real reason except almost everybody is a psychopath. 

My favorite spell somehow ended up being Acid Splash. 

Nobody figured out that Tracer Main is a girl until a good four or five sessions in. In fairness, she’s played by a boy and he never gave us any indication that she wasn’t a boy either. 

Olaf grew oddly fixated on stealing a car from the queen of the fairies. 

We spent an hour fighting a tree so we could build a boat and cross a river that turned out to be less than three feet deep. 

I got knocked unconscious and lost all my memory because John Smith chucked a hammer at the aforementioned tree, missed, and clobbered me in the head. 

Speaking of tree antics, Olaf went crazy from smoke inhalation and his absence of a lung, passed out, and I and the other artificer had to replace his missing lung with a water skin and a cursed pipe that made him spontaneously start crying at random points in time. 

Other plans for crossing a (different) river included: John Smith belly-flopping across the river while casting a freeze spell to create a path, using a wand with fireball to cannonball across, and prayer. 

I found a secret passage by making faces in the mirror. 

Speaking of the secret passage, it made us shrink Alice in Wonderland-style and ended under a wardrobe, where we got stuck while returning to our original size. 

John Smith has a pet gelatinous cube and has so far decided to dispose of at least two bodies by feeding them to it. 

Make that three. 

While fighting sentient coals, Tracer Main ruined two separate buckets. Out of three. Then asked that I douse her hands with acid so she could chuck one of the coals into the water. This is how we figured out that the acid produced by Acid Splash is flammable. 

No joke, this is written in my notes as “The acid is flammable. Fuck you, Tracer Main.” 

Chair killed Olaf by throwing him off a bullywug settlement, causing him to crash into a rock. Chair regrets nothing. 

Olaf’s player outright begged us to do it because his stats were so terrible. 

We then immediately started trying to loot his corpse. Aeran told us off, so we decided to bury his body by blowing it up like some sort of fucked-up rocket. This conveniently also blew up the bullywug settlement, who were friendly to us until that point, and the king we were supposed to deliver a package to. 

Aeran was very disappointed that this also included Olaf’s butterfly wings. 

To add insult to injury, his epitaph is now “throw me in!”, courtesy of John Smith and Chair. 

Also, yes, Chair is a literal chair. And a barbarian. I have no clue how that’s supposed to work. 

He also broke a leg at some point, and we jerry-rigged a wheel to replace it and started calling him Wheelchair because my party is terrible. 

Kijo got eaten by a witch Mariner’s Revenge Song-style. 

[mevekagvain]

Noblesse: Rai's Adventure

Chapter 1 - Mvp lord <3

- Tears of god and Bloodstone are both objectively cool names.

- The mountain of fire? Where the fuck is that? Which volcano are you talking about? The largest volcano that could qualify for this is Ojos del Salado I guess? Since the other two are in the middle of the ocean or on Hawaii respectively.

- Ashoka scolding Gechutel ajsjksks. "Tell me wtf you want!!!" And then they start gossiping about him being shit at directions... but tbf I'd probably forget my way to places if I hadn't been there for 50 years either. I think it's worse when he does it in present day lol.

Chapter 2 - Hi Yuni, hi Keit.

- Snake!

- Ah yes... minotaurs. I like to think that it's because the normal and supernatural realm's boundaries are thin in this area due to some sort of astrology shit that monsters are appearing. The boundaries will become proper again after a while.

Chapter 3 - Well they're not wrong. Raizel is a spoilt rich kid. He's just also got immeasurable responsibility upon him.

- Oh is Yuni barefoot?

Chapter 4 - Karr (the village leader or noble or whatever) is dumb as bricks. Anyone with a brain can tell he's evil. Meanwhile his daughter, Lensia, looks like Ignes.

- Me w/ women.

- Yuni lives with Keit? I guess she's either an orphan or they're related (siblings, cousins, niece and uncle, etc) or both.

- Why is Lensia's hair purple all of a sudden? And only in Keit and Yuni's home... is the lighting there really that different?

Chapter 5 - And now it's purple permanently.

Chapter 6 - Didn't mention this the first time but uh. Big Ben style clock towers over 1000 years ago? Okay then. Sundial or astronomical style ones would make sense since clocks have existed for a hella long time but not modern shit lol.

Chapter 7 - I can see why it's a top comment XD

Chapter 8 - Raizel has one heck of an ego to say stuff like 'How long do you think you can look down on me?' and 'Kneel' so easily. Royalty energy.

Chapter 9 - Still think it's likely that the mystery person who gave Kurmark a bloodstone was Lagus testing out his artificial bloodstones. If it was a real bloodstone then... idk. Some random cultist

- Aaaaand he's a monster. Symbolism of looking like Satan because he actually isn't the god the villager thought he was.

Episode 10 - Interesting that the essence of humans takes the form of red dust just like pureblood nobles do when they die. And we know it's human energy since it only appears once Kurmark dies (he absorbed all aforementioned energy) and heals them. Makes sense even by my hcs where pureblood nobles' bodies are simply physical manifestations their souls are always projecting compared to other nobles who have permanent physical bodies. And ofc the energy from humans and nobles isn't different.

- Okay but Ashoka cares about Raizel so much. He specifically says he'll get the details from him later because that's another excuse he can use to get Raizel to leave his house. Man just wants the best for him iwi.

- Just because you can't tell apart Raizel's microexpressions doesn't mean nobody else can either, grandpa. You're so rude.

[heartxdecay]

WHY do bad things always have to happen to me so close together like I did not NEED the combo of an acquaintance I was attempting to befriend blowing up at me and threatening to kill themselves over them deciding I said something I didn't (fuck being autistic why does everyone assume I'm inferring things when I'm actually NOT) and then my stalker who I haven't seen in about a year suddenly decides to show up at my place of work and ask MY BOYFRIEND if I was there (he lied and said I wasn't but I still caught a glimpse of him so he might have seen me) which lead to me finding out he never actually moved like he said he was going to which means realistically he could go right back to stalking and harassing me any time he wants. In the span of like 3 days. And of course right now we're like 3 weeks away from the big traumaversary time from when I left the cult + this is the midst of when I was reporting aforementioned stalker last year so I'm already constantly on high alert anyway. So now I'm constantly struggling just to stay awake let alone work and I already had to drop out of school and lie to my parents about it because the condition of me living here is remaining in school which means since I'm not they're going to kick me out if they know. So I can't NOT go to school AND not work especially because I'm trying to save as much money as possible in order to move out of this stupid hellhole of a "family" home where I'm constantly used as a third parent for my younger siblings. But I'm so tired all the time from stress keeping me awake at all hours and being completely unable to leave fight or flight mode when awake that I can barely find the energy to move, and my work is extremely tiring. I work retail as a supervisor and I have to deal with my coworkers not doing as much of the workload despite all being full time while I'm part time, none of the people I'm in charge of taking me seriously because I'm either younger than them or the same age as them, regular stress that comes with working retail and dealing with customers, and a management change that is leading to us getting a notoriously rude + perfectionist manager who I have personally seen throw an actual tantrum over having to do his JOB. Which means I can't afford to be tired and grumpy because I have to remain professional and productive. But every time something slightly off happens I want to burst into tears. Nobody there respects me and it's hard enough to handle when I'm NOT dealing with all of this. And of course because God hates me all of this happened when I decided to try to cut back on constantly vaping so after incident #2 I immediately gave up on that and I honestly think I've been going through cartridges FASTER. It's genuinely such a struggle every day to not relapse on self harm or turn to alcoholism and I'm not sure how much longer I can last. Especially because my literal only IRL support system is my boyfriend, because my parents are worth jack shit, my siblings are children, and my only "friend" in person is an objectively terrible human that I only still have around because they were my FP for a really long time and I have a hard time letting go of that relationship (every time I try I end up running back) and I just KNOW that if I even TRY to breach any of this with them they're either going to hit me with an "oof/yikes" and nothing else or spread my PERSONAL shit to everyone they know INCLUDING my extremely abusive ex that they refuse to totally cut contact with because it's "mean". which means I actually have nobody to turn to except the internet friends in my phone who for one aren't online all the time and have lives but two since they're my ONLY SUPPORT SYSTEM I cannot keep dumping everything on them constantly or I'll overwhelm them. Not to mention they have also had to deal with the acquaintance I mentioned at the start because they're actually THEIR friend, not mine, so if anything it's an even bigger deal to them. This leaves me with only my boyfriend who I already feel shitty enough about given the raging BPD.

[cookie-waffle]

Twitter sucks, yea, but do any of you remember that absolute fucking Arkham Asylum that was old school Deviantart?

Actual, real UNIRONIC things I saw on Deviantart:

(trigger warnings for…. everything I guess. This shit was insane)

- A grown man constantly roleplaying in the forums as a little girl, and EVERYONE in the forums fucking hated him

- People openly defending pedophilia. No, not just in fanart. I mean defending real life actual pedos. One person I saw even openly stating they support their pedo uncle.

-A comment reply that started with “You think incest is wrong? Well, as someone who is currently in an incestious relationship-“ (I had an aneurism and blacked out before reading the rest)

- An 8 year old little kid openly talking about how much they love vore (yes, they gave out their actual age. And yes, I reported their profile)

- Someone I used to follow commenting on my profile, asking me to write creepypasta rape fan fiction for them.

- People just…. straight up uploading explicit cp artwork. Not even putting the mature filter on it. You think Tumblr and Twitter are bad? This shit was being openly showed to minors, by adults, on a daily basis and nobody cared at all.

- Accounts dedicated to some of the worst opinions I have ever read in my life

- A diaper fetish guy, who was married to Twilight Sparkle, throwing a fit on an NSFW artist’s profile, because they drew Twilight Sparkle in an indecent manner.

-The aforementioned diaper fetish guy posting about how he finds the puppies from Paw Patrol attractive

-The same guy, again, uploading an image of bdsm gear that he made for his Twilight Sparkle plush, whoms’t he is married to.

- Someone in a comment section saying that muslims need to have a holocaust happen to them in order to end child marriage. It was so offensive that Deviantart Staff actually removed the comment (staff doesn’t usually do jack shit about anything)

- I once had to talk a 12 yr old child down from posting fetish art, so that creepy adults wouldn’t start following him

-Borderline cp artwork AT THE TOP of the FRONT FUCKING PAGE with NO MATURE FILTERS AT ALL because DA staff is way too lazy to actually enforce the site’s rules against underage lewd art.

-Wonder Bread (if you know you know)

- This is redundant, but, I cannot state enough just how many pedophiles were on that site. The place was just CRAWLING with them.

- Was it just me, or were like half the kids on that site always posting about how suicidal they felt? I think it’s when I first started to realize just how depressed my generation is.

Most people remember DA as just the silly Sonic OC and inflation site. But, I remember something much, much worse 💀

And I still use it, because there’s nowhere else I can post art where people will actually see it

[violetsystems]

The only mindfuck for me right now has been that I've been so close to the people and life that I wanted for years and it's the past that's been actively subverting it. Call it a hierarchy of shame. But nobody wants to see you succeed on your own without having a kill switch on your dreams. The past thinks you owe it something. And when you are excommunicated from it all then it weaponizes every bit of self doubt it ever instilled into you. People I called friends were never really there for anybody other than themselves and the political schemes that made them.. And you find yourself trapped between their word on your life and your own narrative. With Chicago, you start to realize that narrative is part of a bigger corrupt ecosystem of money, power, and greed. One that you could wrap around the whole world traveling by yourself and find yourself alienate in your own home. And soon you realize it isn't just your past or your friends you are walking away from. It's all the dirty deals and backstabbing they did to keep you from reaching higher and leaving them behind. They relied on you as infrastructure to get ahead and can't let go. I could talk so much shit about people and I used to think that was the problem. They were afraid of me telling the truth. That's not it. They're afraid of losing control. They're afraid of not being able to shame you into a place where they can neg you and get ahead for it. Sell you short so you stay in your predefined rank in the social order you'll never get an org chart. for. They've been doing it for years. And breaking away from that while living in the middle of its grasp is an abusive and impossible maze to understand with no real map other than targeted memes and connected mobs of cliques and gangs. I'm a weakest link sort of person. That's why I keep to myself. It's easier to figure it out in the long run when you leave all the fake shit behind. I wish I could stop screaming at a wall comprehending how evil and selfish people are. And one day I will. But it isn't ever directed at anything but the utter depravity of knowing people who you gave your genuine friendship to were there to take advantage of it. People who called you by name and listened to your problems. It's a lot different than writing about it on the internet. It is more a confessional in that respect. But in interest of full disclosure. I literally never want to speak to anyone from my past ever again. Not even if they've been filming some secret reality show behind my back. That's why I keep to myself. They're poison. I wish I didn't have to come to that conclusion. But if people are going to hold me hostage in a job market because I won't reconcile with a bunch of people who tried to almost kill me or drug me? And I wish that weren't a true statement. Then we're at that stage in the movies where they tell you "You'll never work in this town again." And I don't really have a choice or map of where to go otherwise. So I just wait until they're run out of the aforementioned town by their own dirty deeds. Or it builds up around me like a wall of trash outside my home until I'm cocooned for life. I want to be that guy who was known for standing up to it all and being right for it so nobody has to repeat this kind of hell if they don't want to.

[tony-quinn]

Eifel Like Shit (idk how to include 65)

Has anyone heard the song "Colors" by Halsey?

I mean probably because it's pretty famous. For anyone who hasn't, humor me while I shift into overly analytical, pretentious douche mode.

IT'S MORPHIN TIME MOTHERFUCKERS!

I was listening to the song recently for the fiftieth time and the chorus struck me in a way it hadn't before. Here it is for those who haven't heard the song, aka dirty plebs.

"Everything is blue His pills, his hands, his jeans And now I'm covered in the colors Pulled apart at the seams And it's blue And it's blue

Everything is grey His hair, his smoke, his dreams And now he's so devoid of color He don't know what it means And he's blue And he's blue."

I've always been a pretty sad guy, ever since I was a kid (not yet a guy.) I'm not sure where it comes from. I've also been an anxious fucker for a long time and I recently found out that the two things correlate so RIP to any sense of peace.

A popular song from my childhood (as well as anyone's who isn't an aforementioned dirty pleb) is "Blue" by Eifel 65.

It annoys me when people say that the group confirmed the song to be nonsensical fuck shit, when songfacts.com quotes them saying otherwise. Here's the quote so nobody can accuse me of pulling it out of the same vault that Half Life 3 is sealed in.

"I started thinking about this character I invented called Zoroti and the lifestyle he led, from the way he would buy his house, pick his girlfriend, his job or the neighborhood he would live in. Then I came up with a color, a color I thought described the way he saw things."

Checkmate bitches. Where's my Nobel Prize?

Listening to "Colors" recently made me think back to this quote and my brain did its typical thing of connecting separate thoughts into a bridge that allows a fully fledged idea to pass over. Nothing is ever simple with me.

Okay if you think the humor in this post is egregious, that's only because I'm writing this in real time and have trouble being completely serious, but I have to do that now so yeah.

I'm blue. Yeah that's a line from the Eifel 65 song, but blue is just who I am. As much as I'm no longer a total believer in anything supernatural or spiritual, maybe this song being a big part of my youth was some form of fate. On the surface it's a silly club anthem, but when you actually look at the lyrics it's kind of deep.

"Colors" gave me this mental image that honestly haunts me, where every woman I've ever tried dating are sitting in a room and talking about me, whether positively or negatively I can't be too sure, but probably the former.

Then the conversation gets serious as one of them (probably the only one I loved) says, "He was pretty sad most of the time.) One by one the other women nod and agree with that sentiment. Sure they thought I was a comedic god, but in some way they all saw the truer version of myself below the surface buried under my goofy jackass attitude; the thoughtful, melancholy loner who never really felt like he could be exposed.

Halsey wrote "Colors" about Matty Healy from The 1975 (they dated.) I don't know too much about his life, but I know he had a drug problem and struggled (or struggles) with depression to some degree. In a way I kind of view myself as a celebrity, in the sense that I'm known for stuff that serves as a smokescreen to the unflattering parts of my life. Gee it's almost like celebrities aren't so different from us. Fucking unfathomable.

This post really had no ultimate purpose. I just wanted to talk about the one thought, but every time I write off the top of my head it shapes itself into something unexpected.

Thanks for reading if you even did. Regardless I feel a bit better.

[luminnara]

Poly Lost Boys x pregnant!reader

The Lost Boys fall head over heels for the (human) reader...who is already pregnant. 

I wrote this on a whim and think it’s cute! Let me know what you think! This gave my brain a good itch so part two will be coming lol

Warnings: pregnancy, vague mentions of past abuse, David smoking all the time because he’s him

PART TWO HERE

Santa Carla, California was a town unlike anywhere you had been before...but with a nickname like murder capital of the world, you hadn’t really expected it to be normal.

The seaside town was full of colorful people--locals, wanderers, tourists, and, just like you, runaways. It wasn’t a place you ever thought you would be rolling through, but it was the only place you could think of where you could show up and nobody would ask questions about your past.

Plus, the bus fare was cheap and it was sort of all you could afford.

It had been a few nights since you arrived. You already loved the boardwalk, even though you couldn’t really drink anything and you couldn’t really go on the rides, but just walking around and seeing the sights and smelling the smells had you feeling like maybe you could call Santa Carla your new home. Was your motel shitty and cheap? Yes. Were you nervous being out in a new place like that? Also yes. But after everything you had just been through, the lights and the crowds were a welcome change, and there was no way you were going back now.

The aforementioned motel was the sort of place that offered cheap weekly and even monthly rates. While that was perfect for you—and way better than being stuck on the streets—it definitely wasn’t the coziest of places. It sure as hell wasn’t the Ritz. The wallpaper was peeling. The carpet was coming up in the corners and looked like it hadn’t been washed in…well, ever. There wasn’t much in the way of amenities, and you counted yourself lucky to have not run into any trouble so far, especially considering your current state of being, but hey, it would have to do.

It was your third night in Santa Carla, and you had slept the day away. You were fucking exhausted after a long bus ride, hunting for lodgings, and then finally letting all of it catch up to you, but now, it was time to get up and get shit done. As much as you wanted to sit down and cry, it wasn’t an option anymore, and if you didn’t figure out a job situation right fucking now, you and the kiddo didn’t stand much of a chance. 

The kiddo. 

As you looked at yourself in the cracked, somewhat dingy mirror on the back of the door, you sighed. That’s how you’d been referring to it: the kiddo. Your ex had plenty of name ideas, at first, before everything had gone down. Now, you couldn’t bring yourself to recall any of those names, and ever since running away with the last of your cash the week before, you’d been avoiding even thinking about them. It was too hard and too painful, and you were in Santa Carla hoping for the chance to start over and maybe make a new life for you and the kiddo, a nicer life than what you would have had before if you had stayed. Names weren’t your top concern, not when money and food and housing were all so much more immediately important. 

You rummaged around in your bag and pulled out a short, airy dress, one of the last things that was still comfy to wear. You were very obviously pregnant now, and there was little hope of hiding your bump with bulky sweaters. Besides, it was summer, and fuck, you wanted to look at least somewhat cute even if your life was falling apart. 

“Okay,” you muttered to yourself after fixing your hair and makeup, “Job search time.”

And that’s how you ended up walking down the boardwalk, peeking at every shop window to see if they had a help wanted sign. Unfortunately, they didn’t--they still had all their teenage employees until the schoolyear started, and store after store was letting you down. 

Until you saw VideoMax. 

The rental store was bright and trendy, and when you walked in and asked the man behind the counter if they were hiring, he looked you over with mild interest. 

“Yes,” he said. “I am, in fact.”

“I’d like to apply,” you said quickly. “I’ve...well, I’ve never worked in a video store, but I’ve got a flexible schedule and...well, I kind of really need a job, so...”

And then he smiled, introduced himself as Max, and told you that he needed an evening position filled because the last girl ‘left town.’ He seemed somewhat irritated as he said it, and you wondered if she had simply walked out of the job without giving notice or something. 

“No, no, nothing like that. She was a nice girl, really. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose.” Max said as he showed you how to run the register the next night.

You gulped.

“Santa Carla is a colorful place,” he explained. “With all sorts of people.”

“Yeah, I’ve, uh...heard the nickname.” you mumbled. 

Max chuckled. “Yes, quite a nasty moniker, isn’t it? I’m told the city government hates it. But please, don’t be afraid. My store is the safest place on the boardwalk.”

You looked at him curiously. “Why’s that?”

“None of those rowdy gangs out there are stupid enough to bother me.” he waved his hand dismissively. “I certainly hope you haven’t had the misfortune of running into any of them.”

“No, not yet,” you said. “I only got here a few days ago and I haven’t had much time to socialize...”

“Are you here alone?” he asked, glancing pointedly down at your belly. 

“Yeah,” you said quietly. “I...ran. I just couldn’t stay there with him anymore. It wasn’t safe for us anymore.”

Max hummed thoughtfully and nodded. “Protective mother.”

“Well, I guess…” you mumbled sheepishly. “I haven’t really started thinking of myself as a mother yet.”

“No?” Max asked.

“I guess it just hasn’t sunk in.” You shrugged.

“I’m sure that you’ll feel better with time. Family is important, after all.” Max said.

You nodded and smiled at your boss. So far, he was turning out to be an easy to talk to, relaxed kind of guy, and as the days passed one by one, you learned more about him. You found out that he didn’t have a family of his own, despite talking about the value of having one so much. He owned the video store and had a house outside of town, and besides Thorn, he seemed to be alone. He was smart and confident and an all around good employer, and above all, he was right about his shop being safe from the rough and tumble gangs out on the boardwalk.

Most of them, anyways.

-0-

Paul was the first of the boys to catch your scent. He was fucking bored, and he was starving, and it was making him whiny, something that David absolutely despised.

“Go find some food, then!” David snapped after Paul complained for the third time. They were lounging around their usual spot next to their bikes, leaning or sitting on the railing as they watched the crowds of humans around them. It was a normal enough night—clear skies, bright lights, and plenty of sights and smells to keep them occupied—but even David had to admit that he could go for some kind of action.

He wasn’t about to let Paul know that he was right, though.

“I don’t feel like goin’ out alone, man!” Paul said.

“Why?” Marko sneered. “Scared?”

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth before I shut it for you,” Paul growled, lunging towards him.

Marko ducked out of the way easily as he laughed, and David just shook his head.

“Fine.” He said, standing up. “Let’s go. Lead the way, Paul.”

Paul jumped up eagerly, and the others followed as he started off down the boardwalk. It was rare that David let him take the lead, but tonight, Paul had more energy than the other three combined, and David was willing to take a step back.

When they ended up outside Max’s video store, though, he couldn’t just sit idly by.

“The hell are you doing, dumbass?” He growled, seizing Paul by the shoulder before he could go waltzing right in.

“What?” Paul asked, twisting to look back at him as he was suddenly pulled to a stop. “What’s the matter, man?”

“What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you?” David asked with a scoff. “Don’t you fuckin’ see where we are?”

Paul glanced up at the sign above the store and then swatted David’s hand away. “Cool it, man.”

“You know how Max feels.” David growled.

“Yeah, Paul,” Marko piped up. “We ain’t allowed in. He’ll skin us if we do it again.”

“Guys, seriously?” Paul asked, looking at them as if they were idiots. “You’re gonna totally pussy out?”

“Pussy outta what, Paul?” David raised a brow as he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his coat and moved to light one.

Paul watched his hands and rolled his eyes. “Of course you can’t fuckin’ smell it…you’re always smokin’ like a chimney, man!”

David narrowed his eyes, but paused anyways. “The hell are you talkin’ about now?”

“I’m talkin’ about…” he closed his eyes, taking a deep inhale. “…that.”

David raised his lip in a sneer, getting ready to snap at Paul for being an asshole, but before he could, Marko let out an excited little noise.

“Shit, what is that?” He asked, mouth practically watering.

“Delicious,” Dwayne growled.

David glanced between the two of them and, seeing that they were in agreement with Paul, shoved his cigarettes back in his pocket. When he inhaled, all he could smell was the smoke that always clung to his skin and his clothes, and when he tried to snort to clear his nose, Paul let out a loud laugh.

“You’re totally nose-blind now, aren’t you?” He cackled.

“I am not!” David snapped, his tone dangerous. “You’re just a goddamn bloodhound…”

“Yeah, whatever.” Paul spun on his heel, not willing to wait a second longer. “I’m goin’ after that scent. Caught it earlier and it’s definitely comin’ from the store. Max can tear my head off for all I care…just wanna know what it is.”

Marko bounded after him, following at his heels, Dwayne only a step behind. David watched them go, too angry to yell at them for just walking off like that. Paul was right; he could barely smell anything useful now, and he hated that. Maybe it was time to finally figure out how to wash his fucking jacket or something.

Not about to let the others have all the fun, he walked after them briskly, shoving his way into the moderately-busy movie rental store.

And that’s when it finally hit him.

An absolutely mouth watering scent, but not the kind that made him hungry for blood. It was everything he loved wrapped up into one smell, and as it twisted and wafted around him, he nearly forgot where he was. His legs moved on their own, his head foggy. He could care less about whatever had happened to the rest of the gang. All he wanted was to be enveloped in that scent for the rest of his days.

“Can i help you?” A voice asked, bringing him back down to earth.

And when he looked down in irritation at whomever the fuck was stupid enough to pull him away from his new favorite thing, his eyes widened.

You had the most perfect face he had ever seen.

To his left, Paul was leaning on the counter. Leaning towards you. To his right, Marko was doing the same. They were busy chatting you up, and you were looking between them, lips pulled into a smile as you laughed at something Paul said.

But David couldn’t move.

He couldn’t speak.

He couldn’t even remember to breathe.

He just stood there, in shock, because he was pretty sure that this was some sort of love at first sight bullshit and he had no idea how he was supposed to handle that.

A quiet grumble sounded, too low and too soft for the human behind the counter to notice, and it took David a moment to realize that it was coming from his own chest. Dwayne glanced down and gave him a gentle, knowing smirk, and David didn’t even have it in him to snap and tell him to fuck off.

“I’m Paul, and this is Marko,” Paul was busy telling you. “Tall, dark, and handsome back there is Dwayne, and the grouchy one is David.”

You laughed lightly, and the sound was like music to their ears. “Nice to meet you all. I haven’t seen you around before…are you new in town?”

“Nah, we’ve been around for ages,” Marko winked. “Haven’t seen you, though.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m kinda the new one,” you smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of your neck. “I got here not too long ago. Max was nice enough to give me a job.”

“Where is the old man, anyway?” Paul asked, looking around the store.

For a moment, you thought he looked worried, spotting a flash of panic in his eyes. Just as soon as it had come, though, it was gone, and the rocker you had met only moments before was back to the same old fun, stoner-looking guy he had just been.

“He’s taking his break,” you explained, nodding towards Max’s office at the back of the store. “You know him?”

“Well, I mean, not really—“

“Everybody around here knows Max,” Marko cut in, elbowing Paul sharply. “I mean, he’s the video store guy. Duh.”

Okay, well…that was a little weird, but you’d let it slide.

“Right,” you said slowly, finally taking the chance to look at the four boys in front of you.

They looked like trouble, that was for sure, and some part of you felt apprehensive. They were wearing leather jackets and ripped jeans, earrings dangling from their ears, fingerless gloves and mesh shirts just adding to an overall theme of maybe these guys aren’t as nice as they seem. You couldn’t bring yourself to be scared of them, though, and as you chatted for a few more minutes, you found that they were easier to talk to than anyone you’d met in your life.

That’s how, not much later, you ended up agreeing to hang out with them after your shift.

“I haven’t got much longer,” you said as they were making to leave. “Max doesn’t like to keep me on too late. Everything’ll still be open when I’m off—“

“Aw, baby, don’t worry your pretty little head,” Paul grinned. “We don’t have early bedtimes.”

“No curfews here,” Marko agreed. “We love the nightlife around the boardwalk. Right, David?”

The platinum blonde, who had barely said a word the entire time, finally looked at you. “That’s right, Marko.”

As his eyes met yours, he somehow managed to take your breath away.

“Maybe you’ll learn to love it too, sweetheart.” He said with a smirk.

Paul glanced at him in surprise, as though his words meant something more than you could ever hope to glean.

“Uh, y-yeah, I hope so,” you swallowed thickly.

David’s smirk only widened. “We’ll be waiting for you outside. C’mon, boys. Wouldn’t wanna upset Max. You know how he hates having riffraff in the store.”

Marko blew you a kiss, but you barely noticed. You were too busy staring after them as they left, walking out just as suddenly as they had come in. Alarm bells were ringing in your head. They were one of the gangs Max had warned you about, weren’t they? Shit, and you had just agreed to hang out with them! At the very least, they probably wanted to party, and you couldn’t exactly do much of that in your current state…oh, you’d really fucked it this time, hadn’t you?

“What’s wrong?” Max asked, suddenly appearing at your side. “You look rather flustered. Is everything alright?”

“I, uh…” you looked up at him and cleared your throat. “I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.”

You watched as his brow furrowed and his nostrils flared slightly. “Are you sure?”

“Y-yes, I’m sure,” you nodded quickly. “I…might have made some new friends. I think.”

Max almost looked exasperated for a moment before he managed to cover it up with mild interest. “Oh, is that so?”

“Yes, I…agreed to hang out with them after my shift.” You said.

He hummed thoughtfully, and then gave you a nod. “Well, I’m sure that sounds lovely. I won’t need you here for too much longer tonight. A bit more work, and then you can go meet up with them.”

And so, less than an hour later, you were nervously walking out of the store, your jacket in your hands and your eyes peeled for the colorful biker gang you probably shouldn’t have even spoken to. You spotted them hanging out on a railing above a bench just a few shops down, David smoking while Paul looked at him hopefully.

“—you sure?” you heard Paul ask as you approached them.

“If she can handle it.” David said, breathing out a puff of smoke into Paul’s face.

“She totally can.” Marko said. “And we’ve still got plenty of wine—“

“If you guys were hoping to drink, I’m afraid I can’t really do that right now,” you said awkwardly as you appeared in front of them.

They scrambled to straighten up, their conversation abandoned as Paul and Marko both opened their mouths to greet you. Then, they took in the sight of your full body, no longer obscured by the counter, and their eyes widened.

Oh, great. They were upset, weren’t they? And you were an idiot for thinking they’d want to hang out with a pregnant chick.

“Wow,” Marko was the first to recover. “Look at you!”

Dwayne gave him a light shove. “Be polite.”

“Ow! I am!” Marko protested.

You sighed. “Sorry…”

“Sorry? For what?” Paul asked. “Girl, you don’t have a bun in the oven, you’ve got a whole loaf!”

For a moment, you just stared at him.

“Paul,” David growled, just about to ready to throw him off the pier for insulting you.

“What?” Paul asked.

Dwayne punched him in the arm, snarling another “be nice,” but when a laugh bubbled out of your throat, all four of them stared at you.

It was the first time you’d really been able to laugh about your situation, and God, did you fucking need that.

“You’re right, I kinda do,” you laughed, wiping a tear from the corner of your eye.

They all visibly relaxed, especially David, who tossed his cigarette over his shoulder without a single care as to where it ended up. They seemed to be looking at you with renewed interest now, their eyes more curious than anything else, and when you realized they hadn’t turned you away yet, you smiled. Maybe this would be alright, after all.

“Well c’mere, sit down.” David ordered, and for some reason, you felt compelled to listen.

Paul hopped down from the railing and offered you his hand. Even though you totally didn’t need his help, you took it, laughing at the goofy grin on his face as he raised your knuckles to his lips and pressed a kiss against them.

“My, how chivalrous,” you joked as you sat down on the bench. “But seriously, guys, I don’t wanna cramp your style or anything. If you wanna party, I can just head home—“

“Nah, we don’t really go to parties,” Marko said, plopping down next to you. “Sides, we don’t really wanna do anything without you around tonight. Right, Paul?”

“That’s right, Marko.” Paul agreed, leaning his hand on the back of the bench. “Gotta say, I am pretty bummed you’ve got a boyfriend, though…”

You paled. “Oh, no, I don’t. Seriously. I don’t even wanna think about that piece of shit.”

David moved around to face you and you watched him cock his head to the side. “What happened?”

You sighed. “Without going into detail…I guess I’m sorta on the run. I’m hoping he doesn’t find me here, if you catch my drift.”

For a split second, you saw white hot rage in his eyes, and then it was gone again. “Yeah. I got it. Where you stayin’, sweetheart?”

“Shitty motel.” You shrugged. “I’m planning on saving up for a little apartment soon, hopefully. Motel’s not really a place for a baby…”

“You need more than just a little apartment for that.” David scoffed.

“Well, excuse me for not having a nice salary right now,” you snapped.

He looked a little impressed by your tone. “You got some bite in you, huh?”

Marko laughed loudly. “You fit right in!”

You glanced over at him with a wry smile on your lips. “Do I?”

“Oh, totally!” Paul cackled. “Sassing’ David on day one? You’re way braver than us.”

“Yeah, you’re brave alright.” David said, pulling your attention back. “Takes guts to come to Santa Carla. Especially alone. Especially in your…condition.”

“Yeah, well…I kinda figured my ex wouldn’t follow.” You shrugged. “Plus, I didn’t exactly have much cash, and the bus was cheap. Motel’s cheap, too.”

“Don’t worry about the motel anymore.” David wrinkled his nose.

“Excuse me?”

“We gotta place you can stay.”

You blinked. “Excuse me?”

At your sides, Paul and Marko erupted into cheers. “Oh, hell yes! You’re gonna love our place, we got so much cool shit—“

“—all the weed you want, after you pop the baby out, of course—“

“—good drinks, all the takeout your heart desires—“

“And space.” David interrupted, his eyes boring into you. “Plenty of space.”

You were speechless. What the hell? You’d only just met them. You couldn’t just move in, that was insane! Although…your due date wasn’t too far off. You didn’t have a place of your own. The motel was better than the street, by a lot, but once the baby came, how were you gonna work? Max was a nice boss, sure, but you weren’t exactly expecting paid maternity leave. You were just a clerk at a video store, and you didn’t have the savings to be prepared for this.

“Room for a nursery,” Dwayne spoke up, sounding hopeful.

“No, I couldn’t impose like that,” you shook your head. “Besides, you guys wouldn’t want a baby around. I don’t have much longer, and you guys are probably way too cool for kids—“

“As if,” Paul interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. “We’ve already got a kid.”

“…what?”

“And we take great care of him, mind you,” Marko said. “We’re like, totally parental.”

You looked up at David, absolutely bewildered.

He looked back down at you calmly, as if he was certain you were going to accept their offer. “Come on. Let’s get you moved in.”

You chewed your lip. Logically, this was a bad move, but…there was something about them, about the way you could see how big and tough and scary they were, but how their body language was so gentle towards you, that had you thinking it was a good idea.

And so, with no better option, you accepted his outstretched hand.

(Continue!)

[sergeantxrogers]

| confused all the time |

Summary: Bucky’s back, and Steve doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader (post CA:TWS)

Word count: 1.9k

Warnings: Angst, violence, slight TW for physical abuse (but not really), just a shit ton of crying because apparently I can’t have a fic without some hurt/comfort

__________________________________

"It was him, I just know it. I would bet my life on it."

Steve ran his hands through his hair for the hundredth time, pacing the floor of your shared bedroom.

You sat in the middle of the bed, legs crossed and frowning. You were worried for him, you really were. Of course, you trusted Steve, with your life practically, and you believed him, but seeing him in this state made you upset.

Apparently, seeing his best friend after decades of thinking he was dead hadn't affected him very positively. There's also the small additional fact that he, the aforementioned best friend, had no idea who Steve was. After finding him on the river bank, last seeing him falling through the sky along with the rubble into the water, lids heavy and barely breathing, soaking wet and cold, it had taken you several days to bring him out of the state of shock he was in.

He had kept insisting it was Bucky who had dragged him out of the water; kept insisting that he saw the hesitation in his eyes before he threw the final punch; kept insisting he had recognized him. You pulled him through every claim with silent nods and the occasional "I know, babe".

Today was different though. It had been 8 days since the incident on the helicarrier, and Steve had been losing his mind bit by bit everyday trying to piece together the how, when and why of the whole situation. Which brought you to right now, watching him shut his eyes and let out deep breaths trying to calm himself down.

"How is it even..," he started quietly. You got up on your knees and moved over to the edge of the bed, leaning a bit to reach out to him.

"I saw him fall," he stated blankly, taking your outstretched hand mindlessly, interlacing your fingers. You bit the inside of your cheek and tilted your head at him.

"Stevie...," you began, and he pulled his hand from yours suddenly.

"I saw him, Y/N, I couldn't see anything else for months. I couldn't sleep because all I could see were his eyes losing hope and all I could hear was him screaming."

You nodded slightly, getting up off the bed and slowly making your way a couple steps over to him.

"So how? How? I know it's him, I just can't, for the life of me, understand how," he said desperately as his head shot up to make eye contact with you. You let out a deep sigh as you grabbed his hands in your own, trying to give him some sense of stability, if only for a split second. You admit, it was very hard to believe, and somewhere in the back of your mind you worried that Steve had lost his mind completely; it had only been a matter of time, honestly, considering everything he'd been through. You had no idea how to talk to him about this, but you knew you should approach the subject lightly.

"Steve, honey, I know you must miss him a lot, and I know it was a horrible thing for you to see him... go like that... but-"

His eyes that were previously burning holes into the floor shot up to meet yours, seemingly furious.

Okay, so maybe it could've been approached even lighter. Oops.

"But? But what?" he challenged, daring you to finish the sentence. In all honestly, you had no idea where you were planning on going with it, but now you were nervous. Very, very nervous.

Steve had this incredulous are you kidding me look he gave people when they said something stupid or rude. It was one of those looks where the disappointment was obvious and whoever it was directed at felt immediate regret. The look of God's Righteous Man and America's Golden Boy, and all that. And you were sure as hell feeling that regret right about now.

"Go on, finish your sentence, honey," he ended on a sarcastic note, pulling away from you to cross his arms. You felt your stomach clench as he leaned his head back to look down at you, raising a brow in waiting.

You swallowed, and shook your head slowly, not knowing what to say. You just wanted to help him, but seeing Bucky like that had made him act like a completely different person ever since. He was frustrated all the time, he tended to roll his eyes at people way more than appropriate, and he always got lost in his thoughts, not registering anything or anyone around him for hours at a time. Nobody knew what to expect from him at any given moment, which is what made your pulse pick up speed. You weren't necessarily afraid of him; Steve would kill himself before he ever deliberately hurt you, but you hated confrontation of any kind.

Steve took a step towards you, and in turn you took a step back. Your brows furrowed as you opened and closed your mouth repeatedly, racking through your brain for something to say to diffuse the situation before it got too out of hand.

"Steve, I'm just... worried about you," you let out honestly.

"You haven't been sleeping... you haven't been eating as much as you should, you've been snapping at people who are just trying to help you..."

You caught the way his nostrils flared slightly at the last part, before he took another wide step in your direction. You took another step back. He did it again, but this time when you stepped back, you were met with the cool surface of the wall against you.

"Baby...," he says lowly, lowering his head to meet your eyes at the same level, "... do you, by any chance, think I'm overreacting? Or do you maybe not believe me?"

Clenching your teeth, you wanted nothing more than to reach your arms out and have him fall into them, but you knew it wasn't the right situation for it. Instead, he placed his hands on either side of your head, trapping you. You sucked in a sharp breath through your nose before speaking.

"No, you know I believe you. You know I'll always be by your side, right or wrong, it's just... you've been so preoccupied with this that it's changing you."

Steve's jaw tensed and he closed his eyes, dropping his head.

"I'm just so confused all the time," he whispered, just barely.

"I know, baby, I know," you cooed, and you brought your hands up to hold his face.

The minute your fingers made contact with his skin, he snapped.

"Stop saying you fucking know, Y/N!" he yelled, slamming the wall to the left of your head with each word, and your heart jumped. You flinched, drawing your hands into yourself immediately, turning your head away from his hand.

"You don't fucking know anything I'm going through, nobody does and I just want some goddamn answers!" he continued furiously.

You felt tears in your eyes and heard Steve take deep breaths. You didn't know what had shocked you more, the fact that Steve swore, the close proximity of his hand to your head or the fact that he had finally cracked, nonetheless, at you.

Your hands shook ever so slightly at your sides as you refused to open your eyes. Steve's labored breaths slowed, and you heard his hands slide down and off the wall. Feeling him step away from you, you opened your eyes just a bit. It was enough to see him looking at you with regret in his eyes. You saw the clarity flood them as his bottom lip trembled; he was about to cry at what he just did.

Your body filled with worry as you surged forwards, arms reaching out to him, but he held his own up and quickly moved away from you. You stood there, both of you worried, eyes filled with tears, hands held up in surrender and hopelessness. It was quiet. Quieter than what you were used to with Steve, and you didn't like it.

Tears ran down his cheeks and he brought one hand up to his hair, pulling at it, a habit he had when he was frustrated with himself. Turning his head away from you, he went to sit on the bed and rested his head in his hands.

You followed him. You knew he didn't plan for that to play out the way it did, so you weren't mad. But you also knew he was mad at himself now, for letting himself go that far. Feeling you come closer, Steve's head shot up from his hands and he quickly shook his head.

"No-" he choked out, holding his hand out to stop you from coming any nearer, afraid of hurting you. The sight of him made your heart hurt, and you felt cool air on the wet streaks your tears left behind on your face as you walked to stand straight in front of him, pushing his hand away.

He kept pushing you back with his hand, and you kept pushing it away from you, determined to hold him even if it was the last thing you'd ever do.

He let out continuous whimpers: "stop", "please don't", "I'm so sorry", "I can't-".

Your hands trembled as you pushed his hand away harder than before.

"Steven, fucking stop it," you said through clenched teeth, pushing at his hands, hating the way the two of you must've looked, and hating the way he was retreating into himself, too scared to even look you in the eyes.

You finally managed to drop to your knees in front of him sitting on the edge of the bed, and you rested your hands on his knees.

"Stevie, it's oka-," you started.

Cutting you off, he took a deep, trembling breath and slid off the bed. His legs on either side of you, head hanging low, he timidly ran his hands up your thighs and over your hips, bringing them to rest loosely on your waist. Grabbing his head and lifting it so you could look at him better, he let out a deep, pained whine when his eyes met your own.

"Everything is just so much," he whispered and brought his head forward to rest against your chest, moving his arms to wrap around your waist. Another wave of tears washed over you and you brought your arms up to wrap around his neck, placing a soft kiss to his hair.

"I'm just so tired," he whined out into your chest, the words vibrating deep in your soul, and you pinched your eyes shut to keep anymore new tears from falling.

Nodding silently, you stroked the back of his head softly.

You placed another kiss on his head, humming through it, rocking side to side slowly. He was going to beat himself up about this for a long, long time, you just knew it. Your travelled down to his back, tracing patterns on it as his breath steadied.

"It's okay... it's okay," you mumbled into his hair, barely audible, but the kisses you felt him leaving on your chest showed you he heard.

You sat there for an hour, rocking him back and forth, until he fell asleep.

You sat there for another as he slept, until your back was sore and your legs were numb.

You didn't care though, Steve had done the same and more for you countless of times. He was always there, as were you.

No, you didn't understand what he was going through, he was right about that part. But, feeling his body relax into yours, feeling the grip he had on your waist loosen, feeling his breath go steady, feeling the wet spots on your shirt where his tears had soaked through, you were determined to try.