#but here? where he grew up and where he lives over the summer?

[wedgiestoriescollective]

The Senior: Years Later

Hello all! Before I start the next story in my “The Senior” series, I wanted to share that since I began writing, uploading, and reuploading these stories on here some things have changed. While I have been sharing my experiences with wedgies on here, these stories thus far have been about my experiences with them as a child and teenager. This didn’t initially bother me because I was sharing and, in a way, reliving these memories through my writing. But it bothers me now. 

Had my experiences with Chase concluded while we were both underage, I would have just stopped writing these stories all together. Yet this is not the case. So, this next part (and the final part following that) will take place four years after the previous story. When we were both consenting adults. I hope you enjoy,

                 

I was sitting at home alone. Well, I was sitting alone in the house where I grew up. I was visiting my parents during a short summer break from the musical theater conservatory I was attending. I hadn’t been home in over ten months. The conservatory went by a unique school schedule, so the week I was home didn’t coincide well with my parent’s work. As both are teachers, they still had school. It was nice being away from my classes, rehearsals, and at my part-time work in Times Square retail. So, things were busy. I was on the couch, a bag of pretzels in my lap as I watched some current popular TV show. My phone vibrated.

“Hey”, the text read.

I immediately recognized the phone number. I had deleted his contact multiple times. I even blocked the number once. Yet, those numbers were as familiar as his name.

“Hey”, I text back.

I pause the TV, redirecting my attention to my phone. I pushed the bag of pretzels aside. The text bubbles (a new IOS feature at the time) visualized three dots, Chase writing a response.

“I saw you were in town. How have you been? Chase texted.

At this time, it had been years since we had communicated with each other. And even longer since we’d last seen each other. Last time I had seen him, I was a Junior, and he was in town on Spring Break from his college in Colorado. We’d met up at my place and almost gotten caught by my parents. We quickly averted detection by sneaking out through the garage, but the stress of the moment gave me pause. Had me so scared of being discovered as anything other than “appropriate” or “normal” that I had (again) cut Chase out of my life.

“I am in town, I’ve been pretty good” I type on my phone, before deleting it.  

“Yeah, it’s been chill”.

I send the text and quickly place my phone face down as far away on the couch from me as I can reach. The phone immediately vibrates, but I force myself to remain still. The similar pattern presenting itself. He texts, I reply, he texts, I reply. Then minutes go by with nothing. Those minutes used to torture me, even when sometimes those minutes turned to hours, or the rest of the night. I promised myself I wouldn’t obsess over this again. That I was better than this. I remained still for just over five minutes before gently reaching over to my phone.

“Give any wedgies in the big apple yet?” Chase texted.

He skipped passed the unnecessary formalities. I hadn’t wedgied any guys in NYC at that point. There wasn’t any time, and I had my own revelations I was working through. Within a month of living in NYC, I had come to understand and accept that I was so far in the closet that I found Christmas presents. I had started trying things on in my new “out” life. Mostly through chats on dating apps or…. well, that’s all I did. I was out to my classmates at school, but back home I slipped back into the guy I was before I moved to NYC. Chase had been out for years by this point.

“I haven’t, too busy! Lol =(“ I reply.

“I have been thinking about the one’s you’d give me.” Chase texts.

“Really?” I reply.

“Yeah, it was hot”. Chase replies.

I politely ignored the fact that I was sporting blushed cheeks. Also, my hard on. I was ignoring that too. My phone vibrated.

“Wanna come over? I can pick you up.”

I looked at the phone in disbelief. After all that we’d been through. The shame that I felt and sometimes still have. The times that we’d avoid each other at all costs. Here he was again, offering to pick me up. To spend time with him. To wedgie him. It’s as if the closeted, hidden high school version of myself peeled away. I stood up and hopped in the shower, but not before typing and sending my response.

“Sure, you know where I live.”

When I opened Chase’s front car door, he looks at me and it was simultaneously as if time hadn’t past while there were also apparent timely differences. Both of us now sported stubble, mine being closer to a beard. Yet, he still had that stupid plush dice dangling from his windshield. We chatted. I don’t remember about what. It was small talk, but I do remember there was a moment when he said something along the lines of “maybe you can’t do that, but you can give a good wedgie”. I remember how my hard on never subsided while sitting in his car. It’s funny what remains of your memories over time.

Chase pulls into the garage of his house. I had never been here before. He gets out of the car and nonchalantly enters his home, knowing I’d follow. There was a black lab that excitedly greeted me. I followed Chase into his room, and he closed the door behind him.

Chase’s room was the standard expected room of a teenager. Sports posters on the wall. His bass on a stand in the corner. A pile of clothes scattered on the floor. Chase noticed me looking at the pile.

“Find any underwear in there?” Chase asked.

“A couple” I reply.

Chase walks up to the front of his bed, taking off his grey zip-up and then tossing it on the ground. He stares at me a for a second as I stare back at him. He’s wearing a slim fitted light grey t-shirt and jeans. Chase then turns around, his back now facing me. I remember feeling awkward standing in that silence. Like I didn’t know how to fill it. We used to have so much to talk about. There were still things that should be said. Yet, I remained silent, lost in where to start.

“Do it” Chase said quietly. Almost as if through an exhale of breath.

His words snapped me out of my haze as if we were in high school flirting in our distant way. Our words and jokes that were just between us. Because no one, not even each other could ever know our true desire for the other. Except, we weren’t in high school anymore, and both of us since then had come out to our close friends, but more importantly to ourselves. That layer of shame was no longer relevant nor present. Nothing was stopping me.

“Do what?” I teasingly ask, taking a couple steps closer to him.

“Give me a wedgie. Please” and then he said my name. I don’t know why, but I found that hot. I was now directly behind him. It was again as if time hadn’t passed. Like I’d done plenty of times before, I lifted his shirt and fingered my way through the waistband of his jeans which also donned a brown leather belt. Once my fingers obstructively found the underwear, I made the waistband of them visible with a gentle tug. The underwear’s black waistband donned the word Hanes stitched multiple times in skinny white letters. The fabric underneath the waistband was dark grey.

I looked forward and clocked my own eyes in the reflection of the full body mirror to the right of Chase’s nightstand. I then locked eyes with Chase who was also staring at me through the mirror. It was like old times. I sharply tugged on the Hanes waistband and Chase arched his head and groaned as simultaneously the leg holes of the underwear came in full display above his jean’s waistband. That was new.

“I was curious” Chase said smirking slightly at me as I had him up on toes as held his underwear up in my grasp. Then I lift upward on my toes almost lifting Chase off the ground by his light grey briefs. My cock is at full attention now, obviously visible through the front of my black joggers. As I continue tugging at Chase’s underwear, on the occasion tug the bulge would briefly drag or rest on Chase’s ass. He knew where I was at.

I continue tugging, alternating between slow gradual pulls and quick pulsating tugs. On each pull, Chase varied his sound responses. Some were groans, quick exhales, and my personal favorite the occasional “ooh” or “ahh”. I got the grey briefs all the way up to his neck at the highest but I would then mess around with this wedgie by snapping the briefs against his back multiple times. I would also tug while pushing him forward only then to pull him back towards me, inching the underwear further in his butt. I at this point have never wedgied Chase in briefs. This made it exciting and new in a way I couldn’t begin to explain at the time, but thinking back on it I was likely excited by the arousal of it all.

The grey briefs were bunched, leg holes and all were above his jeans. I reach my hands in front of Chase, gently moving my hands towards his belt buckle. I slowly start navigating the belt buckle loose and I unbutton his jeans. I then abruptly pants Chase, leaving his wedgied ass full on display. Chase turns his head back towards me, smirking.

“Having fun?” He asks as he slowly pulls his briefs out of his ass and back into place.

I then lifted Chase toward me by his hips, so that his neck was right up against my face. I kiss his neck. Chase moans. I kiss his neck again, but this time as Chase moans I kiss him on the lips. Our first kiss. This right here was all I had ever wanted. His lips on mine.  He didn’t pull away. He turned around wrapping his arms around my shoulder as we continued kissing. His tongue quickly made its way into my mouth, and mine in his. I don’t remember gripping his waistband as we continued kissing, but when I opened my eyes for the first time as Chase was kissing my neck, I saw myself through Chase’s mirror, with his grey briefs lodged up his ass so hard that besides the fabric in my grasp there was no indication Chase was even wearing underwear. It was lodged that far up his perfect round ass. I tugged again sharply with my right hand while my left hand pulled Chase’s head back by his hair.

For a moment, we both simply stared at each other. No longer seeing the scared kids we were years before, but instead seeing ourselves as the men that we are. Men that are kind, yet long for another man’s attention, lust, maybe even love. Yet, in that moment we just remained present. In our own kinky way.

The kissing and the wedgies continued. I even let him briefly tug my blue Jockey boxer briefs softly up my butt, but he remained eager for his flossing. The only thing keeping me from ripping his briefs clean off him was the continued kissing, it was proving to be a weakness of mine. Over the next couple of minutes, Chase kissed his way down my body. From my lips to my neck, to my nipples, and further down my stomach. Chase was on his knees now, alternating between looking at my throbbing bulge and up at me. He looked so beautiful looking up at me, as if I could solve all his life’s problems. Chase slowly then lowered my black joggers off me while still looking at me. Pre cum was already staining the front of my blue boxer briefs as Chase lowered those too. This wasn’t his first time seeing my cock. Back in our high school days we dared each other to hold the others cock in the car for a minute. But this was certainly different. Especially because this time Chase was licking the pre cum off the tip of my cock before putting the rest of it in his mouth.

I audibly moaned as my cock was blown for the first time, overwhelmed by the sensation of it. The newness of it. The excitement of it. All of it felt like a lock was finally clicking open. My whole body recoiled when Chase took a moment to merely tickle my cock with small kisses. He’d told me he was hooking up quite a lot in college in the text exchanges we shared when we chatted briefly after he came out. Back when I was still so scared to accept that part of myself. Before I ghosted him.

“I always thought that you had a hot cock” Chase said looking at me.

I looked down at him, feeling aristocratic as I noticed his grey briefs still lodged up his ass. Chase went back at my cock again; except this time, I cupped the back of his head with my left hand, gently pushing his head inward so my entire cock could face fuck its way down his throat. My other hand between thrusts reached down Chase’s back to grip the grey briefs. As I alternated between thrusting my body forward and pulling on the underwear, I felt closer to myself. As if I was about to descend on the first drop on a roller coaster. I felt drops of sweat trickle off my chin. I looked down then, only seeing Chase’s brown hair and his briefs gripped in my hand halfway up his back, lodged up his ass.

It was then when I remembered the time he yelled at me after we got caught by a police officer. We were rubbing each other’s cocks in an empty parking lot with sunshades over the window of Chase’s car. How scared we both were. How we reacted differently. And then, how when I was a Junior in high school when I saw he had posted a picture on Instagram with a guy. A boyfriend. How betrayed I felt. How exposed that post made me feel. But also, how lonely it made him feel as well.

I gently let go of Chase’s briefs and removed myself from his mouth, pretending like I heard my phone vibrate. I made up something about my mom wondering where I was and that she needed me home. Chase understood, we dressed, and he drove me home. When we got back to my house, there were no other cars in the driveway.

“She wanted me to be ready to go by 4”. I said, trying to talk my way out of the lie.

Chase seemed like he understood, but I must give him more credit. It’s possible that Chase knew I was lying. Still, before I could get out of the car he stopped me. Gently his hand clasped into mine. Again, something new. He leaned in and he kissed me gently. For a moment, I succumbed to it. The desire and lust I still very much had from the past hour’s activities. Tongues touched. He still grasped my hand. And then as if I teleported, I was locking my front door, and he was driving away.

I ran to the bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and stepped in the shower where I preceded to go into my usual, comfortable, one-man routine of pleasing myself. I came within minutes recounting it all. Moaning at full volume as I came. My cum, shooting towards the top of the screen door in the shower, before then slowly trickling downward. As the hot water continued running down my hair and body, I felt both euphoric and lonely. Hoping that the phone would vibrate with a text from Chase saying he came or that he wanted to meet up again. Yet, I sat alone under the running water knowing that it wouldn’t.

[idontlikeem]

How is the game live!!

It was super fun! They have bonkers random rules and it’s pretty clear that none of the guys are taking it all that seriously, plus there’s just something about seeing pro hockey players in a dinky little local arena! You can see them smiling when they smoosh each other into the boards! It’s very cute.

Also Jake absolutely saw my jersey so even though I didn’t get there in time to sneak around back for autographs I have that moment to cherish, lol.

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

Do you ever see someone post about a domestic flower species and you KNOW that it’s the same species (or genus at least) as the ones around you, but something is strikingly different and it makes you go “woah. I didn’t know they could do that”

This post is about lilacs but applies to other species as well

[goldsbitch]

Our wedding

Y/N and Lando probably went a little too overboard when planning their wedding. She finally looses it when his friend suggests a product placement bucket hat.

A dream wedding.

Distant palazzo, with acres of private lands to roam around at night. Lavish dress, designed to fit perfectly and re-done three times. Coordinators, who made sure everyone who needed to be invited actually was. And also took care about almost anything one can imagine.

A perfect wedding, that's what they both wanted. Go big or go home. Combining romance, with generously giving everyone they loved, or deemed important, the time of their life. To say that this event was supposed to be extra would be an understatement.

Lando said yes to all of Y/N's wished regarding flower arrangements, menu items and rooming lists. She said yes to all of this ideas about the music, sound systems set up in each part of the venue (because heaven would turn upside down if there had been one quiet spot with no music, according to Lando) and drinks choices. They could not agree on the photographer - so Lando just booked his, and hers option as well. Saving money was not on the table. He knew that the amount of good PR and brand deals the Quadrant team managed to get together was going to pay out in the long run. Everyone loves a wedding.

That's where the first issues started - the amount of people invited grew into higher hundreds. She voiced her point few times, but Lando quickly shut those off with a promise to book a private charter for all friends and family who were coming from her homeland. She caved in and agreed to just few more CEO's she'd never met, as long as they did not share their table.

It was the final two months before the wedding and things could not be more hectic. They had to plan the wedding around Lando's race schedule, so summer break between races it was. Y/N had to juggle her job with all of this planning, so she attended less races than she usually would. Most of the calls she shared with Lando were wedding related and it seemed like his best friend Max took it upon himself to speak on behalf of Lando - so sometimes it felt like she was marrying Max rather than her fiancé. After a total break down she had few days ago, which resulted in her crying on the phone to Lando at 4 am his local time, they agreed she absolutely had to come over to the next race so that they could find some down time.

//

Having to endure a tiring overnight flight, she finally stepped into the hotel where Lando was staying at. Exhausted, jet-lagged and generally in a bad mood were the main ingredients in the perfect cocktail of "you should just avoid me" Y/N. She finally opened the door to his room and let out a groan. Traveling to see him used to be her favorite thing. A bombastic cherry on top was that she immediately recognized Max's voice coming from the living room. Was this guy staying in the same room as them now?

"Y/N, is that you?" she heard, desperately hoping he hadn't heard her enter in. She felt like a bitch for wishing that, but he was the last person she wanted to see at that point. Her hopes of jumping in the bed and cuddling Lando the first thing coming here dissolved like cotton candy, leaving tooth aches behind.

"Yes, Max, it's me," she said, not even bothering adjusting her tone to something more socially appropriate.

"Great, just on time. Can you come in here? We have some decisions that are becoming pressing matters," he said dryly and added his own frustrated comment quietly "...since someone does not feel like answering emails." She heard that, bit her lip and swallowed all her comments, otherwise she would explode.

"What's up?" she asked, entering the living space. There were dozens of baseball caps and buckets hats laid down on the coffee table with Max and some random young guy towering over them.

"We need you to pick out one of these which you'll be wearing after the reception. I have a great brand deal on the table which I need to close today. So, go ahead - pick one." She could not believe the words coming out of Max's mouth. Was he for real?

"May I ask when did I agree to wearing a baseball cap with my dress right after my wedding?"

Max glanced at her and then rolled his eyes. "Can you just pick one? Lando is on board with this, he'll be wearing this green one," he pointed to objectively very nice stylish item of clothing - but still, it was a bucket hat. Rage levels shot up in Y/N blood steam.

"Max, I'm suppose to be wearing my wedding dress until the evening, that's also in some deal you guys made," she proclaimed, hoping this would finally make him get some sense. "The dress is very classical, I don't think this would fit the vibe."

"Oh, come, we agreed to sticking to the Quadrant Athletes color palette and all of these check that. We want to break the classical vibe up with this."

"I'm sorry, who exactly is we in this scenario? And who the fuck are you?!" she pointed at the guy standing next to Max.

"I'm...I'm the product placement controller," he said in a shy voice.

Her eyes just went wide at that point.

"Y/N, no need to freak out again, you need to create a viral moment to make the brand grow," Max said, as if he was talking about a new merch launch.

And that was the final straw. "I'm getting sick of you guys making my wedding into a Quadrant PR stunt. You need to realize this is my wedding, not yours! The whole event is already dripping with brand deals and promotions, is there nothing out of line to you? Will my mom also have to wear one of these hats? Will force the officiant to wear sneakers? Where will you stop?"

Max stared at her, his own cup finally also full. But unlike her, he spoke calmly - again, giving strong business vibes. "Oh, I'm sorry - I'm sorry I am pulling heaven and Earth to make sure your wedding does not ruin your future husband! I apologize that I seem to be more stressed about this wedding than you are. Sorry for caring and trying to uphold some standard."

"Max, this is all too much! I feel like I'm suffocating," she tried to reason with him once more.

He just had enough at that point. So many little moments of mutual disagreement finally grew on him.

"Yeah, well maybe you're just not suited for this world."

Before she could even take a breath to respond, a familiar voice cut them both off.

"Guys, that's enough I'd say," Lando said as he slowly stepped out the same corridor Y/N had entered moments ago. Both Max and Y/N turned around, knowing they'd have spoken way differently had they known he was there as well.

Max gulped, knowing he stepped over a line and immediately started to apologize. "Mate, I'm sorry, we just sort of lost it. I'm sorry."

Lando glanced at him, his face suddenly hard to read for both his friend and his fiancée. He quickly flashed Y/N a look, seeing the obvious distress finally on his own, in a way the camera on a phone just does not capture. It pained him to see them two fighting, but it pained him more to see her on the verge of crying.

She couldn't find words to apologize to Max. In fact she could barely even see him, as Lando took all of her attention.

"Can you guys leave us for now? I think we need to talk alone," Lando said in a tone so serious that Max hardly remembered last time he'd heard it.

"Yeah, mate. Of course," he said shyly, gesturing to his companion to quickly exit with him.

Once the door finally clicked, Y/N felt like she could get out of her frozen state.

"My god. Lando, I knew it would be a challenge these few months, but I did not expect to grow so far away from you," she said, as the words flew out of her mouth without her being able to control it.

He was more careful with his words, but brave nevertheless. "It's true. I don't think we've even been so distant."

Him acknowledging it just made it real and hurt more.

"Right. At least we have that in common."

There was an awkward silence, something these two hadn't experienced in months.

"Why is Max involved so much?" she asked, hoping that she would not hear anything that would make her biggest fear come true - Lando's lack of desire to marry her.

He took a moment to get his point in the right order. "He's my best friend. This is our wedding. I can't stop focusing on racing, but I want it to be perfect. I'd say not giving him any credit sometimes."

Of course, he was defending him. She wondered if he defended her in front of Max sometimes.

All card on the table. She gulped before uttering the next sentence. "I'm scared that I don't want to go to my own wedding anymore. I feel like an unwanted guest."

They shared a look full of hidden pain. It was impossible to tell, but Lando was scared as never before. "What are you saying...Do you want to call it of??"

She looked back at him, praying that he would understand. "God no, that's the last thing I want to do," she sighed and put her head in her hands. How did it got to a place where he could even assume that? "Marrying you, the love of my life, is my dream. In fact, I'd just like to jump to the moment where I can finally say yes to you."

The air still felt really heavy. "Then let's do just that."

"What do you mean?"

Lando took few steps closer to her, missing her close proximity for the past few weeks. He desperately needed to fix them. "Let's book a wedding for next week in Monaco, just you me and any other people required by the law."

The idea of that seemed silly at first. But the more she thought about it, the more she craved that idea. "So, you want to call the actual wedding off?"

Lando chuckled at the image of them cancelling that at last minute and all the hustle that would bring. "No, silly, not unless you really want to. But who says we can't have a fake ceremony there, celebrate with everyone, while already being married at that point? We don't need to tell anyone, keep the magic for them. We can have two weddings."

It was her time to laugh now. "So because we find organizing one wedding hard, we're going to be doing two now?"

"We are anything but conventional. And if this is news for you then, well...That would mean I'm marrying the queen of delulu. Twice."

The weight of the past weeks was lifted.

"Does this mean I can say "No." at the big wedding?" she teased him, closing the distance between them and holding his hand.

"Not if I'll say "No." first," he winked and quickly gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm not wearing a bucket hat. Just stating that now."

"Oh come, at least one of our weddings," he said as he ruffled her hair. "Wow, I think you need a post airport shower, my love."

"Do not try and change the topic - no bucket hats!" she mumbles as she tried to fix her hair.

"Fine, I'll just get you drunk. You'll wear a bucket hat at one of our weddings one way or another."

It felt so good to just banter with him, like they always did before they got caught up in all the stress. A shot of guilt went through her system, as she flashed back at the whole process so far.

"I should probably apologize to Max," she uttered, avoiding his eye contact once again.

He finally hugged her. "Yeah probably. But...let him rot in his feelings for a moment. I hate when someone makes you upset. Apart from me, of course."

"What makes me upset right now is the alarming amount clothes you're wearing."

"That's my girl!"

//

They got legally married the following weekend, Lando bribing anyone he could in order for them to skip few spots that were unavailable. The first wedding was secret and full of inappropriate, but honest kisses. The second one was fake, but they slayed it together, as newly married couple. Without the stress of actually getting married, they really enjoyed their wedding. The little secret stayed with them - and Max of course, because he just had to get involved with everything.

[hopelesslyromanticshark]

Hi, can you do a Percy x daughter of persephone headcannons pls

⋆⭒˚.⋆ percy jackson x daughter of persephone! reader hc

content: percy jackson x daughter of persephone! reader hc warning: painfully hozier coded...that's it author's note: this one was also fun!! i kinda dove head first into looking at what being a demigod and a child of presephone meant, so the percy love thing kinda got lost but i hope i recovered it??? i still love this one tho!!

oh, daughter of presephone?! did you mean nico's step sister?? i think that's what you meant

he's protective and for what?? bro youre younger, stfu and walk away fr (we like to joke here, nico knows i love him)

tho the last sister percy had been put in charge of didn't end so well...so you can see where the protectiveness comes from.

i would like to formally apologize for that last one-

on a real note tho that's something that keeps percy up at night

he doesn't want to fail you, doesn't want to put you in any situation where your life is at risk, if you so much as get a scratch he's tearing everything down brick by brick

you're his precious flower girl

and he's willing to kill for you if it means you're safe

it also doesn't help that you really are lacking in the powers domain

you're like a diluted child of demeter (hey, gram-gram) with a minor affinity for graveyards.

that might be where the overprotectiveness comes from, this interpretation of weakness.

they're dead wrong, btw

you could topple cities, if you weren't such a diplomat

during the fall and winter, you make frequent visits with nico to the underworld, helping your mother keep her garden up and your step father with the diplomacy that comes with the underworld.

during the spring and summer, you're not allowed to go, as your mother isn't present. both hades and nico think this rule is stupid, but can't really fight it.

hades really do be losing his wifey and his beloved princess of daughter all at once. damn major L for his ass

anyways, we've lost the plot, back to percy

on the first date, percy made the mistake of getting flowers

typically, this wouldn't be a problem, any girl would kill to receive flowers

but the moment you opened your door and revealed percy with his bundle of flowers, tears began to pool in your eyes and you took them from his hand with a minor glare

"you killed them! they were living just fine and equally as beautiful but then you stomped up with your shears and you cut their heads off!" you cried, walking deep into your cabin and producing a plant pot from some closet, freeing the flowers from the butcher paper and shoving them into the dirt.

"w-what?" percy sputtered, following after you, slightly concerned that he might have completely fumbled this whole thing.

"you're lucky, jackson, that my momma isn't here or she'd have your ass. just picking flowers left and right," the girl continued to grumble before shoving her hands into the dirt with the flowers.

nothing happened for a moment then more sprouts grew in the pot, flowers beginning to grow to match the flowers that percy had brought for her.

percy just stared, not shocked, by trying to figure out how to recover from this massive mistake.

don't worry, he won you over

and, he never bought you flowers again, rather opting to bring you potted plants and seeds

he learned his lesson alright.

nico wasn't exactly the biggest fan of this relationship in the beginning but he knew there wasn't really much he could do.

plus, he could see how happy percy made you, the flowers in your cabin growing faster and bigger and more vibrant.

if anyone made his sister that happy, he'd allow them to stay around for just a bit longer.

on quests with you, percy always carried fruit, which you probably loved more than him

"we should probably stop soon, get something to eat," you'd say with a shrug

"okay, cool. so, i've got oranges, apples, that weird pink one that's white and black on the inside and pomegranates. you want something else?? i'm sure there's a store around here somewhere," he'd reply instantly, somehow managing to pull all of these fruit from the pocket of his hoodie and holding them out to her.

tbh every winter and fall when you aren't around, bro gets mopey

he misses his blossom and it doesn't help that all the plants are matching his mood

he'd rather be six feet under and shaking hands with your step father than anywhere that you aren't.

author's note cont. : another day, another hc collection bc i am a menace and cannot be stopped wahahahahahaha god i love writing this is so much fun!!

[bonesandchalamet]

predictable - c.fisher

masterlist

requested: y- “Can you do a conrad fisher x reader where the readers family has a house next to theirs so they grew up going to cousins for the summers (cons age), and they are in love w each other but don’t want to admit it and everyone notices it around them/teases them. maybe a flash ward to their wedding in a couple of years and everyone’s speeches are like “yeah i won the bet they would be married by now” or smth like that?“

pairings: conrad fisher x fem!reader

warnings: fluff + jokes

a/n: I hope I did this justice anon! xx there are NO spoilers of book 2 or season 2!

you can hear his voice. it’s muffled, he sounds like he’s in your kitchen, a blessing of having the bedroom right above it, but you can hear him talking to your mother.

you don’t have time to think, you just fling your legs over your mattress and rush down the stairs at an appropriate pace. you’d just woke up, maybe not your best state to be in, but you couldn’t wait to see conrad fisher. the boy next door.

he’d gone to Princeton, smart cookie if you say so yourself, and you hadn’t seen him since last summer. in fact, you only saw him maybe once or twice outside of the neighborhood and that was getting ice cream and groceries. other than that, you live by the fence that separates your yards waiting to hear the laughter and conversations from the Conklin and fisher kids.

“just tomatoes? are you sure? I can go pick out some basil—“

“no, no laurel will kill you if you do any more yard work! I can get it.” you hear conrad protest. the fisher family was used to your parents generosity, the beautiful vegetable garden grew right on the fisher/y/l/n house line, the family was more than welcome to eat and take whatever they wanted, but it didn’t stop them from being kind enough to ask. Susannah raised those boys right.

“are you sure?”

“what’s going on?” you ask, it’s like the words floated out of you when you saw him. his brown hair a little longer than normal, his t-shirt a bit smaller on him, and he’s wearing small navy blue swim trunks. a sight to make any girl swoon for a fisher.

“oh, y/n, do you think you can help conrad get some more tomatoes from the vines? it seems to be the fisher-Conklin clan has run out.” your mother hands you Susannah’s woven basket that conrad was once holding. your mother looks at you with pleading eyes but she knows you’ll do anything that has conrad fisher involved.

“happy to.” you take the basket in your hand and gesture for conrad to follow. he thanks your mother once again and follows along out the back door. you can hear not only just your heartbeat, but the blood rushing to your ears.

being alone with Conrad was sometimes awkward. at least to you it always felt that way, because you never knew how to be around him as yourself. you were so deeply in love with him that just being in his presence was enough to make you fumble over your words.

“here I can get the tomatoes.” conrad pushes past you, his shoulder brushing against your body, you could smell his cologne, the salty ocean in his hair, and the mixture of the laundry detergent Susannah uses. it was an intoxicating smell, one to make your world spin.

“you sure? they are kind of all over the place.” you chuckle setting the basket down into the grass. you start picking the beautiful blush red ones and gently place them in the basket along side the ones conrad was picking. every so often your hands would brush or you’d about pick the same tomato. you both would blush and apologize instantly for the connection.

“would you guys just kiss already! you’re making me nauseous.” Jeremiah calls over the fence line from the pool, he’s watched about every embarrassing second of you and his brothers interactions.

“come on, con!” Steven hollers, it’s loud enough for the neighbors on the other side of their house to snicker at the boys energy for far too early in the morning.

“I don’t know what their problem is.” Conrad says and it’s only for you two to hear. he’s picked up the basket from the grass now, you’re stuck with holding a few more tomatoes that he claims would be more than enough for everyone.

“no seriously, just keep those ones.”

“we have enough inside, just take them—“

“fine,” he huffs out an annoyed sigh and watches you dump them into the basket, “can I at least make you breakfast with them?”

“sounds like a plan to me.”

that day, he made you more than breakfast. he made you feel the most indescribable feeling of love and excitement. he left you walking home as beat red as those tomatoes you picked. you could thank Steven and Jeremiah for their pressure and tease, because conrad fisher did in fact kiss you that morning.

—

FUTURE

“I’m so happy for these guys because today I became twenty dollars richer,” Jeremiah pauses, the laughter of friends and family make you both blush, “so thank you Steven for believing they would never get married. here’s to the bride and the groom!” Jeremiah holds his champagne glass up, others in the room follow.

“you really bet we would get married?” Conrad turns to his brother who passes the microphone to belly before sitting down beside him.

Jeremiah’s hands clap his brothers shoulder, “we also made a bet that you’d kiss her that summer. belly also made a bet that you’d have tomatoes on the menu, looks like you guys are the most predictable couple ever.”

[theemporium]

[1.8k] when both hughes brothers think the pretty girl at the bar is way too out of quinn's league, not realising she is very much his girlfriend they were about to meet.

not totally convinced i like this but it's the first quinn piece so who knows

.

“There’s no fucking way, dude.” 

“Mhm.” 

“She’s out of your league, just drop it.” 

“I don’t know, I think I could pull it off.” 

Jack raised his brows at his older brother, examining his face like he was trying to work out if he was being serious or not. However, when Quinn showed no signs of joking around—not even a hint of a smile—the boy was inclined to snort and shake his head. Luke, sitting on the other side of his oldest brother, could only join in. 

“I love you, but you’re fucking delusional,” Luke told him before his eyes glanced back over to where you were sat at the bar. “Not to be funny, dude, but she looks like she’d walk all over you.” 

Quinn just lifted his bottle of beer to his lips, trying to hide the grin that was threatening to break out. 

With the chaos of the hockey season and the summer months spent at the lake house, it was rare for his brothers to find a chance to come up to Vancouver. They flew up just as often as he came down to Jersey, which wasn’t enough by any of their likings but it was the unfortunate way things worked.

Unless they were playing a game—like they were in a few days. 

With no games or pre-planned duties beforehand, it was easy for Jack and Luke to come up a little earlier than the rest of the team to spend a few days with Quinn. And he was glad to have them up in Vancouver. 

Sometimes, it was hard not to feel a little isolated during the season when both his brothers played for the same team and he was left by himself. He wouldn’t change playing for the Canucks, and he adored his team. But he also adored his brothers and maybe, just sometimes, he missed having them be the biggest pain in his ass. Only every once in a while though, not that he would ever admit that to their faces. 

But the distance between them and the chaos of the hockey season meant that sometimes it was hard to keep up to date with each other’s lives beyond the messages and odd phone calls they could slip in here or there. 

And, to his brothers’ defence, he probably should have told them about you before they arrived in Vancouver.

But the thing between you and Quinn started as a small experiment, no real labels and just a lot of fucking chemistry that both of you were willing to explore during the pre-season training. It didn’t seem like a big deal, or something worth telling his brothers about. 

Yet, the weeks went on and the relationship between you two grew stronger and, yeah, it took him a little bit longer than he cared to admit to grow the balls to ask you out. But he got to call you his now so he wasn’t all that bothered with the details.

But you being his girlfriend should have been a detail he shared with his brothers, along with the fact the night out to grab a drink at the local bar near his apartment wasn’t just a random decision but an opportunity to introduce you to them. 

And that really was the plan. 

However the second they walked into the bar, Jack and Luke had nabbed a table and didn’t give Quinn a chance to explain himself as they waited for his ‘friend’ to show up (not that Quinn used that word, once again, his brothers were just idiots who made assumptions). And Quinn was left staring helplessly at where you sat at the bar, sipping your drink as you probably waited for them to arrive. 

And just when Quinn was about to open his mouth again, his brothers picked up on his staring at the pretty girl by the bar and did what brothers do best—rip the absolute shit out of Quinn for thinking he even had a chance. 

And Quinn did what oldest brothers do best—he let them continue to embarrass themselves before he proved them both wrong after he had his fun with the situation. 

“Let’s make a bet,” Quinn said casually, knowing full well he was about to exploit the competitiveness that ran through all three of them.

Jack’s eyes glimmered in interest. “Go on.”

“I get her number and you both have to give me a hundred bucks,” he said as he glanced between his two brothers.

Luke’s brows furrowed together. “And if she rejects you?”

“I’ll give you both two hundred each,” Quinn stated. “And you get bragging rights that you were correct.”

“Deal,” Jack said without even thinking twice.

“Wait, wait,” Luke quickly spoke up, giving the boy an exasperated look before turning back to Quinn. “You can’t tell her anything about the bet though, that’s cheating.”

Quinn raised his brows. “You don’t think I’m a good sport?”

Luke just shrugged. “Just covering all our bases.”

“Now, go on and embarrass yourself!” Jack grinned as he slapped his older brother on the back in a faux comforting gesture. “We will totally not be recording you from way back here.”

Quinn rolled his eyes. “You’re on.” 

The oldest Hughes said nothing more as he chugged the last dregs of his beer before stepping away from the table. His lips were pressed together to try and repress his grin as he walked away from his brothers and towards your spot at the bar. 

Something in his chest eased a little as he closed the distance between you, his fingers itching to just reach out and hold you close after barely seeing you over the last two days since his brothers arrived. The messages were not enough, not when he was selfish and spoiled having you around him almost every day since the spark between you two started.

“Hello, gorgeous.” 

Your head snapped around at the familiar voice, and instantly a smile broke out on your face when you saw your boyfriend sliding into the spot beside you. 

His fingers skimmed along the small of your back, the touch small and subtle before his warm palm was pressed against you. It was a comfort you grew to enjoy around Quinn, the fact he always needed to be touching you in some way, shape or form—even if he didn’t realise he was doing. Whether it was his knuckles skimming down your arm, or a hand resting on your ankle when you threw your feet on his lap during movie night, Quinn Hughes always liked the comfort of knowing you were there with him.

And after two days of not seeing you, the palm on the small of your back was almost like a reassurance you were actually sitting next to him and you were not running off again any time soon.

“Hey, baby,” you grinned as you turned on your stool, spreading your legs slightly so the boy could easily stand between them. “Where’s your brothers?”

“They grabbed a table by the back,” he said, his fingers fiddling with the hem of your shirt as it rode up slightly, exposing a small slit of skin along your back just above the waistband of your jeans. “You excited to meet them?”

“So excited I almost threw up on the way here,” you told him with a sheepish smile.

“They’re gonna love you,” Quinn reassured you. 

“Aren’t you meant to be better at giving pep talks?” You murmured as your hand itched to reach for his, to intertwine your fingers and hold onto him.

“Nah, that’s the captain’s job,” he murmured with a small grin before he nodded vaguely towards the table his brothers were at. “C’mon, gorgeous, you know I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

“My knight in shining armour,” you deadpanned before straightening your spine. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“You ready?” He asked, his brows raised slightly.

“Absolutely not,” you breathed out with a shaky smile. “But that’s what the two margaritas I had before you got here were for.”

Quinn’s lips twitched upwards as he lifted his hand from your back, raising it to gently hold your face in both his palms instead. “It’ll be fine, baby, I promise.”

You leaned in before you overthought it, enjoying the first kiss you were able to get from him after over forty-eight hours of nothing. You sunk into his embrace, your fingers looped into the belt hoops of his jeans as you tugged him closer, a needy noise sounding from the back of your throat that had him smiling against your lips.

“Easy, tiger,” he murmured, his nose playfully nudging yours. 

“It was for confidence,” you said shamelessly as you pulled back, an innocent expression on his face.

Quinn huffed out a laugh. “Sure.”

The defenceman let you intertwine your hands together before he began to lead you through the bustling crowd at the bar, his hand squeezing yours to reassure you were behind him. But, his attention was momentarily drawn away from you as he noticed his brothers’ table a few feet away—and more importantly, the absolutely gobsmacked and baffled expressions both his younger brothers were wearing. 

Their jaws were hitting the table by the time Quinn stood on the other side, pulling you forward until his arm was wound around your waist to hold you close to his side.

“Guys, meet my girlfriend.”

Luke blinked, his face absolutely blank.

However, Jack’s reaction was a lot more animated.

“Girlfriend?!” Jack spluttered out before shaking his head, a noise mixed between a scoff and a laugh leaving his lips as he pointed between the two of you. “This is cheating! You were in cahoots!”

Your brows furrowed together in confusion. “Cahoots?”

“Cahoots!” Jack repeated passionately.

Quinn only shrugged, glancing at you before he glanced back towards his brothers. “Say what you want but I’m pretty sure I won the bet.” 

“The bet?” You questioned.

“They didn’t think you were in my league,” Quinn mused, a glint of mischief in his eyes that told you more than enough. It took mere seconds to put together what the boy had just pulled off, and you could only snort in response.

“You’re evil,” you murmured with a shake of your head.

“I agree with your girlfriend!” Jack huffed out as he crossed his arms over his chest. 

Quinn rolled his eyes. “Stop being dramatic, Rowdy.”

“You’re a cheat!” Jack shot back.

“Luke doesn’t seem to think so,” Quinn retorted, and all eyes turned to the youngest Hughes who looked up from his phone, a blush painted across his cheeks.

“Oh no, I think you’re a dirty cheat,” he said, his lips pressed together. “I was just messaging the family group chat so we don’t have to pay.”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Dick.”

“Be nice,” you playfully scolded with a shake of your head. “You were the one that tricked them.”

“Their fault for being stupid enough to fall for it,” Quinn shrugged.

“You never told us you had a girlfriend!”

“All I’m hearing is excuses.”

“That’s it, I’m calling mom.”

.

[yoongiseesawmp3]

banana pancakes - seungcheol (m)

summary: when the city girl comes back home for the summer, the cocky diner owner tasks himself with making her feel welcome. 

word count: 12k

warnings: not quite enemies to lovers, more like annoyance to lovers; smut, afab reader, gendered nicknames (mostly just city girl), oral (m receiving)

masterlist

seungcheol was in the middle of a lunch rush when you walked in. you looked frazzled and out of place, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off you. he almost dropped someone’s blt because he couldn’t stop staring. you however couldn’t figure out who in this dingy place could possibly be the owner, so you awkwardly stand to the side at the counter while you squint at the specials board.

“what’ll you have?” cheol asks as he rounds the bar, ending up at the cash register in front of you. “speak quickly.”

“excuse me?” you ask, taken aback.

“it’s busy, you’re holding up the line, order now or i’ll pick for you,” he tries again and you blink at him in shock. people in the city were rude, sure, but not like this.

“fine, order for me then,” you say as you hand him your card. “and add a black coffee. all of this is to go.”

“i scared you off so soon?” cheol smirks as he rings you up. “total’s two dollars and fifty cents.”

“uh, that’s all?”

“meal’s on me,” he shrugs. “won’t charge you for it if it ends up being something you don’t like.”

“oh, well, thanks,” you say as you sign the receipt. “when will it be ready?”

“when it’s ready,” cheol replies like it’s obvious. 

“wonderful service here,” you say as you roll your eyes. you take a seat at the newly open stool at the counter and cheol tsks.

“seats are for customers who eat here,” cheol says while he gets to work with your coffee. 

“make the food faster and i’ll leave sooner,” you counter back. cheol nods, smiling to himself as he goes to the back. when he reemerges he’s got one container in his hand that he drops off to you before skillfully helping everyone else at the counter. you watch in quiet appreciation, noticing how his buff chest makes his plaid shirt fight for its life to not pop open. you see bits of curly hair peeking out from under the backwards cap on his head, and-

“that’s the last of it,” cheol says as he drops another container off in front of you. he comes back a moment later with a bag and starts packing it up for you as he explains, “had some left over banana pancakes from breakfast, hope you’re fine with that even though it’s past noon.”

“no, that’s great,” you sputter out, “that’s my favorite kind actually.”

“noted,” cheol says as he holds your gaze for a moment. “then i made you some turkey sausage to go with it. hope it’s worth the two bucks.”

“i’m sure it will be,” you say as you grab the bag. “thanks-”

“cheol,” he smiles. “and you are?”

“y/n,” you reply. “you new here?”

“nope, but you are.”

“no i’m not,” you shake your head. “i grew up here. i’m just home for the summer.”

“from school?” cheol questions, wiping down the counter.

“my big city job, actually,” you reply. “i just quit so i need to live at home for a bit while i find a new one.”

“well it’s nice to meet you, city girl,” cheol smiles. “enjoy the food.”

“bit of advice?” you ask as you stand up, sipping your coffee. “fix the attitude. good coffee though.”

-

“and then he ended up paying for my food,” you finish explaining to your best friend, vernon. as soon as you left the diner you headed to vernon’s house (where he still lives with his parents - don’t mention it, it’s a touchy subject). 

“yeah, seungcheol’s a weird guy,” vernon replies as he takes another one of your pancakes and folds it up like a taco. “at least you got free food though, that means he likes you.”

“doubtful,” you roll your eyes. “he seems like a dick.”

“oh then he’s just your type,” vernon teases, and you kick at his lap. he’s the definition of bachelor living at home, he has the whole basement of his parent’s house to himself and there’s really just a bed, a couch, and a full set of instruments set up in the corner for his band that practices here. you’re currently sat on the couch, a movie long forgotten on vernon’s projector. you couldn’t stop talking about cheol, or thinking about him, since you left the diner. he really irked you today. “whatever. pretend you don’t think he’s sexy, but i think someone’s got a little crush.”

“screw you,” you laugh as you snatch the take out container from his lap. “you don’t get to eat my food anymore.”

“seungcheol does deliveries, you know,” vernon says coyly. “i could call him and he’ll be here in minutes...”

“eat all you want, just save me a pancake.”

-

after your debrief with vernon, you finally headed back home. you needed the time with your best friend to catch up and get some much needed insight on your current situation. you were staying at home for a while, yes, but you couldn’t decide how long that would last. you had quit your job in the city because you were burned out, and you didn’t know what was coming next. but the little bit you’ve spent at home has reminded you of how easy life here can be. you can’t decide if you need to refresh your city life, or just stay at home and slow it down for a while. vernon wasn’t much help, he just reminded you of all the things you’d miss about both places, and then not so subtly mentioned that cheol only exists in your small town. 

cheol. he’s a mystery to you, but thinking about him makes your blood boil. unfortunately, vernon told you, his diner is the only edible place in town right now. you don’t feel like cooking for yourself tonight, and your parents are currently out of town on vacation, so if you want a meal then you’ll have to face the bully in a baseball cap again. 

once you’ve unpacked at home, you collapse onto the couch in your living room, ready to relax and maybe order a pizza to keep you from seeing cheol again so soon. you spend a few minutes channel surfing only to be interrupted by your stomach growling, and you realize your fate is set. you’ll have to go back to the diner. 

when you walk through the door, you’re met with the ding of the bell and silence. there’s only one other person there, sitting at the far end of the counter with his food. at the sound of the bell cheol emerges from the back, wiping his hands and smiling. 

“back so soon, city girl?” he asks. “sit anywhere, i’ll bring you a menu.” wordlessly you find the stool you sat at earlier today and sit, smiling awkwardly at the only other customer here. he nods back, a patch of ketchup on the side of his lips. when cheol comes back he passes you a menu and asks the man, “all good hoshi?”

“you got anymore ketchup?”

“check your face.”

“charming, isn’t he?” hoshi, apparently, asks you. you chuckle politely and look at the menu, but hoshi’s interest is piqued. “sorry, what’s your name?”

“city girl!” cheol shouts from the back, and you shoot him a glare he doesn’t see.

“i’m y/n,” you reply. “nice to meet you. aren’t you friends with seungkwan?”

“i am! how do you know him?” 

“we went to school together,” you explain, and hoshi nods. 

“you’re vernon’s big city friend,” hoshi connects the dots. “what brings you back home?”

“need to save money while i look for a new job,” you tell him, and cheol joins you at the counter just then.

“saving money and yet you’ve eaten here twice today?”

“well you gave me my food for free earlier, so i thought i could get another deal,” you joke. 

“she got free food?!” hoshi shrieks. “i come here every day! i keep your lights on! i deserve a free meal every once in a while!”

“yeah, but you’re not a pretty girl, hosh,” cheol replies. 

“oh, i see what’s going on here,” hoshi smiles knowingly. you sputter trying to defend yourself, but cheol won’t let you. 

“do you know what you want?” he asks you, “or you want me to pick again?”

“how’s the fried chicken?” you ask hoshi instead. 

“oh, to die for,” he tries to convince you. “but if cheol really likes you then you should ask for something off menu-”

“gross,” you interject.

“-like pasta, he makes a killer carbonara-”

“hoshi,” cheol warns, and you hide your smirk seeing the blush on cheol’s cheeks. when he turns back to you it deepens because he sees how you’re staring at him. he clears his throat and asks, “so? chicken or not?”

“i’ll do the chicken and potatoes please,” you say with a nod. “and another coffee too.”

“it’s almost 8pm,” cheol stops. “you’re gonna drink coffee at 8pm?”

“you’ve still got some in the pot,” you nod toward the machine. “just give me what’s left and you won’t have to throw it out. i’m the only crazy person who drinks coffee this late apparently.”

“you’re never gonna sleep,” cheol continues to scold you.

“i will, promise,” you insist. “now give me the coffee, please. i’m a little tired of you telling me what i can and can’t have here.”

“this is riveting,” hoshi says with his chin on his hand, leaning over the counter as he watches your interaction. with cheol safely in the back, he scoots a couple seats closer and asks, “so do you think he’s hot?”

“excuse me?”

“it’s alright, you can tell me,” he says. “your secret is safe with hoshi.”

“i’m sorry, i don’t-”

“stop bothering my customer, man,” cheol says as he returns with a clean coffee mug. he pours what’s left from the pot and passes it to you, your hands brushing as he passes it over. “you tired or something? why’re you drinking coffee so late?”

“it’s 8pm, this isn’t late,” you say before taking a sip. “and it’s good coffee. sorry i wanted to give you money.”

“can i get the check?” hoshi asks, interrupting the way seungcheol was trying to commit the shape of your lips to memory. “i’ll leave you two alone.”

“no, you’re fine,” you say quickly, but cheol is faster and has the check and change ready for hoshi. he politely waves goodbye to you both, and after the ding of the bell the diner falls silent. cheol leans back against the counter with the coffee, watching you. “shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?”

“nope, i was waiting to see if anything interesting was gonna happen out here,” he replies as he crosses his insanely buff arms over his chest. 

“sorry buddy, but i’m all good,” you say as you take another sip of coffee. “just incredibly hungry.”

“then let me help you with that,” he says with a smirk before disappearing. you notice that your cheeks are hot, probably from how enraging seungcheol is. no other reason. 

-

one thing you’re determined to do while you’re home is clean out your childhood room. your mom has been complaining about how much junk you and your siblings have left here over the years, and you’re tired of the passive aggressive comments whenever you come visit. consider it an early birthday present mom, the old toys and decaying art projects will be gone before you know it!

it takes a few days for you to sort through all the junk, throwing out what’s unusable and making countless trips around town to donate the rest. you’re finally left with the bones of your room: a few childhood mementos you can’t bear to part with, the twin bed you’ll be sleeping on for the next few weeks, and a broken desk you can’t seem to move on your own. you’ve been frustrated by the thing more times than you can count, so you cave and call vernon for help.

“come move my desk for me,” you say as soon as he picks up.

“hello?” he replies, confused.

“hey,” you continue. “you know the desk in my room that’s been broken since high school? help me move it, please.”

“why?”

“because it’s annoying.”

“just like you?”

“please vernon?” you whine. “it’s too heavy for me on my own and my car isn’t big enough to drive it somewhere.”

“fine. you owe me pizza though,” he says as you hear keys jingling in the background. “be there soon.”

eventually there’s a knock at your front door, and you slump up from the couch grumbling about how late vernon is. you open the door, ready to complain about his punctuality, only to be met with cheol’s smiling face.

“hey city girl, heard you need a truck?” he asks as he leans forward, peeking into your house. “where’s the desk?”

“um, my room?” you reply, and you watch in shock as cheol walks in and makes himself at home. “where are you going?”

“to your room?” he turns around, hands in his pockets but smirk still perpetually on his lips. “vernon said you’d have it ready to go but i guess he didn’t realize how spoiled you must be.”

“spoiled?” you scoff, pushing past him to your room. “because i can’t move a desk by myself?”

“it’s alright, everyone has flaws,” cheol nods as he follows you like an eager puppy. he stops at the doorway to your room, taking it in. he tries to hide a smile when he sees the baby blankets and dolls strewn across your bed. “you gonna introduce me to your friends?”

“shut up,” you snap. “come help me with this.”

“can’t even give me a please?” he sighs, coming into your room anyway. he joins you at the desk, facing you at the other end. he gets a good grip and then says, “lift on three. one, two, three,” he huffs. it’s astounding how easy it is to move with cheol’s help, and he backs out of your room carefully to make sure you don’t trip. 

“so where’s vernon?” you ask, carefully walking the desk out of your house. you get to the front steps and cheol stops.

“you think you can get it down the stairs?” he asks. “don’t trip.”

“i’ll be fine,” you insist. “answer my question.”

“vernon doesn’t have a truck.”

“i didn’t say i needed a truck,” you grumble. “this could’ve fit in his van.”

“that broken down thing?” cheol chuckles. “i’m pretty sure the extra weight would make the car stop altogether. vernon felt the same, that’s why he asked me so nicely to come help a damsel in distress.”

“you’re obnoxious, did you know that?” you ask him as he guides you to lift the desk up into the back of his truck. 

“and you’re stronger than you look,” he comments slyly, watching as you straighten your clothes. “so where’s this going?”

“the dump?” you reply. “thanks for hauling it, i guess.”

“hey, whoa,” he whistles as you start turning back to your house, “where are you going?”

“inside?” 

“you’re not coming with me?” he asks with a pout. 

“you’re a big boy, you can manage on your own,” you reply with a similar pout.

“no, seriously,” he says, “you gotta come with me to tell me where this goes.”

“i don’t care, just drop it off somewhere,” you reply. 

“hm, and you said you weren’t spoiled,” cheol tsks as he climbs into his truck. “whatever. see you later city girl.”

“wait!” you shout over the sound of cheol’s truck starting. he rolls the window down to hear you better, an eyebrow quirked as he waits for you to go on. “um, let me grab my keys. i’ll be right back.”

“sure thing,” he smirks. “i’ll keep the seat warm for ya.”

-

“are you sure this is the right way?” cheol complains. you’ve circled this block three separate times, so sure that the donation center is somewhere on this street. 

“if you would just slow down,” you whine. “i was here the other day, i know it’s close by.”

“oh, so you can do things on your own?” cheol teases, and you cross your arms. “sorry, that was rude.” silence. “are you giving me the silent treatment now?” nothing. “god. you’re irritating, you know that?”

“hm right back at ya,” you reply. “turn left up here.”

“why?” 

“because i said so.”

“fine,” cheol grumbles. as soon as you’re around the corner you see the donation center and you point toward the drop off, already unbuckling your seatbelt so you can be out of the car ready to unload before cheol even puts it in park. “hey, be careful,” he scolds, following behind you and lowering the tailgate. “you’re annoying but i don’t want you to get hurt on my watch.”

“i’ll be fine,” you bark, and cheol holds his hands up in defense. 

“did i say something?” he asks as you work together to bring the desk back down. “you’re touchy.”

“you’re getting on my nerves,” you explain, “so let’s move this desk and get this lovely afternoon over with, hm?”

“so nice to someone doing you a favor, sweet thing,” cheol replies, and your grip on the desk almost slips at the new nickname. 

“what was wrong with city girl?”

“i like to spice things up,” cheol smirks, knowing he’s getting to you. once you drop the desk off he rushes back to the truck to open your door for you, offering his hand so you can easily climb back into the cab. you ignore him and pull yourself up, and cheol gives your ass an appreciative glance. you let him close the door for you, and you stew silently as he closes the tailgate and gets back into the driver’s side. “you all buckled?”

“yep.”

“you gonna be a brat the whole ride back?”

“depends, you gonna call me spoiled and irritating some more?”

“depends,” cheol smiles, and you let your head fall back onto the headrest with a groan. you drive on for a while in silence, and you try to sneak a glance at cheol without him noticing. he’s wearing a new flannel, the sleeves folded up to his elbows to show off his strong arms. his hair is still hidden by that cap, and you’re tempted to ask him to take it off so you can see the curls you know are hiding underneath. “whatcha lookin at?”

“you,” you don’t try to hide it. “just trying to figure out how someone the town seems to love so much can be such a jerk.”

“when you make the best food for miles people tend to overlook the attitude problems.”

“so you admit it?” 

“admit what?”

“that you have an attitude?” you ask, leaning forward to look at him better.

“yes, i do,” he says with a sidelong glance at you. “and the sooner you admit to yours the sooner i think we’ll get along.”

“in your dreams.”

“so you want me to dream about you?” 

“oh my god,” you groan, letting your head fall against the dashboard. “drop me off here, i’ll walk home.”

“no can do, city girl, there’s lots of scary things round these parts.”

“you’re one of them,” you say with an accusing finger pointed cheol’s way. 

“but i’m a sweetheart,” he says innocently. “and we’re almost back at your house, take a chill pill.”

“alright dad,” you grumble. there’s another beat of silence before you quietly mumble, “thank you, by the way.”

“what?” 

“i said thank you,” you repeat. “i don’t know how i would’ve moved that desk on my own. so thanks.”

“you’re welcome, sweet thing,” cheol says happily. “you know, if you got my number, you could ask me for help whenever you need it.”

“i think i can manage on my own,” you say with a nod as cheol pulls up to your house. he puts the truck in park and turns to face you, arms still draped over the steering wheel. 

“well, you know where to find me,” he replies. you think he’s going to say something else, but he just stares at you instead, so you awkwardly clear your throat and say your goodbyes. cheol watches you walk up to your house, making sure you’re safe inside before pulling off. you see him waiting when you turn to close the door, and you shyly wave goodbye before closing it behind you.

-

the next day you find yourself outside the diner again. you had been running around town all morning finishing up errands, and you tried holding out on grabbing a cup of coffee for as long as possible. you don’t know what cheol does to make the coffee so good but you can’t stop thinking about it. the coffee and the man serving it are addictive, and you take a deep breath before opening the door to find an empty diner. no diners, no cheol.

“hello?” you call out to no reply. you slowly walk toward the counter and take your usual seat, looking around. you hear footsteps but you’re not sure from where, and cheol appears from a dark corner at the end of the counter. he looks surprised but pleased to see you, and he takes his time moseying down to stand in front of you.

“well hey there sweet thing,” he greets you. “coffee?”

“please,” you nod. “how did you know? and where did you come from?”

“you’re a creature of habit,” he replies. “and my apartment is upstairs, it was slow so i went up to take a break.”

“really mixing your work life balance living above your business,” you tell him. “that’s not good for you.”

“coffee’s not good for you either,” cheol scolds despite handing you a fresh cup.

“then why do you serve it?” you question, taking the warm mug from him regardless.

“brings in the money,” he answers. “you want anything else?”

“hm, i’m good for now, thanks,” you reply, trying to organize the bags at your feet. cheol stands on his toes, looking over the counter to stare at your stuff.

“shopping till you drop?” he teases, and you groan as you sit back up.

“i promised my mom i would restock the house before my parents came back from vacation, so i had to get some groceries,” you start to explain. “but i forget we live in the middle of nowhere so i had to go to a couple stores to get everything i need.”

“your parents are coming back?” cheol asks, and you hum in response. he leans on the counter, abnormally close to you, before he says, “when do you want me to stop by to meet them?”

“um, never?” you respond. “you’ve probably met them already, why do you have to be weird about this.”

“because i like seeing you squirm,” he smiles before pushing back from you. “if you don’t need anything else i’m gonna go check on something in the back.”

“take your time,” you mumble. you busy yourself with something on your phone and almost miss the plate that cheol slides in front of you. you look up to see him with hopeful eyes, and then you look down to find out he’s giving you a piece of pie. “what’s this?”

“cherry pie.”

“i didn’t ask for pie,” you say, and he rolls his eyes.

“but i’m giving it to you. you could say thanks.”

“what if i don’t like cherries?” 

“tough!” he replies. “i’m not leaving you alone until you take a bite.”

“what if i’m allergic?” you try testing him further, squinting at him. he squints back before he replies, watching you take your first bite.

“then i’ll administer mouth to mouth,” he retorts, making you almost choke.

“that’s not how you stop an allergic reaction,” you cough out, and cheol watches on amused. 

“you want some water?”

“no, i need you ten feet away from me,” you laugh nervously. “i’ll take the check, i should go anyway.”

“but you didn’t finish the pie,” he pouts, and you feel something in your chest tighten. you settle back on the stool and sigh, taking another bite. “so?”

“it’s really good,” you mumble, some crumbs falling to your lips. cheol motions for you to wipe your mouth and, embarrassed, you grab a napkin. “but seriously. you can give me the check, i’ll go ahead and pay and you can go back to doing whatever diner man things you do.”

“i don’t have any diner man things to do right now,” he shrugs. “the check can wait.”

“why do you like messing with me so much?”

“everybody needs a hobby,” cheol smiles. “what do you like to do? throw flaming darts at a picture of me?”

“fascinating that you think i put that much emotion into how i feel about you,” you reply, and cheol mimics getting stabbed in the chest.

“damn, city girl, that hurts,” he hisses. 

“sorry, that was mean,” you backtrack. “i just. i don’t know how to handle you.”

“you can handle me however you want,” he nods. “i can take it.”

“good to know,” you mumble out, focusing on the pie. “thanks for this.”

“you’re welcome,” cheol smirks, watching you intently. “i’ve heard they pair well together. kinda like you and me. the coffee is bitter, like you,” cheol teases, “and the pie is sweet, like me.”

“i’m gonna vomit.”

“not on my counter,” cheol replies with a laugh, and you glare at him as you reach for your wallet. you hand your card over to him and he pretends to swipe it at the register. “should i make fake beeping noises to sell it or will you just let me give you this for free without a fight?”

“you can’t turn a profit if you keep giving people free food you know,” you scold. “not a good business plan.”

“i only do it for you,” he shrugs. “so i think i’m fine. come back whenever want, city girl. i’ll take care of you.”

-

one of the benefits of being home is seeing all of the friends you’ve missed while you were in the city. you’ve missed your movie nights with vernon and seungkwan specifically, so when vernon calls asking what your friday night plans are you’re thrilled to tell him you’re not busy. within minutes of showing up at his house you’re settled on the ginormous bean bag chair you claimed as yours several years ago. the boys are on the couch bickering over which movie to watch, but knowing vernon, he’ll probably have the final say regardless. you don’t care what you watch, you’re just happy to be here. 

“y/n, help,” seungkwan whines. “tell vernon i don’t want to watch cars.”

“it’s his house kwan,” you reply. “if he wants to binge all the cars movies then i’m afraid that’s what we’re doing tonight.”

“and this is why y/n is my favorite friend,” vernon says with a finger pointed in seungkwan’s face. he rolls his eyes and moves vernon’s hand before fighting back.

“if we’re watching cars then i need a drink,” he grumbles, and vernon reminds him that he keeps the minifridge stocked with beer just for seungkwan. he asks if you want one but you decline, too comfortable curled up on the bean bag to sit up just so you can drink. 

“you gonna make it through the movie or are you gonna fall asleep on us?” vernon asks you with a smile. you hum as you think about it.

“depends,” you say with a stretch. “are we eating? food would wake me up.”

“yeah, it’s on its way,” vernon replies and you nod, nuzzling back into the bean bag chair so you can see the screen better. 

“ok,” seungkwan starts as he sits back down, “i will watch this movie, maybe the second one, but i am not watching the third. and vernon i swear to god if you make me listen to life is a highway in that disgusting car of yours-”

seungkwan is cut off by the sound of the doorbell ringing, and you assume vernon, the one who lives here, will get up to check. you peek over at him and instead see both of the boys staring at you expectantly. 

“what?” 

“go get the door,” vernon says. “that’s our food.”

“you get it! this is your house!”

“you’re closer to the stairs,” vernon replies. “you know the rules.”

you groan loudly as you get up, and continue groaning as you stomp up the stairs, and you make sure your footsteps are loud and obnoxious as you walk to the front door to make the boys very aware of how annoyed you are. you pull the front door open just as the bell rings again, and you almost shriek when you see who’s on the other side.

“y/n,” seungcheol smiles. “fancy seeing you here.”

“what the hell?” you ask in disbelief. 

“you’re not happy to see me?” he pouts, readjusting the bags of food in his arms. “bummer.”

“i-what?”

“vernon ordered food, didn’t he?” cheol asks, and you nod. “i’m delivering the food. what about this is hard for you to understand?”

“none of it i guess,” you mumble, stepping aside to let him in. “do you need help carrying it?”

“nope, just show me where to go,” cheol says as he waits for you to close the door. you start walking him toward the basement and then stop, making cheol almost run into you. “whoa city girl, warn me next time.”

“s-sorry,” you stutter, “um, i was just gonna say the stairs are kinda narrow, so seriously, give me something to carry. it’ll be easier.”

“if you insist,” cheol sighs, nodding to the bags on top. “take those. if we’re going down stairs they might fall.” you take the bags, but don’t move further. cheol gives you a look and asks, “you forget where you’re going?”

“why are you here?”

“told you,” he smiles. “i’m making a delivery.”

“but the diner, who’s watching it?”

“it’s late, diner’s closed,” he explains. “i’m doing this and then going home.”

“and you always do the deliveries yourself?” you question, finally walking back toward the basement. 

“if they tip well,” he jokes. “and i’d heard you would be here, so that’s an added bonus.”

“you invited him?” you ask vernon as soon as you’re back downstairs. he turns to look at you and smiles when he sees cheol trailing behind you.

“i ordered food from him, yeah,” vernon says. “it’s good to support small businesses, y/n.”

“yeah, y/n,” cheol mimics. you try to help him place the food on vernon’s shoddy table so you and the boys can eat, but he insists, “i got it, sweet thing, you can sit down-”

“no, i’m trying to help so you can leave-”

“seriously, i’m good-”

amidst your bickering you accidentally knock into cheol, making the last part of the order topple over onto the floor. you gasp as you watch the drinks spill all over vernon’s rug, and you reach for the paper towels before kneeling down to clean the mess.

“vernon, i’m so sorry,” you say quickly, trying to dab everything up. you see him and seungkwan spring into action out of the corner of your eye, kwan looking for a real towel and vernon in search of something to handle the stickiness. that leaves you and cheol, who kneels in front of you to help in the meantime.

“you don’t know when to stop,” he mumbles as he frustratedly tears off some paper towels. you stop moving and glare at him as you ask, “what?”

“i said you don’t know when to stop,” cheol repeats, taking the dirty towels to the trash. “you don’t like people helping you. you’re too stubborn.”

“first i’m spoiled, now i’m stubborn?” you ask, still kneeling on the ground. cheol’s standing over you, returning your harsh stare, and for a moment your mind flashes to a very different situation with cheol looking down at you on your knees. “i hate you.”

“you keep telling yourself that,” cheol scoffs, walking away. “does vernon keep soap down here?”

“i mean it,” you say as you stand and follow him wandering around.

“if you hate me then why do you find a reason to see me every day?” cheol asks, spinning around to face you. “you’re either in my diner or in some kind of situation where you need my help-”

“your help?” you spit back. “i’ve never asked for your help.”

“moving your desk? feeding you? cleaning up a mess you made?” he lists off.

“oh you’re so full of yourself,” you mock. 

“is that why i feel like i catch you staring at me whenever you think i’m not lookin?” he asks, and you back down. “no, tell me. am i imagining that? or am i right, are you as obsessed with me as i am with you?”

“you, what?” you whisper, watching cheol intently as he calms himself down. 

“nothing. forget it,” he mumbles as he turns to leave. “enjoy the food.”

-

with your parents coming home, there was less time for you to hang around town and risk running into cheol. that’s a good thing, because you don’t think you could face him again after what happened in vernon’s basement. it was hard enough explaining to him and seungkwan what went down without them exchanging knowing glances, so you’re sure whatever feelings you have and don’t understand are just as obvious to cheol. 

cheol is glad for the break too, but he finds himself hopeful at the sound of each bell, looking up to see if it’s you coming through the door or not. yes, you’re annoying. yes, you made him mad the other day. but he still wants to explore whatever’s happening between you. he knows he can be hard to read sometimes, and you’re the first person in maybe years that he’s felt this way towards. so, in the hopes of bettering himself, cheol buys a self help book. he usually turns to books when he needs a break from reality, either escaping to a fantasy world to neglect the problems in his own or buying a book that will help him with his business. it’s not out of the ordinary to find him reading behind the counter when it’s slow, but he forgets that the eyes everywhere in town make it hard to keep anything a secret. 

people have noticed you suddenly stopped going to the diner, and they’ve seen cheol’s face fall every time someone other than you walks in. hoshi especially is keen to what’s going on, so during his next visit he comes in with a purpose. 

“hey hosh,” cheol greets without looking up from his book. “sit anywhere, be with you in a minute.”

“sure,” hoshi nods, taking his usual spot at the counter. he lets cheol read a second longer before asking, “whatcha got there?”

“a book, you seen one before?” cheol asks as he joins hoshi further down the bar. “what can i get you?”

“i’ve seen a book before,” hoshi replies seriously. “read one? no. and i would like your finest hamburger, please. extra ketchup.”

“not sure why i even ask anymore,” cheol chuckles, writing the ticket anyway. “you always order the same thing.”

“i like what i like,” hoshi shrugs. 

“yes you do,” cheol nods. “it’ll be out soon.”

“gives you more time to read, hm?”

“what? sure,” cheol agrees, scooting the book farther from hoshi so he can’t see what it is. 

“whatcha reading?” he asks anyway, and cheol clears his throat, ready to lie. “something about love?”

“what?” cheol whips his head up, embarrassment in his eyes. 

“there’s a big ole heart at the start of that chapter, are you reading a romance? tell me about it,” hoshi says as he rests his hands on his fists, watching cheol expectantly. 

“it’s um, it’s not about love.”

“no?”

“well, not like that,” he explains. “it’s, um...you have to swear not to repeat this.”

“what’s in it for me?”

“i’ll stop serving you,” cheol warns.

“noted, your secret is safe,” hoshi agrees. “so what is it?”

“it’s a book about relationships, mostly. teaches you how to be in love better,” cheol replies, making hoshi smile.

“and who’s the lucky lady?” he asks, causing cheol to blush.

“let me go check on your food, man.”

“whoever it is i wish you a very happy life together!”

-

you’re able to last well over a week without visiting the diner. it’s been nice not running into cheol, because you haven’t experienced that weird feeling that comes with being in his presence. what’s even weirder though is the new thing you might be feeling. you think you miss him, and you really want to apologize for being such a problem before. 

one saturday you’re up early, and you find yourself pacing back and forth outside the diner. it’s so early the diner isn’t even open yet, but you still trudge to the door and knock quietly, knowing if you don’t address it now you never will. 

you knocked softly enough you hoped cheol wouldn’t be able to hear, but before you can run away you see his broad chest through the blinds. you hear the door unlock, followed by the bell tingling as cheol opens the door. he looks you up and down then grunts, “we’re closed.”

“but i want to come in.”

“you think you’re special, city girl?” he asks with the hint of a smile. 

“i’m a paying customer, you really gonna turn me away?” you reply, and for a moment you’re afraid he’ll actually tell you to leave.

“i’d never turn you away,” he says at last, stepping to the side so you can come in. “take a seat, i just made a pot of coffee.”

“it’s like you knew i was coming,” you smile before melting into a yawn. cheol watches you fondly, placing a menu at your usual seat. “i don’t need a menu.”

“what do you want?” he asks while he makes your coffee.

“um, i uh, i wanted to say i’m sorry?” you answer, awkwardly standing next to the stool. 

“you sure about that?” cheol asks as he hands you the mug. your fingers brush, and you find the confidence to look him in the eyes as you try again.

“i’m aware i can be a little hard to get along with,” you try again. “you’re really nice. and i wasn’t always appreciative of that. so i’m sorry.”

“that’s all?” 

“huh?” you ask, cheeks warming in embarrassment. “i said i’m sorry-”

“i mean, are you done with your apology?” cheol corrects himself, and you nod. “good. because it wasn’t necessary.”

“it wasn’t?”

“no,” he shakes his head. “i like that you’re a little bratty.”

“oh my god,” you roll your eyes, taking a sip of the coffee to avoid saying something ‘bratty’ in response.

“sorry,” he smiles. “i should’ve said i like you just the way you are, city girl. but thanks for smoothing things over.”

“good,” you nod. “now let me pay for the coffee.”

“nope,” cheol shakes his head. “first cup of the day is always free.”

“you’re a liar,” you accuse him.

“and you’re pretty,” he counters, and you choke on your next sip slightly. “what? you disagree?”

“just wasn’t expecting that,” you say as you wipe your face. “can i get a napkin please?” 

“you wanna order too?” he asks as he grabs a napkin for you. “want me to tuck this in your collar?”

“see, i thought we had reconciled and now here you are saying something insufferable again.”

“i’m good at that, aren’t i?” he smiles, passing you the napkin. “so are you staying for a while? you want banana pancakes?”

“please.”

you watch on as cheol finishes opening the diner, getting comfortable enough at your seat that you pull out a book and start reading while you wait for your food. you’re there long enough for other customers to start trickling in, and you’re too immersed in your book to hear the murmurs about you being there so early. what everyone assumes is that you just spent the night there, so the rumors that the diner owner finally found a special someone are traveling through town at the speed of light. you and cheol are both oblivious, so when he brings you your food before serving anyone else there’s several sets of eyes watching the exchange.

“what are you reading?” he asks, wiping off a set of utensils for you as he waits for your response. 

“ah, it’s this book my coworker recommended,” you explain, then correct yourself. “ex-coworker, i guess. keep forgetting i don’t work there anymore.”

“you wanna talk about it?” cheol asks, helping someone else at the counter without pulling his attention from you. you shake your head, and he asks a different question, “tell me about the book then.”

he listens intently as you describe the plot, mentioning that it’s supposed to be a love story and you don’t usually like those. cheol realizes this is the most he’s ever heard you talk, and he briefly thinks about how easy it would be to sit and listen to you all day. he lets you finish before he excuses himself to make rounds through the diner, and you catch your gaze following him wherever he goes. he smirks to himself when he sees you staring, and he may or may not puff out his chest a little just to give you something to look at. 

it doesn’t take you long to finish your food, and cheol keeps the coffee coming. it’s easy for you to lose track of time, and before you know it cheol is stopping in front of you with a deep sigh. you look around and notice the diner is exceptionally empty, and cheol looks exhausted.

“you ok?”

“fine,” he nods, “just a long morning.”

“what time is it?” you ask, searching for your phone.

“almost noon,” he replies, and you can feel your stomach growl. you hope cheol didn’t hear, but of course he did. “you hungry, sweet thing?”

“no, i should really go-”

“stay right there,” he says without giving you a chance to leave. he comes back with a sandwich and fries, and you start to protest when he says, “chill out, this was a pickup order no one ever came for.”

“but i don’t wanna be a bother-”

“y/n,” he says sternly, silencing you quickly. he never calls you by your name. “you’re fine. i like the company.” 

“well i’ll only keep you company if you take a break and eat with me,” you conclude, and cheol has to hide his smile as he wipes his hands off. 

“let me go grab a plate, we can share.” 

when he comes back, you take the empty plate and slide more than half of the fries onto it followed by the bigger slice of the sandwich. cheol tries to complain, reaching for your plate so you’ll end up with the fuller meal, but you push your body weight into him to keep him away.

“cute,” he hums, letting you win. “i am stronger than you, you know.”

“more reason for you to get the bigger plate,” you say as you pop a fry into your mouth. “now eat.”

“so bossy,” he shakes his head as he obeys regardless. then, with a mouthful of sandwich, he asks, “how do you like being home?”

“eh,” you shrug. “it was nice at first because it had been so long, but now i’m kind of antsy.”

“why? missing the city too much?” cheol asks, sliding a napkin to you and motioning to the edge of your mouth. he wants to wipe the mustard off for you, but he doesn’t think that would be a good idea. 

“a little,” you admit. “i miss my friends-”

“you have friends here,” cheol points out.

“i miss having things to do,” you add on. “i still don’t have a job.”

“hey, i could always use a dishwasher,” cheol teases, and you push his arm that keeps brushing against yours. “i get it though. this town’s just too small for you city girl.”

���what’s your story?” you say next, catching him off guard. to clarify, you add, “i mean, growing up you weren’t here. visiting during college i never saw you. then all of a sudden your diner is the hottest spot in town. how’d that happen?”

“you sure you never saw me before you came into the diner?” cheol asks, and you do have to think about it for a second.

“no,” you conclude, shaking your head. “i would’ve remembered your face.”

“i’ll take that as a compliment.”

“you should,” you reply, quirking an eyebrow at cheol when he looks at you surprised. “so when did you move here? how’d you start the diner?”

“my dad grew up here,” he begins. “actually, i think we went to the same university. i was talking to vernon about it and i was a couple years ahead of you, but i was there. i always dreamt of having my own business, i just didn’t know what it would look like. at first i tried setting up a cafe downtown-”

“who’s the city girl now?” you joke, and cheol pinches your arm before continuing. 

“but i failed before i even started. i lost so much money i had to move back in with my dad, and he was thinking about moving back here. so i started looking at places, and planned out the diner,” cheol says with a sweep of his hand. “honestly, i’ve always been afraid of the city. so i think it’s great that you seem to thrive so much there. takes a very special kind of person.”

“i’ll take that as a compliment,” you mimic, and cheol smiles.

“you should.”

“i can’t believe this is so new though,” you say as you look around. “it feels like it’s been here forever. you’ve done a good job making this feel like home, even if it wasn’t part of me growing up here. i come in and i just feel..”

“feel what?” cheol asks, watching you intently, slowly inching closer.

“i feel safe,” you say quietly. “being here, in this town, usually gives me so much anxiety. but i come in here and...all of that goes away.”

“that’s good to hear,” cheol smiles, tentatively reaching for your hand on the counter. he places his larger, callused hand on yours and squeezes, holding your gaze as he says, “you look comfortable here.”

“it’s because of you,” you admit, and if cheol weren’t so close he would’ve missed it. you don’t elaborate, and cheol thinks things may go further, but it’s like he watches you realize what’s going on in real time. “um, i mean, you’ve worked so hard. to make this place nice, to fit in with everything else in the town. it’s um, because of you that everyone likes this place so much.”

“uh huh,” he nods, tongue in his cheek as he watches you pull away. he would try to stop you, but a quick glance at the clock on the wall tells him it’s about to be lunch rush. he won’t be able to talk to you again for another couple hours anyway, so he lets you go, even though he desperately wants to know what would’ve happened if you’d sat there a little longer. 

“um, ok, so, thanks for the food,” you stammer out, making sure you have all of your things. “i really need to go now. you’ll need this stool soon.”

“sure,” cheol agrees, watching you rush toward the door. “hey!” he calls, and you turn with a frazzled look in your eyes. “what are you doin tomorrow?”

“um, nothing, probably,” you reply. “i’ll be here at some point for coffee.”

“ok,” cheol hums. “see you later then.”

-

the next day, a saturday, cheol’s busiest day, there’s a knock at your door around dinner time. you ended up grabbing coffee with vernon at the bakery this morning, so there was no need for a diner visit today. that’s why you’re shocked when you open the door to see a well dressed cheol with a nervous glint in his eyes. 

“hey, city girl,” he smirks. “you free for dinner?”

“am i..what?”

“you never came by the diner today,” he pouts. “so i had to make a home visit. now come on, let’s go eat.”

“um, ok, i just, let me change first?” you ask, and cheol nods. 

“i’ll be here,” he says, content to wait on your porch as you rush back inside to make yourself presentable. you go for something casual, because even though he had on a white dress shirt he was still wearing his signature baseball cap and walmart jeans. he looked incredible, but that was not what you needed to focus on right now. once you’re satisfied with your look, you sneak out the back door near your room and walk up on an unsuspecting cheol kicking rocks in your front yard. his head lifts at the sound of footsteps, and a proud smile graces his features as he says breathlessly, “you look beautiful.”

“i didn’t do anything special,” you try to downplay, but he shakes his head.

“nope, don’t do that,” he scolds. “you look beautiful. end of discussion.” 

“well thank you,” you mumble, and cheol extends his hand for you to take. you shyly lace your fingers in his, and he pulls you forward so he can wrap a hand around your waist. you let out a quiet ‘oh’ as you place your hands on his chest to steady yourself, and when you look up to find cheol staring at your lips you don’t know what else to do other than lean forward and leave a delicate kiss on his. you pull back more nervous than you were before, but cheol looks pleased.

“i was just gonna say your lip gloss was smudged,” cheol says cockily. “but that was nice too.”

“oh then let me take it back,” you joke, and cheol nods, diving back in to kiss you again. “that’s not what i meant-”

“what, you want that one back too?” he asks with a playful look in his eyes. 

“no, we’re good,” you laugh nervously as he starts leading you down the path from your house. “what are you up to?”

“i like you,” he says like it’s obvious. “so we’re on a date. we just kissed, remember? you were there.”

“i was, but, i mean, why?”

“why do i like you?” he asks, “or why did we kiss? because you started that.”

“ok, i’ll try again,” you groan. “why now? why not ask sooner?”

“i didn’t think you liked me back,” cheol replies with a shrug. “but after you spent the day mooning at me in the diner i was sure.” 

“to be fair i wasn’t sure i liked you until i started mooning at you yesterday either,” you admit. 

“i’m glad we’re here now,” cheol smiles, squeezing your hand as you see the diner in the distance. “hope it’s okay for us to eat here?”

“sure,” you shrug. “i hear it’s the best food in town.”

“wait until you’ve tried the place upstairs,” cheol says mysteriously, and you watch as he unlocks the diner and tells you to go toward the hallway that leads to his apartment.

“you closed the diner for this?” you ask, and he blushes. 

“i didn’t want anyone to bother us,” he replies shyly. “plus i didn’t want my place to smell like fries when i invite you over for the first time.”

“you know you could invest in an air freshener,” you tease, letting cheol open his apartment and lead you inside. the sight in front of you takes your breath away and quells whatever smart remark you were about to make. “cheol, oh my god.”

“is it too much?” he questions, tsking as he guides you with his hand at the small of your back. you’re silent, taking it all in, noticing the fresh flowers on the table amongst the plates of food. cheol has made what looks like homemade pasta, and you think you could cry. no one has ever done something so nice for you before, and you turn to cheol to tell him exactly that, but he looks worried. “it’s too much.”

“no, cheol, i can’t believe you did this for me,” you say in disbelief. “i love it.”

“you do?” he perks up, and you assure him everything is great. “here, take a seat,” he pulls a chair out for you and hands you your napkin before grabbing a bottle of wine. “do you like red wine?”

“no,” you shake your head, and cheol laughs. “but i’ll have some tonight.”

“tried to make everything perfect,” he sighs, pouring you a small glass that you take gratefully. “guess i’ll try harder next time.”

“next time?” you question, and cheol hums. you take a sip of the wine before adding, “next time i’ll have to cook for you.”

“i’ll hold you to that,” cheol says as he finally sits down across from you. you both laugh as you notice the flowers obstruct your view, and cheol quickly moves the vase, telling you that the flowers are yours to take home later. 

“thank you,” you say for the first time tonight. “thank you for all of this.”

“anything to make you feel more at home, city girl,” he says. “now try the pasta.”

you tentatively try a piece, noting that the freshness makes it easier to fork it. you watch cheol as you take the bite, and it’s embarrassing how quickly you melt at the taste. you let out a content sigh, verging on the kind of moan that only comes out when you eat the most delicious piece of food you’ve ever had. cheol couldn’t be happier, and you blush when you notice how closely he’s been watching you. 

“how did you learn to cook so well?” you ask with a whine. “it’s not fair.”

“not fair?” cheol laughs, and you nod as you try to get as much pasta in your mouth as possible. “don’t hurt yourself.”

“could you leave us alone please?” you ask, a spot of pasta sauce on your chin. unlike yesterday at the diner, cheol doesn’t back down from reaching across the table to swipe the spot away with his thumb. before he can stop himself he licks it off, meeting your eyes shyly. 

“sorry,” he clears his throat, finally picking up his own fork. 

“you never answered my question,” you try and change the subject. “you study in italy or something?”

“yeah, actually,” cheol replies. when he sees how confused you look he smiles before explaining, “i had a study abroad in italy. it was before i knew i wanted my own cafe or diner or anything, but one of the excursions for the trip was a pasta making class. guess it stuck.”

“okay now i’m jealous,” you tell him. “of you, for going to italy. but then of anybody else who’s ever had your pasta. this is incredible.”

“you’re the only one,” cheol says nonchalantly. 

“why are you so nice to me?” you ask softly, and cheol reaches for your hand across the table. he absentmindedly rubs his thumb over your knuckles as he explains.

“because i like you?” he chuckles. “i already told you that.”

“yeah, but why?” you ask, leaning closer. “why me?”

“i could ask you the same thing,” he replies, but the way you’re staring at him pushes him to answer. “you remember when you came into the diner a couple weeks ago?” you nod, and he continues. “you remember how you were a little rude?”

“if i was rude it was only because you started it,” you grumble, and cheol laughs.

“that’s why i like you,” he says, “you were the first person to take my attitude and give it right back to me.”

“well i’m glad you finally met your match,” you tease. “now can i have my hand back? i want some of that garlic bread.”

“yes ma’am,” he lets go with a final squeeze. he hands you the basket before reaching for the wine, asking, “do you want some more?”

“honestly? no,” you shake your head. “i’m fine with water.”

“i’d offer you something else, but all i have is wine, beer, and a ginger ale that’s been open for two weeks,” cheol tells you. 

“actually i’ll take a beer,” you say, and cheol stares at you with a new look in his eyes. “what, weirdo?”

“careful, you might make me say the l word.”

“lasagna?” you joke, and he rolls his eyes as he gets you a beer. he gets one for himself, and you cheers once he’s sitting back down. he watches you take a sip, admiring the way your lips wrap around the bottle, and then you both go back to eating. talking to cheol is easy, you notice. this is a first date but it doesn’t feel like it, and as the night goes on you get this feeling of dread in your gut that you’ll have to leave at some point. 

“why do you keep looking at the clock?” cheol asks nervously, a smile on his lips to hide the fact that he’s worried you’re bored or ready to go. “you need to leave?”

“no, no, the opposite,” you assure him. “you fed me the best meal of my life, i’ve now had a glass of wine and two beers, so i’m getting tired..but i don’t think i could leave even if i wanted to.”

“you full?” he asks, standing to clear the table. “because i made dessert too.”

“are you gonna force me to eat cherry pie again?” you ask as you try to help him clean. everything you pick up he just takes from your hands, so instead you grab the empty beer bottles and search for his recycling. 

“no, but i made a tiramisu-”

“you made tiramisu?!” you ask, whirling around to see a confused cheol. he nods like it’s nothing, and you groan as you say, “i didn’t think the man of my dreams existed, and yet here you are.”

“i’m the man of your dreams?” he asks, the confusion gone as he sidles up to you to wrap his hands around your waist. “this is great news.”

“hm, suddenly i need to go,” you say as you try to step back, but cheol’s grip tightens and you think you hear the slightest growl come from deep within his chest.

“no.”

“no?”

“no,” cheol confirms, thumbs slipping under your shirt to rub circles onto your skin. “you have to at least try the tiramisu before you go.”

“what if it makes me want to stay even longer?” you ask, and cheol leans in to give you a delicate kiss. without pulling far from your lips, he whispers, “then you stay longer.”

you let your eyes linger on his for a moment before you connect your lips again, your hands moving from their awkward spot on his chest to wrap tightly around his neck. one hand steadies you, and the other tangles into the hair at the nape of his neck that just peeks out from beneath the cap on his head. you groan into his mouth and he can tell it’s a sound of frustration, so cheol pulls back to ask what’s wrong.

“do you ever take your hat off?” you ask him. 

“what?”

“take it off,” you command, and you wait for cheol to loosen his grip on you to reach up and remove his hat. you keep watching as he ruffles his hair, letting down the curls you knew were hiding beneath. “do you keep those hidden from the world because you know it makes you hotter?”

“no, i work in food service, keeps my hair out of people’s lunch,” he says, pulling a shy smile from you. 

“forget i called you hot then.”

“never,” he replies, leaning back down to kiss you. he pulls one of your hands from his neck and places it on his full head of curls, which you take as a sign to play with and tug at his hair as much as you please. cheol deepens the kiss, his tongue darting out to meet yours, and you unintentionally pull his hair harder. he moans into your mouth and you feel yourself shiver, but you pull back for some reason. cheol really growls this time, asking in a low voice, “where ya goin, sweet thing?”

“mind your business,” you scoff as you kneel in front of him, your hands finding the waistband of his jeans. you look up at him and ask, “is this okay?”

“more than okay,” he groans, hands lacing through your hair now. he watches on with hooded eyes as you unbutton his jeans and pull them down just below his ass, slowly tracing over the bulge in his boxers next. you’re mesmerized by the size of it and you’re still not face to face with his cock, and cheol calling your name pulls your attention back in. “having fun?”

“sh,” you hush him, tracing his outline one more time before pulling at his waistband to let it snap against his skin. he hisses and the grip on your hair tightens, his breath quickening above you.

“baby, you’re killing me,” he whispers, so you glare at him as you pull his boxers down, almost getting hit by his boner when it’s finally set free. you’re quick to grab his shaft, spitting on the tip as you hold eye contact with cheol. he lets out a shaky breath, and he tries to burn this moment into the back of his eyelids so he never forgets the way you look on your knees ready to swallow his cock. you pump him a few times, licking at his tip while you hype yourself up to take him into your mouth. 

“you know, i think i’m getting tired,” you tease, trying to push cheol’s buttons. “think i might just head out.”

“you talk a lot,” cheol mumbles. “i’ve got something that could shut you up.”

“oh, you mean this?” you ask, picking up the pace of your hand stroking him until you think he can’t take it anymore. “what if i don’t want to?”

“then i won’t return the favor,” cheol challenges you. he watches, pleased, as you roll your eyes but still lean forward to wrap your lips around his tip anyway. he keeps watching as you inch further down his cock, taking him like it’s nothing. he doesn’t have to worry that he won’t fit, because you keep going until your nose is pressed against his skin. you surprise him by swallowing around him once, then twice, and he uses the grip on your hair to pull you off completely. “shit, baby, you really are trying to kill me.”

“excuse me, i’m doing some of my best work down here,” you say as you wipe the saliva off your chin. “now shut up and let me suck your cock.”

cheol lets you get back to work, but he doesn’t stay quiet. he lets himself moan freely, groaning as he tries to get you closer to him than you already are. every time you swallow around him he cries out, and you can feel yourself getting wetter. you can tell he’s trying to let you lead, his hold on the back of your head strong but reserved. he bucks his hips slightly each time you pull back and suck on his tip, but you want more. you hollow your cheeks and pick up your pace, tears stinging at your eyes as you gag around his cock. cheol has been talking you through it too, telling you how good you’re doing, how sexy you look, how good you’re making him feel. you would be embarrassed at how cock drunk you are right now, tears in your eyes and spit dribbling past your lips, but you’re addicted to the weight of cheol on your tongue and the way his strong hands tug on your hair. you have to pull back to catch your breath, a string of spit connecting your lips to his tip. as you sit back on your calves, cheol takes his cock in his hand, swiping at the spit before smearing it over his tip. he strokes himself lazily as he lets you catch your breath, and when you try to knock his hand out of the way he doesn’t let you get back to work.

“move,” you say sternly. “i’m almost done.”

“yeah, so am i,” cheol laughs. “you’re gonna make me come, city girl.”

“good,” you say proudly, “let me taste it.”

“you’re evil,” he groans, guiding his tip back to you awaiting mouth. he sighs happily when you swallow around him again, and he tentatively thrusts forward to test the waters. when you catch his eye and nod, he knows it’s okay to try again, picking up the pace so he can fuck your mouth. he’s close, and if you wanted a taste that’s what he’ll give you. “i’m about to come baby, you ready?” you moan around him and the vibration sends him over the edge, his release shooting down your throat. it’s sinful the way your eyes roll back as you swallow around him, and cheol thinks in that moment you are the most perfect woman to ever exist. he helps you carefully pull yourself off his cock, and he shudders when the cold air hits him. “you okay, beautiful?”

“all good,” you nod, voice a little hoarse. “i’m tired though.”

“too tired for me to eat you out?”

“in the morning maybe?” you ask, yawning.

“yeah?” cheol asks as he helps you up, and you nod. “you wanna stay the night?”

“can i?” you ask, realizing you didn’t know if he wanted you there or not. “i mean, is that alright?”

“yeah, of course,” cheol says quickly. “i’ll get you some clothes. and water. and a toothbrush.”

“you’re too sweet,” you say shyly, taking the flannel and boxers that he offers you. he leads you to the bathroom where he finds a clean toothbrush, and he disappears while you change so he can get you a glass of water. when he returns he finds you snooping in his medicine cabinet, his lotion on your hands and his fancy floss wrapped around your fingers. “oops?”

“no, make yourself at home,” cheol laughs, handing you the cool glass. “what’s mine is yours.”

“i’m sorry, i got too comfortable,” you say. “sorry. thanks for the water.”

“thanks for the head,” cheol smirks, and you push him slightly as you easily finish the glass. “you want more?”

“no, i’d have to get up in the middle of the night to pee,” you complain. “can i, um, do you mind? if i go to bed?”

“please, baby, you don’t have to ask,” he says, carefully leading you to his room. “i’m gonna wash up, be back in a minute.”

you carefully pull down the blankets on his bed, simultaneously feeling at home yet nervous. you feel comfortable around cheol, sure, but this still feels like a lot all at once. cheol walks in on you contemplating this dilemma that’s only in your head, and he asks with a smirk, “you gonna stare at the bed all night or you gonna get in?”

“sorry,” you mumble, scampering to get under the covers. 

“stop apologizing,” he says as he walks to the other side of the bed. “you look cute in my clothes by the way.”

“you look cute without your hat on,” you counter, and you’re proud to see a slight blush on his cheeks as he lays down next to you, mimicking your posture. he lays facing you with an arm under the pillow, and you suddenly feel overwhelmed. “cheol?”

“yeah?”

“is this too much?”

“what?” he asks, the happy look in his eyes faltering slightly. 

“me spending the night. it’s our first date,” you whisper, suddenly afraid that speaking too loud will make your worries bigger. 

“i don’t mind,” cheol says, pulling for your free hand beneath the covers. “i am very happy to have you here.”

“i’m happy to be here,” you say quietly, and cheol looks at you with an appraising look. 

“you sure about that?”

“i am,” you assure him. “i had an amazing night. i’m glad i could do something nice for you after all that you’ve done for me. but...i’m scared.”

“scared? why?”

“i like you,” you whisper. “i like you a lot. but i’m afraid of what the town will say. i’m afraid i like you too much, and i’m afraid of leaving.”

“then don’t leave,” he says simply. “and who cares what the town thinks?”

“no, like what if i get another job? what if i have to leave?” you ask, and cheol thinks for a moment before he pulls you closer, burying your head in his chest. he kisses the top of your head and whispers against your forehead, “then we’ll talk about it. for now just go to sleep.”

-

you wake up early the next morning, light trickling in through the curtains of cheol’s room. you feel more rested than you’ve been in months, maybe years. cheol is still wrapped around you from the night before, and you chuckle when you see how his lips stay pouted as he snores slightly. you watch him a little longer, pushing a stray curl out of his face, and he softly wakes up. he sees you staring down at him and he smiles, taking your hand and kissing your palm before laying it back on his cheek. 

“morning, sweet thing.”

“morning, handsome.”

“how long have you been up?” he yawns.

“not long.”

“you been staring at me the whole time?”

“mind your business.”

“you hungry?”

“starved,” you reply, sitting up to stretch. “and i need coffee. bad.”

“good stuff’s downstairs,” cheol mumbles, nuzzling back into his pillow. you’re about to ask where when you look down and see he’s back asleep, so you lean down to kiss his cheek before getting up. you slide on some slippers, shuffling downstairs to the diner to make coffee. you forget to check the time though, because the quiet doesn’t necessarily mean that the diner is closed. when you appear in the doorway, obviously clad in cheol’s clothes, and the ten or so customers in the diner turn to stare at you, your heart drops as you scurry back up to cheol’s apartment. you find him in the kitchen scratching his ass, and he turns to say, “where the hell did you go?”

“you said the coffee was downstairs!” you half scream, and realization dawns on him. he’s shocked for a moment, then tries not to laugh.

“how many people saw your walk of shame?” he asks, failing to hide his smirk.

“enough,” you groan as you fling yourself into his arms. “so i’m sure everyone will know by the end of the day, and it won’t just be our business, and if i ever do leave then everyone will blame me for us breaking up, and-”

“whoa, whoa, slow down,” cheol backtracks, holding you at arms length. “you’re freaking out over nothing.”

“but-”

“no! enjoy this!” cheol says, kissing you on both cheeks. “enjoy this for as long as you can, even if you have to leave. but like i said last night, we’ll talk about that if we get there. i just want to date you and see how much fun that can be. it’s nobody’s business but our own.”

“but everyone downstairs saw me in your clothes,” you whine.

“then they’ll know how nice your legs are.”

“i’m being serious,” you push him. “it was embarrassing.”

“would coffee and tiramisu make it better?”

“throw in some banana pancakes and i might just forget it ever happened.”

“deal.”

[starboyshoyo]

The Summer After Graduation pt. 2

Pairing: Malleus Draconia, Silver, Sebek Zigvolt x fem!reader (separately)

Fandom: Twisted Wonderland

Genre: fluff, domestic

A/N: @ryker-writes ;) you know. It’s so early and I’m exhausted, so if there’s mistakes I’ll go back and fix them later.

Where does life take you, after you move back to Briar Valley with them?

Part 1 (Kalim, Deuce, Epel, Trey) || Part 2 (HERE)

Malleus Draconia

In Malleus’ eyes, the moment you agreed to be his was the moment you became engaged. A relationship with him starts and stays serious and committed due to the traditions of his species. So naturally, after the two of you graduate from NRC, you move back to Briar Valley with him and his family as his first friend and first love.

There are some difficulties with hostile fae at first. The traditional council would be very against your relationship with him. But according to Briar Valley lore, draconic fae children can only be born from immense love and care between a couple. So even if the royal advisors disagree with the prince’s choice of partner, they couldn’t deny him his happiness if they ever hoped for an heir.

So despite the protests of some narrow-minded fae, Malleus is free to bring you home with him, to live as his partner and lover. Of course, Lilia is In complete support of the two of you, as is Silver. Sebek took some time to come around- he complained a lot about how no one, human or fae, could be worthy of Waka-sama’s affections. But once Lilia pointed out how happy you made Malleus, Sebek quieted down. No one had ever seen the crown prince smile the way he did when you were around.

Moving into the royal palace takes some time to get used to. It��s easy to get lost in the corridors of Castle Draconia. The hallways can also seem gloomy and cold at first, and almost frightening when you walk the stone passageways at night. If you get nervous, Malleus will do his best to be by your side as much as he can, holding your hands and cuddling you at night. If not him, then he’ll send a guard or two to watch over you.

If you want to take part in more diplomatic duties in Briar Valley and insist that you get to know the citizens as their future queen, Malleus will be worried but support you wholeheartedly. You’re considerate, responsible, and kind, three qualities that make for the best ruler. And besides, he doesn’t want you being cooped up inside all day the way he was when he grew up. While the work you’re doing may be dangerous, Malleus trusts you to handle yourself. Just make sure to bring Silver with you along with the rest of your personal guards, just in case. Fae can be unpredictable at times.

When Malleus isn’t busy with his princely duties, he’ll seek you out and whisk you away to a private wing of the castle using magic. The castle is old, and even with hundreds of years of free time, he hasn’t been able to explore every nook and cranny of it. The two of you will roam the hallways, naming the various statues you come across and slow-dancing in empty ballrooms with ancient music echoing from an unknown place within the walls.

“Briar Valley has come alive, my dear. Do you hear that? They are greeting their new ruler. This is all for you.”

At night, nothing makes Malleus happier than returning to his bedchambers to find you cuddled up in the sheets. He’ll slide into bed around you, tail unfurling to curl around your body and hold you close to him. He’ll spread his wings and rest them over your body to protect the two of you while you snuggle through the night.

Malleus might not know much about romance, but he does know when he’s found the one. He’ll have to ask the royal jewelers for a ring soon- infused with magic and inlaid with his love.

Silver

All his life, Silver was trained to become a knight for Malleus. It’s exactly what he did in the years he attended NRC. But what Silver hadn’t realized yet was that it was more of an obligation than his true calling. After meeting you and moving back to the Valley of Thorns, Silver began craving a quieter lifestyle- one where he could enjoy your company without having to be on guard duty 24/7.

It’s Lilia who first notices Silver’s restlessness, and he takes the matter to the young king. The two of them surprise you and Silver with a little graduation present- a cottage deep in the forest. Malleus tells Silver that he’s promoted him from the title of knight to that of a lord- the land that the cottage is built upon is now his to care for and do as he pleases. He’s already had servants move yours and Silver’s things there. Silver was initially worried that he was being fired from his job for falling asleep too much, but with some reassurance from his father, the two of you were on your way.

The cottage is gorgeous, situated in a clearing with a meadow and waterfall. The sun caught the water just right every morning- creating rainbows through the spray that danced in the dawn. It’s the perfect place for you and your boyfriend to live a peaceful, quiet life. The nearby villages are peaceful ones, and don’t mind having two humans living in their vicinity. They occasionally come by to drop off homemade food or ask for Silver’s help, but otherwise it’s just the two of you.

Silver’s animal friends come by daily to help out with the chores, making the workload light. The birds do the laundry for you and hang clothes out to dry, while deer often come by to help weed the garden. Even the squirrels play their part in helping to patch up holes in the walls and roof.

With only light work, your days are spent by Silver’s side, going on horseback rides through the meadow and napping with him in the garden. Finally, you have time to learn all of the things you’ve ever wanted to do. Speaking another language? Reading a book? Learning to sew? You have all the time in the world.

Date nights become a regular occurrence; something that you couldn’t do back at the palace. One of the most memorable dates is a time where Silver covered your eyes and led you to a beautiful meadow on the mountain, overlooking a valley. As you watched, songbirds swooped down carrying a picnic basket and blanket, setting up a romantic little spot for you and Silver to lay together and watch the sun go down. While you were busy watching the stars come out, a gentle smile graced your lover’s features. Yes, the sky was beautiful- but he could never take his eyes off your smiling face.

Sebek Zigvolt

Sebek Zigvolt has always known his dream was to serve Malleus Draconia in any possible way. A love life and career don’t always mix, so he feels grateful that he found you- always so willing to support his dreams. It helps that you and Malleus are on friendly terms as well. Nothing makes Sebek happier than seeing his lover and his Lord get along well.

Life with Sebek in Briar Valley is pretty similar to life at NRC for a while. Besides the fact that you don’t have to attend classes, Sebek still gets up at the crack of dawn every day to do weight training and go on a morning run, to train for the royal guard exam. He’ll ask you to get up with him, but ultimately leaves it up to you. If you have trouble sleeping, he wouldn’t want to tire you out. But for a while, you won’t be getting many lazy mornings with your boyfriend.

While Sebek is gone, his family will keep you company. Sebek’s mother loves to gush about her son’s younger days and show you embarrassing photos, while his father is quite happy to have another human around for once. His brother and sister love teasing him- who knew that grumpy Sebek would end up falling so hard for a human?

It’s a little-known fact that Sebek is actually afraid of horses- he tolerated being in the equestrian club because he needed to know how to ride if he wanted to be a knight for Malleus. Sebek will want to hold your hand before he goes to riding classes in the afternoon, and he’d appreciate it if you’d watch him- he’d feel safer if you did. He’ll do the same for you when you need him to be strong for you as well.

The both of you will be so proud when Sebek finally passes the class, and is certified as a real Briar Valley knight. Lilia assigns Sebek to lead a new, special battalion, one directly under his and Malleus’ command. Sebek will wear his uniform with the crest on it- a peacock with honeysuckle and iris flowers surrounding it, and a tail made of eucalyptus leaves- proudly. He’d probably wear it to sleep if you didn’t remind him to change out of his work clothes.

Sebek is a big deal in Briar Valley, and gone for work trips often. While you do miss his company, it also gives you time to plan surprises for him, such as learning to speak his native language. While Sebek has mostly gotten over his prejudice towards humans, he’s still immensely proud of his culture as a nocturnal fae. If you take the time to learn the language of his heritage from his mother, Sebek will realize that the feelings he holds for you are not between a human and a fae, but one between soulmates.

[chrollohearttags]

writing silly prompts with my OTP so you don’t have to • part one

content warning: exactly as it says, voyeurism, exhibitionism, reverse cowgirl, squirting

📝: I cannot explain this even if I wanted to. Sometimes, I have a lightbulb in my head, constantly flickering and other times, it’s nothing more than wind and baked beans up here so I need help jogging my brain muscles and reviving my creative spark. Don’t get me wrong, I love you guys’ asks and I’ll get to them, as well as the commissions, I swear but I need to get my juices flowing again 🫶🏾

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“Ahh! Shit…mmphm. Gonna make me come..”

“Go ahead, princess. Nut on this dick..better keep quiet though. You don’t want us to get caught..”

another peaceful Sunday stroll down South Beach’s Design District turned to a rather eventful outing. Of course, that was nothing out of the ordinary for the infamous couple. It wasn’t rare for the two of you to spend your very limited free time enjoying relaxing walks through the various shops in the heart of downtown..where you may have frequented your favorite stores and restaurants as a bit of routine in your very chaotic and ever changing schedules. It was the one constant that you could bet on in your hectic lives. However..as soothing as the mundane was sometimes…you both still craved that thrill. The excitement that came with doing something you had no business. That rush only grew tenfold when you considered the fact that you weren’t exactly inconspicuous..everyone in Miami and the world at this point knew EJ the Don and (y/n) (l/n). Everyone was looking for an excuse to photograph you two. So it was insane that you were so casually perched atop your man’s dick at a popular lounge on Ocean Drive; enjoying some semblance of privacy as you had rented out the rooftop area for yourselves but even so, if caught, you’d find yourselves front page on somebody’s blog. Right now, you just couldn’t be vexed to give a fuck. Instead…

“Fuck! I don’t care who sees, I just wanna keep—“

your words trailed off into a high pitched yelp as that tip poked the inner corner of your sensitive core. Being fucked up into like a jackhammer into concrete. A tattooed hand on your clothed tummy and inked fingers stroking your clit. All of this because you just had to wear..it. A regular, run of the mill sundress that you had probably gotten as part of PR from Fashion Nova or Shein a year ago and just decided to throw it on to combat this horrendous heat. And yet, it was getting your pussy pounded! Strutting around without so much as a thong on underneath, just in case the mood struck you. Of course, it didn’t take long for your husband to follow suit when saw the fat of that ass swaying from behind the clingy material and watched you bend over to retrieve something when that hem raised and that plump little cunt became visible..from there, neither of you could contain yourselves. Up and down with your legs propped onto the pool chair you went..rutting your hips in slow circular motions as you performed tricks on that dick. Smacking, wet noises filling the summer air. You were certain some attendee or waiter was lurking in the shadows, possibly jerking off or even filming you two but it didn’t even matter. Your only concern was coming all over him! That deep voice growling in your ear as he held you close to his chest and let you ride out your orgasm. Even shortly after, bending you over again so that he could see that ass moving against him. Shouting off expletives at each other..

“Give it to me! Fuck this pussy, daddy. Right there!..”

“Hold still, baby..gonna nut all in this shit!—“

before he could do so, you were already reaching a climatic high..clamping down on his shaft before springing up and spraying him with those sweet, divine juices. Groping one of your tits, Eren would cackle as he watched you come undone for him. Squirming all over the place with uncontrollable trembling from that powerful peak. You were still shooting out tiny streams of that squirt afterwards. Having been fucked so roughly with such impact but of course, it couldn’t be helped..

“Sorry, princess. You know what happens when you wear that shit around me. Can’t help myself..”

[tatoda]

Mine || conrad fisher x fem!reader

!!MINORS DNI!!

masterlist

request

summary: attending the same college as your best friend has its highs and lows, but conrad sees you flirting with another dude he finally does something about his feelings

pairing: conrad fisher x fem!reader

warning: slight angst, male receive, jealous conrad CHARACTERS ARE 18

wc: 1.1k

im a little rusty on my smut writing I apologize I'm trying to get back into it still. edited but I may have missed stuff

You and conrad grew up together as the oldest siblings, you to your brother and sister, steven and belly, and conrad to his brother jeremiah. Your birthdays was just a day apart from conrad’s. To say that your mothers were so excited to have babies around the same time was an understatement. They were best friends and it was their dream to have kids at the same time. Also as mothers, they knew you were both meant for each other. To be the first two little kids to run around the beach house, to attending your dream college together.

At the end of the summer before college started in the fall is when conrad broke your heart. It was the 4th of july and Jeremiah dragged everyone out of the house to go to nicole’s party. You hung out with Belly most of the night not trusting the drunk guys around her. With your mind occupied with her most of the night, you never got to talk to conrad. You wanted to watch the fireworks with him and not come to this lame party, you wanted to kiss him and tell him how you felt about him after all these years. Belly took off with nicole letting you have your fun. Who knew that fun could be ruined in 2.5 seconds? You walked into the living room looking for the brown-haired boy only spotting him with a girl on his lap and her eating his face out with him doing the same thing.

You ended up leaving the party and cousins that night. Telling your mom that you needed to finish a ton of college stuff before moving in at the end of the month. She didn’t push to ask you what happened and let you leave knowing you would call if it was anything serious. When everyone arrived back home that night conrad looked for you. He wanted to talk to you about your midnight plans to go watch the fireworks, but everywhere he looked you were gone. He looked in your bedroom seeing the nicely made bed and your bags gone. He sat on the edge of the mattress looking around softly.

“she left.” laurel walked into the room slowly

“where did she go? everything was fine before the party.” he stood up walking around your room and to the picture of you and him as babies. laurel walked behind him placing her hands on each side of his arms

“two peas in a pod, you two are inseparable.” laurel paused “she went home to finish college stuff.”

“and she didn’t ask me to go with her?” he brought a hand to rub over his face and sighed in defeat.

You didn’t talk to conrad the rest of the summer. He texted you, but you decided you better not get your heart broken again.

It was a few weeks into the school year. Your roommate dragged you out to another party that you didn’t want to attend, only because conrad would be there and almost every time he didn’t see you but you saw him. And you saw the girls he would leave with. And it just broke your heart more. So here you were trying to distract yourself with Josh— a boy from your math class— as he talked to you about his frat. You acted as if you cared only trying to hook up with him in the end.

“yeah my dad wanted me to follow him in his footsteps so he decided to pay for my school year.” he bragged taking a sip of his drink

“wow.” you acted interested

“if you want, one day i can take you for a ride on my boat back home?” he leaned towards you as if it was a secret

“i’d love that, yeah.” you put a hand on his arm rubbing it a little before a shadow crept over the both of you, it was conrad.

“sorry to bother, i need to talk to her,” he grumbled in josh’s face

“can it wait? i’m talking to her?” he tried to protest and you didn’t look at conrad, it would only make you fall and say you’re sorry for everything

“no it can’t.” he grabbed your hand off the dudes arm and walked you to an empty room before shutting the door “what the hell are you thinking!” he moved around you and away from the door

“i don’t know.” you shrugged slowly lifting your gaze to him, he was wearing a white shirt, plaid pullover, and jeans, you had never seen the boys other than in the summer and it was nice to see conrad dressed in jeans

“he was practically fucking you with his eyes!” he stood in front of you now

“grow up conrad, we’re in college now.” you scoffed. putting your drink down on a nearby dresser

“yeah, and it’s my job you don’t get an std from a frat boy like him.”

“oh and you’re any different?” it slipped out of your mouth

“what’s that supposed to mean?” he was taken back by your comment

“i’ve seen the girls you take back to your dorm. how do you know they aren’t carrying anything harmful when you stick your dick inside of them!”

“y/n what the fuck are you talking about?” his eyebrows furrowed

“the girls.”

“what girls! not one has stepped into my dorm other than our damn family when we moved in!”

“b-but you take girls home.” you tried to make yourself believe it

“i walk them back to their dorm. they are a drunk mess and my mom raised me that way, you should know.” his voice softly said

“i-“

“i’ve only had my eyes set on you since we were kids.” he blurted

“w-what?”

“yeah but i wanted to give you space to figure out your college life, but not get dicked down by a frat boy at one party.” he smiled to himself

“i’m sorry, okay? i’m sorry i didn’t see it earlier.”

“i tried for years, for you to see how i feel.”

“i felt the same way, i was going to tell you at cousin’s, but then i saw you with this girl at nicole’s party and she was all over you so i just left.”

“the party? is that why you left cousins early?” you nodded looking back down at the floor

“i was heartbroken con. you were making out with her what was i supposed to feel?”

“i don’t know you should have talked to me.”

“i talked to jere and he said that it wasn’t worth it, so i just left to get a head start to move in.”

“that’s why you were so distant when college started? we were so excited to be going to the same place, my mom was excited!”

“i felt heartbroken and i didn’t know what to do you’re the only boy i’ve ever loved, i didn’t know how to work around it!”

“i kissed the girl at nicole’s party because jeremiah told me you went on a date,” he whispered

“i-i hung out with a dude at the arcade for 10 minutes trying to help in figuring out a game. jeremiah was there!” you tan your fingers through your hair

“well, how was i supposed to know!”

“it seems like jere is just against us.” conrad laughed softly

“he’s always had something for you, you know.” you nodded knowing how the other fisher boy liked you, but you only had eyes for conrad

“he doesn’t matter. i’ve only seen him as a friend.” conrad let out a soft breath

“come here.” he gestured at you and you walked towards him as he opened his arms for you. the comfort of his arms secured you leaned against his chest hearing the raging of his heartbeat

“your heart is going crazy.” you twisted your head to look up at him with your chin on his chest and conrad looking down at you

“because of you.” he brought a hand to the side of your face and leaned in to kiss you, for the first time. conrad fisher was kissing you, it felt like a dream

He held your face so softy. He didn’t wanna break you, not again. His arms tightened around you pulling him closer to you. The kiss became deeper and stronger than you have ever had before with anyone. That’s when you felt the effect you had on him, he was hard, from you. You didn’t know you could do that to anyone ever but it felt amazing and an accomplishment.

“sorry.” he smiled against your lips as you both slowly separated lips turning red

“don’t be.” bringing one of your hands to his hair moving a few pieces away from his eyes the other hand you had slowly descended towards his pants

“y/n” a warning tone came out of his mouth

“hm?” you looked at him innocence in your eyes as if your hand wasn’t messing with the button of his jeans before moving to the zipper

“no one’s ever-“ his breath hitched as your hand cupped his erection “no one ever touched me down there.” you looked at him confused

“you’ve had sex though?” he nodded

“that doesn’t mean foreplay was involved, they just skip to the sex.” you kissed his lips

“don’t worry, just sit down and relax.” you pushed him to sit on the bed

Dragging down his jeans he lifted your hips to help get the fabrics down to his calf’s. He looked scared and nervous. You were touching him, the girl he’s been in love with forever, finally seeing the effect she has on him. You slowly swiped to get some pre cum off of the head and conrad shuttered under your touch.

“like that?”

“fuck, you have no idea.”

You coated the sides of his dick before slowly moving up and down at the right movement. He looked down at you breathing hard and deadly to your touch. A loud clatter came from outside the room and his eyes turned to worry.

“y/n, i don’t think this is such a good place to do thi-“ you cut him off licking the side of his shaft shutting him up immediately and the sounds from outside passed “fuck” he brought a hand to your head holding it as you bobbed up and down on him “keep going.” you didn’t plan on stopping, you hollowed your cheeks taking him in deeper and his groans filled the room

The way you moved made him jealous of the guys who have seen this image before. You on your knees sucking him off like no tomorrow. But the thought disappeared as soon as it came because he realized that this will be his view for the rest of his life. You looked up at him making eye contact and he felt the warm build but he didn’t wanna release just yet.

“just a few more, yeah.” he started to take control by moving your head with his hips as they came up off of the bed making you gag “just-“ he moved faster feeling the edge start. he pumped all the way into your mouth and let his release into your mouth as he groaned into the air

“fuck.” you pulled off of him and swallows the salty taste “did you just-“ he couldn’t believe you were real

“is that bad?”

“no, no, god no.” he moved your hair from your face. “all i know is no man is ever touching you again, you’re mine.”

[rustedhearts]

every corner (steve harrington x fem!reader)

summary: it's been 7 months since you said goodbye to steve. most exes that fell out of love move on and never speak. but you never really fell out of love, did you?

uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.

♡ everytime (part one) ♡ the library ♡ the record store

tags: mention of past substance abuse; angst; hurt/not much comfort; pining and yearning; smut.

a/n: here we are, an entire year later. hope you enjoy. love you (and soft, sad everytime steve) forever!

ko-fi (because i graduated from college recently if you wanted to leave a tip!)

"nothing happened in the way I wanted, every corner of this house haunted. and I know you said that we're not talking...but I miss you."

— i miss you, i'm sorry, gracie abrams

halloween night, 1999

The familiar tune of Michael Myers' entrance has you clutching the knitted blanket closer to your chest, cowering behind your knees to shield the tv. The grainy picture glows through the living room, illuminating half-eaten Chinese takeout and four cherry Pepsi cans. You had a bucket of popcorn on the cushion beside you and a bag of Red Vines near your feet. A party for one, completely alcohol free.

It's been four months since you've had even a sip, and it pained you to say that maybe your friends were right. You did have a problem.

You were still gaining their trust and friendship back, tiptoeing around past mistakes and attempting to right them.

After that drunken night at Eddie's house over the summer—when Steve rescued you from stupor and tucked you into bed—your friends had an intervention. Sat you down—sober, grumpy, and lashing out—and fixed you with some tough love.

"Clinging to Steve isn't gonna help either of you move on," Robin said. "It's not gonna help you get better. And you need to get better."

You sat back on Eddie's couch with your arms crossed and your legs tucked up, glaring at the wall above her head. Back then, you took their stern attitudes as hatred. You thought they were being mean, coming down on you for your own heartbreak.

But they were ten steps ahead of you. They saw the spiral before you could even recognize it happening.

"You're not in it alone, Steve has some fault in this, too. But...I think you guys need some time apart. Real time, no contact. It's the only way I think you'll get sober."

You moved your eyes to Eddie, who was wringing his hands together and tossing you a furrow-browed look. Gwen massaged his bicep lovingly, and you turned your eyes away again.

"We love you," Gwen added. "But when you're drunk, or high...you're harder to love."

So you stopped drinking. Stopped smoking anything that wasn't nicotine, started sublimating with caffeine. It wasn't a complete cold break, but you had to start somewhere.

The only downside to sober life was the distance you felt from your friends. The parties and get-togethers didn't stop, but you had to stop attending most of them. Of course, you didn't expect your friends to stop drinking or smoking just because you did. Eddie Munson would always be a pothead—but he wasn't an addict. He didn't have to keep himself away from it, because he knew when to stop. That was the difference between you and your friends.

Your lack of control.

Which is why, when your phone rang every few weeks and Steve's voice came through the other side, you just...didn't tell anyone about it.

You figured they must've sat him down and had a similar conversation to yours. Told him to stay away, move on, find some other way to cope that didn't involve bothering you.

But they didn't get it. You grew up together. You can't just forget your first love.

And right now, you're sitting on the couch cushion closest to the end table where your phone waits. You find your eyes meeting the still and silent cradle every few scenes, and every time you get up to get another snack or use the bathroom, you're on high alert. Waiting for the shrill ring. Waiting for the call you know is coming.

Because Eddie and Gwen host a Halloween costume party every year, and Steve is always in attendance. Despite his distaste for getting drunk and stupid, he loves a competition—and he always wins best costume.

And right now Steve is 20 minutes away, sitting on a couch much like you are, nursing a lukewarm beer and staring at a couple cuddled in the armchair. He watches the man tuck her hair behind her ear, watches the girl kiss his jaw and nuzzle her nose in his neck. You used to do that. Used to tell him how good he smelled after working up a sweat, licking it from his skin without apology.

Steve pinches his eyes shut, inhaling sharply. He needs to stop thinking about you. He needs to stop remembering the way you touched his body, the way you loved him with your mouth and hands because you never knew how to use your words.

The blunt edge of his nail rips the soggy paper wrapped around his beer bottle. He's itching to call you. He quite literally feels sick about the thought of forgetting the way you pronounce his name, the way your voice wraps around words in their own special way. He can't remember which version of 'either' you used, and it's killing him.

He's forgetting you.

He can't forget you.

Eddie and Gwen are in the kitchen laughing and mingling with other couples. Robin's flirting with a girl in the corner, hand pressed against the wall above her head. They'll go home together, and Steve will go home alone.

No one's watching. So, he picks up the phone.

He dials your number with quick and eager fingers, gripping the phone with antsy hunger. His heel bounces on the carpet, fingers drumming his knee.

Your eyes slide to the phone a split second before it rings. Every nerve in your body began to buzz in anticipation before that first trill, and you almost knock over the popcorn in your hurried rush to receive the phone.

But you pull back. Sit back on the couch and retract your hand. You watch the phone shake on the cradle stand, rattle the lamp behind it on the table. It rings once, twice, three times. At Eddie's, Steve thinks about hanging up and grows sicker.

You pick up the phone before it stops.

"Hello?"

Steve exhales, lets a smile touch his face. He focuses on the beer bottle wedged between his thighs to avoid seeming too giddy.

"Hey."

You slide back against the couch, turning the tv down. You fondle a sticky Red Vine mindlessly as silence passes between the pair of you. It's been two weeks since you last spoke—the longest you'd gone. Pathetic, isn't it? You haven't been together in almost seven months, yet you can't go more than two weeks without talking.

You tried not to let the thick, sick feeling in your throat at the thought mean much.

"You at home?"

You try not to giggle at the obvious. But he was just filling the space. He just wanted to hear you speak again.

"Yeah."

Steve tears another rip in the beer label. "Which Halloween are you on?"

Your gaze moves to the tv again, where you grin at the movie playing. "The third."

"Blech," Steve groans. "That one sucks."

"I know," you giggle at his playful distaste. "But I don't like skipping through a series."

Steve waits a beat. He rotates the bottle between his legs to peel the back. The beer sloshes around, and he knows the next swig of it will be disgustingly warm.

"All the lights on, too?"

Your eyes bounce around the room at the various lamps glowing soft yellow light through the room. The light filtering through the hall from your bedroom, the one clicked on above the sink in the kitchen. Your lip turns upward.

"Yeah."

Your chest squeezes at the thought of Steve knowing you so well. It wasn't that long ago that he was curled up next to you during a Halloween movie marathon, soothing you when you'd shriek, chuckling when you hid your face in his chest. He always took scary movies as an opportunity to cradle and baby you, because it wasn't often you let him.

Maybe that's why they were his favorite now.

Steve tugs the beer free from his legs and tipped back a swig. He winces as the warm liquid slid down his throat, face soured with disgust. His eyes slide toward the corner of the room where Robin and her current infatuation are giggling. He can hear Eddie's voice squawking in the kitchen, but it's growing closer.

He runs a hand down his face and shakes his head, knowing the next words to leave his mouth will be stupid and another space filler. "You scared?"

You snicker through your nose. He hears a soft snap when your teeth tear at a Red Vine. "Maybe a little."

He gnaws on his bottom lip a moment, gripping the neck of his beer bottle tightly. His stomach is in the knot of all knots, sitting somewhere between his chest and his throat. The next words are weighing him down and he spits them out before he loses the gall.

"Want me to come over?"

The line buzzes. Your living room vignettes, the top layer of skin under your sweatshirt littered with goosebumps. Swallowing down the candy comes with difficulty. You can only seem to stare at the bright light of the television, switching between pictures.

At Eddie's, Steve drops his head into his hands and tugs hard at the top of his hair, tapping the phone against his forehead in self-reprimand.

"Steve?"

He puts the phone back to his ear quickly. "Yeah?" His voice is so much smaller, croaked.

"Is that...is that a good idea?" You trust his judgement more than yours.

Steve cranes his head over his shoulder, peering around the corner into the kitchen. Eddie and Gwen are leaning against the kitchen sink, the latter tucked under his arm. He has a polaroid at the bottom of his sock drawer of all four of you in that very spot when Eddie first moved into the apartment. It was July and you did all the heavy lifting yourselves.

"I don't know," Steve sighs. His hand is still in his hair, twisting at the roots until it hurts.

But it still doesn't hurt as much as the squeezing in his chest.

"I don't think it is," you whisper.

Steve lets go of his hair and scratches at his stinging scalp. "Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're right."

He taps his finger on the other side of the phone. He tightens his grip on the beer bottle and it creaks under the weight. He imagines himself throwing it across the room just to hear the shatter, but he would never do such a thing. Not in his best friend's home.

"Would it be the last time?"

Steve perks up, lifting his head from where it's drooped toward his lap. His cheeks suddenly hold a heat that burns, and it's traveling down his neck.

"Y-yeah. Yeah, it...it can be," he fumbles, swallowing thickly. He doesn't want it to be the last time.

You pluck a piece of stray popcorn from your sweater and toss it back into the bowl. You eye the mess on your coffee table and wonder how long it would take you to clean up and light a candle to mask the fact that you haven't cleaned in over a week.

Steve hasn't seen your new place. He hasn't seen how well you've been doing.

If anyone asks, you were just showing him.

"Okay...grab some more cherry Pepsi on your way over?"

Steve leaps from the couch, tugging the phone cord with him and dragging the tablecloth askew. He curses under his breath, jolting to grab the cradle before it falls off the end table.

"Ye-yeah—yes! I will. I'll...I'll be there."

Your lips press into a smile. "Okay."

He can barely contain his grin as he slams the phone down and clumsily fixes the end table back into its original state. He snatches his jacket thrown on the back of the couch and rushes out of the room, toward the kitchen where his keys are sitting near the stove.

"Hey, buddy," Eddie coos as Steve scrambles for his belongings. "Where ya been?"

Steve shoves his keys into his pocket, jacket balled in his fist. He barely spares Eddie or Gwen a glance as he pushes past the bodies blocking the door.

"Uh...I gotta go. Gotta, um..."

Steve pauses, shoe squeaking on the kitchen tile when he turns on his heel to face his friends. Heat rushes to his face again, cheeks coloring a deep red. He hooks his thumb over his shoulder toward the door.

When Eddie and Gwen blink at him, Steve sighs defeatedly and drops his hands. He neglects any attempt at an excuse in his eagerness to see you.

"I gotta go, guys."

Before either can interrogate his vagueness, Steve is spinning around and rushing the door, nearly knocking everyone else over along the way. He fumbles over his feet down the stairs to the lobby, where he flings the front doors open to the parking lot. The BMW clicks open easily, and he's thankful for her reliability as he starts the engine and screeches toward the street.

At home, you're throwing all trash into the bin and spraying perfume to hide the smell. You rake through your appearance to throw it into something more presentable, but you know Steve likes a frazzled, "lazy" look more than anything. He always said he preferred you in your pajamas or one of his faded t-shirts.

You're bent over grabbing a piece of crust from this morning's toast under the kitchen table when the door rattles under a heavy fist. You jerk up, hurriedly tossing the toast into the bin before pushing it back under the sink. You stand in front of the door for a moment, fussing with your hair and adjusting the hem of your sweater. You can hear Steve's shuffling behind the door, and when you peek through the peep-hole, he's anxiously running his hand through the front of his hair.

It's shorter, a little lighter—but always handsome.

The door swings open just as Steve lifts his fist to knock again. He's holding a single can of cherry Pepsi in one hand and his keys in the other.

You realize as your eyes roam his appearance, that he isn't even wearing a costume.

"Hi," he breathes.

You smile, pushing the door open all the way. "Hi."

One foot enters the doorway, sneaker thumping on the linoleum tile. It crunches under his weight when he steps all the way in, keys clattering on the doorframe when he presses his hand there. He hasn't changed his cologne since sophomore year of high school and it sends you spiraling back to homecoming football games and prom night in his backseat.

Your teeth dig into your cheek, gnawing down the swirling in your stomach as Steve's eyes mimic yours and trace your body. They start at your shoulders, roaming down to your feet where your toes curl under a pair of fuzzy pink socks. In the other room, the television shrieks with a horrific scream. Neither of you even flinch.

Instead, Steve pushes off the doorway and takes another step into the kitchen. He swings the door shut behind him and you jump when it slams. He doesn't even move. But his keys skate over the countertop when he throws them, and the cherry Pepsi can hisses on its roll toward the other side of the kitchen when it falls from his hand.

And then they're on your face—those big, warm hands. Cupping your cheeks and propping your jaw, pulling you in with a familiar, firm grip. They're squeezing the back of your neck when he slants his mouth over yours and inhales sharply. Breathing you in—because finally, finally he can breathe again.

You whimper against his teeth when your back bumps into the counter, and he's pulling you off by the back of your neck to move his hold down to your hips, cushioning them from the hard surface. Always the giver.

When you pop away from his mouth, you bring your fingers to your own, slick with saliva and pulsing with bitten soreness.

"What if we made a mistake?" Steve rushes out, eyes wild and settled on your face.

"W-what?"

"What if we made a mistake? We were kids, and maybe...maybe things would be better now—"

"Steve—"

"Don't say anything. Not yet. We can talk tomorrow. Just...if this our last night, I don't wanna spend it talking."

You meet his eyes, softening once more. One hand leaves your hip to brush your cheek and trail down your neck. He ghosts them over the spot below your ear, where you shiver and giggle when he breathes hot air.

"Okay." You nod.

And then his mouth is back on yours. His hands are moving and squeezing and grabbing, and his throat is thick with moans and uneasy breaths.

This is the last night, you think, as he lays you down in bed.

The last time, you promise, when he leaves every inch of your body covered in spit-soaked kisses.

And when the phone rings as he's sucking on your neck and digging bruises into your hips, you let it go. You know it isn't him on the other line, because he's finally in your arms again.

For the very last time.

[applejuicebegood]

Hi gorgeous!! I haven’t gotten a chance to respond to your message about jason x booknerd!reader, but I wanted to quickly message and tell you that I’ve read it and I’m absolutely in love! You literally always come up with such good ideas, idk how you do it!! You’re awesome and ily!!

-(@midnightorchids)

Jason with a Bookworm!S/O

A/N: I know school has started back up for you again babe, so I don't blame you :((( I was originally planning to expand this for you, hopefully you can read this during a study break or some down time (i might repeat some stuff - just look away). It's IB exam season where I am so I share in your pain. Hang in there dude!! Summer is almost here!!

Masterlist

He's a vintage paperback and leather-bound kinda guy. Crime, Sci-Fi, historical-fiction/romance, magical-realism, and non-fiction are his go-to genres. Favourite authors include; Margret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, Frank Herbert, and probably M.T Anderson. He's only a little pretentious about it.

He can spend hours in used book stores digging through the big plastic bins and stuffed cardboard boxes. You help him find specific authors or titles, your basket heavy with your combined finds. He'll carry the bags back to your apartment, his other hand tucked into yours as you gush about excited you are to sort and organise your new additions to your shared library.

He still has some books that Bruce and Alfred gave hm before his murder. Leather bond additions of the Liliad and rare printings of Dracula and Frankenstein. They have these little notes left in the front pages from Bruce that he couldn't bring himself to tear out or throw away entirely. And if you thought his home library was huge- wait until you see the book shelves in his old room.

Since he doesn't spend that much money on himself, he now has every chance to spoil you with your own special additions of your favourite stand-alone's, expensive book-marks, and lavish coffee dates where both of you enjoy your books over the smoothest of richest of espresso.

In the early months of your relationship, most of your dates were spent at bookstores, thrift-shops, and libraries. Your love quite literally grew from the yellowed, torn pages your would both get lost in.

Once his home library combined with yours, most of your bedroom and living room wall space became covered with his floor to ceiling bookshelves. Your bedside tables would each have a small stack of books that you were currently reading.

He absolutely loves how you look with your reading glasses. He thinks it's too cute when you push them up with the back of your hand, entirely focused on an intense passage. Your eyes going wide or your breath stopping at a beautiful line. Your adorable focused stare and sweet round cheeks are accentuated fully. He should be reading the book in his own lap but he's entirely distracted by you. You shut the book with a thump and immediately turn to him to gush about the chapter you just finished only to have his hands catch your jaw and bring your smiling lips against his. And suddenly, you forgot what you were going to say to him.

Jason finds lines and prose in his books that remind him of you and highlight them. He would keep them in a note stack on his phone, just to read them back to remind himself of your beauty. It's something that he could never put into words himself, hence one of the reasons why he adores reading so much. He can find the right order of words that properly express his infinite adoration and care for you.

I've explored this before but you guys have a set date once a month where you'll sit in each-others arms and just read all day. You'll curl up in one of his sweaters with one of your thick Sanderson novels and he'll tuck a blanket around his lap with his special addition of 'Little Women' open in his lap. He'll refill your tea mug because it's always hard to pull you out of your book during your reading days.

You'll order in some warm comfort food for supper and talk about your books respectively. He'll gush about how Jo March is such a revolutionary character and how Amy is actually a metaphor for the loss of innocence girls experience when attempting to emulate patriarchal standards of womanhood.

All while you gaze lovingly back into his eyes, your chin resting on your palm - wondering if a marriage proposal would be too sudden for your evening conversation.

[cameronspecial]

Could you make a one shot where the reader grew up with a very loving family (especially her dad) and rafe surprises her with gifts, activities and acts of service that she loves. She gets confused and asks him what’s with the stuff. He says that he’s recently been spending lots of time with her parents and always asks them what reader likes to show that he can meet the bar her dad has set. (And maybe slip in something on how he’ll set his bar with their future daughters and their boyfriends 😈🥹). I always look forward to reading ur work and I just wanted to finally ask cuz you write everyone’s requests so well!!

Setting The Standards

Pairing: Rafe Cameron x Reader

Warnings: N/A

Pronouns: She/Her

Word Count: 0.6K

Masterlist

Y/N loves that Rafe likes to spend time with her parents without her. She finds it sweet that he takes time out of his day to get to know the other people she loves and thinks it is good for him to be around a family that actually treats him with love and attention. Every time Rafe visits her parents, she notices he gives her a gift and does one more chore around the house the way she likes it. A part of her feels like he is trying to condition her, but it wouldn’t really make sense because he is the one doing the visiting. 

One day, she decides to ask him about it. Her parents spent the day with Rafe at her and his shared house while she was at work. They had to leave before she got home because they had to get to her brother’s house to babysit her niece. She places her purse on the side table and pads to the living room. She isn’t surprised to find a box wrapped in flower-patterned wrapping paper and a bow. She approaches it with a smile, tearing into it as soon as she is within arms reach of it. Her instinct to wait for Rafe goes out the window. She didn’t expect to find ketchup chips in the box. Her parents must have told him about how she became obsessed with the snack when they vacationed in Canada a few years ago. Her hands eagerly reach for the bag and pull it open, shoving the red potato slices into her mouth. She moans at the sweet taste that reaches her taste buds. Rafe enters the room with a chuckle, “I see you like the snack I got you.” His feet take him behind her and he reaches into the bag to pop a chip into his mouth. She stares up at him with a smile. “I did. Thank you. What were you doing?”

“I was switching out your winter clothes with your summer ones. The weather is getting warmer so it’s time for flower patterns and shorts, Bumblebee.” He kisses her cheek with his arms around her waist. Butterfly erupts in her stomach. She hates changing between her closets. It takes forever and is so tedious.

“Aww, thank you, Baby. It means a lot that you do all this for me.” She rests her hands on his and they sway for a little until she gets the courage to ask what she has been wanting to ask. “So… I have noticed that whenever you are with my parents, I get gifts and your acts of service are more tailored towards me. I was wondering why.” 

They freeze and he caresses her forearms. “One reason why I love spending time with your parents is that I get to learn small stuff about you that you may not see as important to me. It helps me make you happy and that’s my mission in life.” 

She awws and kisses his cheek, “That’s so sweet, Baby. I wish I could do those things for you.” He brings his hand up to her cheek as a reassurance. “You may not know it, but just being here for me is enough, Bumblebee. Plus, how am I supposed to show our daughter how she should be treated if I don’t lead by example? Because both of you are meant to be treated like queens. I’m just setting the standards.” A heat spreads over her cheeks at the mention of their possible future. It solidifies her belief that he will make a great father one day. “You are going to set the standards so high for her that she will recognize that she only deserves to be married to a king,” Y/N adds. “Thank you for everything that you do for me.”

Taglist: @winterrrnight @loves0phelia @thelomlisrafecameron @wickedlovely121 @thepatriarchykeychain @drewsmusee @starkowswife @maybankslover @forstarkey @loving-and-dreaming @magicalyoura @rubixgsworld

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 5: Artemis, Goddess Of The Hunt]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 6.6k

Let me know if you'd like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

“So you smoked grass in college,” Aegon says, pondering you with glazed eyes as he slurps his cherry-flavored Mr. Misty. You’re in Biloxi, Mississippi where Aemond is making speeches and meeting with locals to commemorate the first summer of the beaches being desegregated after a decade of peaceful protests and violent white supremacist backlash. Route 90 runs right along the sand dunes. If you walked out of this Dairy Queen, you could look south and see the Gulf of Mexico, placid dark ripples gleaming with moonshine. “And swore, and had a boyfriend, and presumably, what, did shots? Skipped class on occasion?”

“Yeah,” you admit, smiling sheepishly, remembering. You stretch out your fingers. “I chewed gum, I talked during mass. And I loved black nail polish. The nuns would beat my knuckles with rulers, I always had bruises. I wore these flowing skirts down to my ankles and knee-high boots. My hair was a mess, long and blowing around everywhere. My friends and I would do each other’s makeup, silver glitter and purple shadow, pencil on a ridiculous amount of eyeliner and then smudge it out. If you saw a photo you wouldn’t recognize me.”

Aegon takes a drag on his Lucky Strike cigarette, weightless smoke and the tired yellowish haze of florescent lights. Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth is playing from the Zenith radio on the counter by the cash register. “I’d recognize you.”

“I used to skip this one class all the time. The professor was a demon. I could do the math, but not the way he wanted me to. Right solution, wrong steps, I don’t know. I learned it differently in high school, and I couldn’t figure out the formula he wanted me to use. So he’d mark everything a zero even if my answer was correct. I couldn’t stand that bastard. Then the nuns kept catching me sunbathing on the quad when I was supposed to be in Matrices and Vector Spaces. I racked up so many demerits they were going to revoke my weekend pass, and then I wouldn’t be able to go into the city with my friends. So I stole the demerit book and burned it up on the stove in my dorm. Almost set the whole building on fire.”

Aegon is laughing. “You did not. Not you, not perfect ever-obedient Miss America!”

“I did. I really did.” You sip your own Mr. Misty, lemon-lime. Across the restaurant, Criston and Fosco are eating banana splits—dripping chocolate syrup and melted ice cream all over their table—and passionately debating who is going to end up in the World Series; Criston favors the Cardinals and the Orioles, Fosco says the Red Sox and the Cubs. The rest of the Targaryen family is back at the hotel watching news coverage of the Republican National Convention, something you can only stomach so much of, Otto’s cynical commentary, Aemond’s remaining eye fixed fiercely on the screen as he nips at an Old Fashioned. “I was wild back then.”

“And you gave it all up to be Aemond’s first lady.”

You think back to where it started: palm trees, salt water, alligators in drainage ditches. “My father grew up in a shack outside of Tallahassee. No electricity, no running water, he dropped out of school in eighth grade to help take care of his siblings when his mom died. They moved south to live with their aunt in Tampa, and my father wound up in Tarpon Springs working as a sea sponge diver.”

Aegon’s eyebrows rise, like he thinks you’re teasing him. “Sea sponges…?”

“I’m serious! It paid better than picking oranges or sweeping up in a factory. It’s dangerous. You have to wear this heavy rubber suit and walk around on the ocean floor, sometimes 50 feet or more below the surface.”

“What do people do with sea sponges?”

“Oh right, you would be unfamiliar. You’re supposed to clean yourself with them, like a loofah. Soap? Water? Ringing any bells?”

He chuckles and rolls his eyes. “You’re a very mean person. Aren’t you supposed to be setting an example for the merciful wives and daughters of this great nation?”

“Painters and potters buy sponges too. And some women use them as contraceptives. You can soak them in lemon juice and then shove them up there and it kills sperm.”

“I suddenly have great appreciation for the sea sponge industry. God bless the sea sponges.”

“So my father spent a few years diving, and he fell in love with a girl who worked at one of the shops he sold sponges to. That was my mother. They got married when he had absolutely nothing, and by their fifth anniversary he had his own fleet of boats, a gift shop, and a processing and shipping facility, all of which they owned jointly. They just opened the Spongeorama Sponge Factory this past April, a cute little tourist trap. But my point is that they were partners from the start. My father listens to my mother, and she works alongside him, and it was never like what I’ve seen from my friends’ parents: dad at the office 80 hours a week, mom at home strung out on Valium, just these…deeply separate, cold planets locked in orbit but never touching each other. I knew I didn’t want that. I wanted a husband who was building something I could be a part of. I wanted a man who respected me.”

Aegon watches you as he lights a fresh cigarette, not saying what you imagine he wants to: And how is that working out? He puffs on his Lucky Strike a few times and then offers it to you. You aren’t supposed to smoke, not even tobacco—it’s not ladylike, it’s masculine, it’s subversive—but you take it and hold it between your index and middle fingers, inhaling an ashy bitterness that blood learns to crave. The bracelets on your wrist jangle, thin silver chains that match the diamonds in your ears. Your dress is mint green, your hair in your signature Brigitte Bardot-inspired updo. Aegon is wearing a black t-shirt with The Who stamped across the front. When you pass the cigarette back to him, Aegon asks: “What music did you listen to? The Stones, The Animals?”

“Yeah. And Hendrix, The Kinks, Aretha Franklin…”

“Phil Ochs?”

“I love him. He’s got a song about Mississippi, you know.”

“Oh, I’m aware. It’s one of my favorites.”

“And I’m currently getting a little obsessed with Loretta Lynn. She’s so angry!”

“She’s sanctimonious, that’s what she is. Always bitching about men.”

“Six kids and an alcoholic husband will do that to someone.”

Aegon winces, and then you realize what you’ve said. Loretta Lynn sounds a lot like Mimi. He finishes his Mr. Misty and then fidgets restlessly with his white cardboard cup, spinning it around by the straw. You feel bad, though you shouldn’t. You wouldn’t have a month ago.

“Aegon,” you say gently, and he reluctantly looks up at you, sunburned cheeks, blonde hair shagging over his eyes. “Why do you ignore your children? They’re interesting, they’re fun. Violeta invited me to help her make cakes with her Easy-Bake Oven last week. And Cosmo…he’s so clever. But it’s like he doesn’t know who you are. He might actually think Fosco’s his dad.”

Aegon takes one last drag off his cigarette and discards the end of it in his Mr. Misty cup. Now he’s fiddling with it again, avoiding your gaze. “I don’t have much to offer them.”

“I think you do.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do,” you insist. “You can be kind of nice sometimes.”

He frowns, staring out the window. You know he can’t see anything but darkness and streetlights. “I should have been the one to go to Vietnam. If somebody had to get shot at so Aemond could be president, I was the right choice. No one would miss me. No one would mourn me. Daeron didn’t deserve that. But I was too old, so Otto and my father got him to enlist. Now he’s in the jungle and my mother has nightmares about Western Union telegrams. If I was the son over there, I think she’d sleep easier.”

I’m glad you’re still here, you think. Instead you say: “Your children need you.”

“No they don’t. Between me and Mimi, they’re better off as orphans. Helaena and Fosco can be their parents. Maybe they’ll have a fighting chance.”

The glass door opens, and a man walks into the Dairy Queen with his two sons scampering behind him, all with sandy flip flops and carrying fishing rods. The dad is at least six feet tall and brawny, and wearing a Wallace For President baseball cap. You and Aegon both notice it, then share an amused, disparaging glance. You mouth: Imbecile bigot. The man continues to the cash register and orders two chocolate shakes and a root beer float. At their own table, Criston is mopping up melted ice cream with napkins and telling Fosco to stop being such a pig.

“Me?!” Fosco says. “You are the pig, that spot there is your ice cream, do not blame your failings on poor Fosco. I have already let you drag me to this terrible state and never once complained about the fried food or the mosquitos. And that thing out there is not a real beach. The water is still and brown, brown!”

“For once in your life, pretend you have a work ethic and help me clean up the table.”

“You are being very anti-immigrant right now, do you know that?”

Aegon begins singing, ostensibly to himself. “Here’s to the state of Mississippi, for underneath her borders, the devil draws no lines.”

“Aegon, no,” you whisper, petrified. You know this song. You know where he’s going.

He’s beaming as he continues: “If you drag her muddy rivers, nameless bodies you will find.”

Now the man in the Wallace hat is looking at Aegon. His sons are happily gulping down their chocolate shakes. Criston and Fosco, still bickering, haven’t noticed yet.

“Oh, the fat trees of the forest have hid a thousand crimes.”

“Aegon, don’t,” you plead quietly. “He’ll murder you.”

“The calendar is lyin’ when it reads the present time.”

“Hey,” calls the man in the Wallace For President hat. “You got a problem, boy?”

Aegon drums his palms on the tabletop as he sings, loudly now: “Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of, Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of!”

In seconds, the man has crossed the room, grabbed Aegon by the collar of his t-shirt, yanked him out of his chair and struck him across the face: closed fist, lethal intent, the sick wet sound of bones on flesh. Aegon’s nose gushes, his lip splits open, but he isn’t flinching away, he isn’t afraid. He’s yowling like a rabid animal and clawing, kicking, swinging at the giant who’s ensnared him. You are screaming as you leap to your feet, your chair falling over and clattering on the floor behind you. The man’s sons are hooting joyously. “Git him, Paw!” one of them shouts.

“Criston?!” you shriek, but he and Fosco are already here, tugging at the man’s massive arms and beating on his back, trying to untangle him from Aegon.

“Stop!” Criston roars. “You don’t want to hurt him! He’s a Targaryen!”

“A Targaryen, huh?” the man says as he steps away, wiping the blood from his knuckles on his tattered white t-shirt, stained with fish guts. “All the better. I wish that bullet they put in Aemond woulda been just another inch to the left. Directly through the aorta.”

Aegon lunges at the man again, hissing, fists swinging. Fosco yanks him back.

“Are you gonna call someone or not?!” Criston snaps at the girl behind the cash register, but she only gives him a steely glare in return. This is Wallace country. There’s a reason why it took four years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to finally desegregate the beaches.

“We should go,” you tell Criston softly.

“Yes, we will leave now,” Fosco says, hauling Aegon towards the front door. Then, to the cashier: “Thank you for the ice cream, but it was not very good. If you are ever in Italy, try the gelato. You will learn so much.”

“I can’t wait ‘til November,” the man gloats, ominous, threatening. His sons are standing tall and proud beside him. “When Aemond loses, you can all cart your asses back to Europe. We don’t want you here. America ain’t for people like you.”

“It literally is,” you say, unable to stop yourself. “It’s on the Statue of Liberty.”

“Yeah, where do you think your ancestors came from?!” Aegon yells at the man. “Are you a Seminole, pal? I didn’t think so—!” Fosco and Criston lug him through the doorway before more punches can be thrown.

Outside—under stars and streetlights and a full moon—Aegon burst out laughing. This is when he feels alive; this is when the blood in his veins turns to wave and riptides. You didn’t think to grab napkins from the table, so you wipe the blood off his face with your bare hand, assessing the damage. He’ll be fine; swollen and sore, but fine.

“You’re insane, you know that?” you say. “You could have been killed.”

Aegon pats your cheek twice and grins, blood on his teeth. “The world would keep spinning, little Io.” Then he starts walking back towards the White House Hotel.

~~~~~~~~~~

When the four of you arrive at your suite, Aemond, Otto, Ludwika, and Alicent are still gathered around the television. The nannies have taken the children to bed. Helaena is reading The Bell Jar in an armchair in the corner of the room. Mimi is passed out on the couch, several empty glasses on the coffee table. ABC is showing a clip they recorded earlier today of Ludwika travelling with Aemond’s retinue after he made an impassioned speech condemning the lack of recognition of the evils of slavery at Beauvoir, the historic home of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The reporter is asking Ludwika what she thinks makes Aemond a better presidential candidate than Eugene McCarthy, as McCarthy shares many of the same policy positions and has an additional 15 years of political experience.

“This McCarthy is not a real man,” Ludwika responds, her face stony and mistrustful. “He reminds me of the communists back in my country. Did you know he met with Che Guevara in New York City a few years ago? Why would he do such a thing?”

Now, Otto turns to her in this hotel room. “I love you.”

Ludwika takes a sip of her martini. “I want another Gucci bag.”

“Yes, yes. Tomorrow, my dear.”

“What happened to you?” Aemond asks his brother, half-exasperated and half-concerned. Criston has fetched a washcloth from the bathroom for Aegon to hold against his bleeding lip and nose. Aemond is still wearing his blue suit from a long day of campaigning, but he’s taken out his eye and put on his eyepatch. His gaze flicks from Aegon’s face to the blood still coating your left hand. On the couch, Mimi’s bare foot twitches but she doesn’t wake up.

“There was a Wallace supporter at the Dairy Queen,” you say. “Aegon felt inspired to defending you.”

Aemond chuckles. “Did you win?” he asks Aegon.

“I would have if the guy wasn’t two of me.”

On the television screen, Richard Nixon is accepting his party’s nomination for president at the Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida.

“He’s a buffoon,” Otto sneers. “So awkward and undignified. Look at him sweating! Look at those ridiculous jowls! And he comes from nothing. His family is trash.”

“Americans love a rags to riches story,” you say. And then, somewhat randomly: “He loves his wife. He proposed to Pat on their very first date, and she said no. So he drove her to dates with other men for years until she finally reconsidered. He said it was love at first sight. He’s never had a mistress. And jowls or no jowls, his family adores him.”

Aegon turns to you, still clutching the washcloth against his face. “Really?”

You nod. “That’s the sort of thing the women talk about.”

There’s a knock at the door. You all look at each other, confounded; no one has ordered room service, no one is expecting any visitors, and the nannies have keys in the event of an emergency. Fosco is closest to the door, so he opens it. A man in uniform is standing there with a golden Western Union telegram in his hands. Alicent screams and collapses. Criston bolts to her.

“It’s okay,” you say. “He’s not dead. Whatever happened, Daeron’s not dead.”

Otto crinkles his brow at you. “How do you know?”

“Because if he was killed, there would be a priest here too.” They always send a priest when the boy is dead. Aegon glances at you, eyes wet and fearful.

“Ma’am,” the soldier—a major you see now, spotting the golden oak leaves—says to Alicent as he removes his cap. “I regret to inform you that your son Daeron was missing in action for several weeks, and we’ve just received confirmation that he’s being held as a prisoner of war in Hỏa Lò Prison.”

“He’s in the Hanoi Hilton?!” Otto exclaims. “Oh, fuck those people and their swamp, how did Kennedy ever think we had something to gain from getting tangled up in that mess?”

“But he’s alive?” Aemond says. “He’s unharmed?”

“Yes sir,” the captain replies. “It is our understanding that he is in good condition. The North Vietnamese are aware that he is a very valuable prisoner, like Admiral McCain’s son John. He’ll be used in negotiations. He is of far more use to them alive than dead.”

“So we can get Daeron back,” Aegon says. “I mean, we have to be able to, right? Aemond’s running for president, he’ll probably win in November, we have millions of dollars, we can spring one man out of some third-world jail, right?”

The captain continues: “Tomorrow when your family returns to New Jersey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be there to discuss next steps with you. I’m afraid I’m only authorized to give you the news as it was relayed to me.” He entrusts the telegram to Otto, who rapidly opens it and stares down at the mechanical typewriter words.

“I have to pray,” Alicent says suddenly. “Helaena, will you pray with me? There’s a Greek church down the road. Holy Trinity, I think it’s called.”

Obediently, Helaena joins her mother and follows her to the doorway. Criston leaves with them. Otto gives his new wife a harsh, meaningful stare. Ludwika, an ardent yet covert atheist, sighs irritably. “Wait. I want to pray too,” she says, and vanishes with them into the hall.

As the captain departs, Mimi sits up on the couch, blinking, groggy. “What? What happened?”

“Go with Alicent,” Otto tells her. “She’s headed downstairs.”

“What? Why…?”

“Just go!” he barks.

Mimi staggers to her feet and hobbles out of the hotel room, her sundress—patterned with forget-me-nots—billowing around her. The only people left are Otto, Aemond, Fosco, Aegon, and you. The fact that you are the sole woman permitted to remain here feels intentional.

After a moment, Otto speaks. “You know, John McCain has famously refused to be released from the Hanoi Hilton until all the men imprisoned before him have been freed. He doesn’t want special treatment. And that’s a very noble thing to do, don’t you think? It has endeared him and the McCains to the public.”

Aemond and Otto are looking at each other, communicating in a silent language not of letters or accents but colors: red ambition, green hunger, grey impassionate morality. Fosco is observing them uneasily. Aemond says at last: “Daeron wants to help this family.”

“You’re not going to try to get him out.” Aegon realizes.

Aemond turns to him, businesslike, vague distant sympathy. “It’s only until November.”

“No, you know people!” Aegon explodes. “You pick up the phone, you call in every favor, you get him out of there now! You have no idea if he has another three months, you don’t know what kind of shape he’s in! They could be dislocating his arms or chopping off his fingers right now, they could be starving him, they could be beating him, you can’t just leave him there!”

“It’s not your decision. It could have been, had you accepted your role as the eldest son. But you didn’t. So it’s my job to handle these things. You don’t get to hate me for making choices you were too cowardly too take responsibility for.”

“But Daeron could die,” Aegon says, his voice going brittle.

“Any of us could die. We’re in a very dangerous line of work. Greatness killed Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Huey Long, Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Vernon Dahmer, Martin Luther King Jr., does that mean we should all give up the fight? Of course not. The work isn’t finished. We have to keep going.”

“Will you stop pretending this is about America?! This is about you wanting to be president, and everything you’ve ever done has been in pursuit of that trophy, and you keep shoving new people into the line of fire and it’s not right!”

“Aegon,” Otto says calmly. “It’s unlikely we’d be able to get him out before the election anyway. Negotiations take time. But if Aemond wins in November, he’ll be in a very advantageous position. The North Vietnamese aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t kill the brother of a U.S. president. They don’t want their vile little corner of the world flattened by nukes.”

“Still, it feels so wrong to leave a brother in peril,” Fosco says. “It is unnatural. Of course Aegon will be upset. We could at least see what a deal to get Daeron released would entail, maybe his arrival home would be a good headline—”

“And who the fuck asked you?” Otto demands, and Fosco goes quiet.

“Okay, then tell Mom,” Aegon says to Aemond. “Tell her you’re going to pretend Daeron made some self-sacrificial vow not to come home until all the other POWs can too. Tell her you’re going to let him get tortured for a few months before you take this seriously.”

Aemond replies cooly: “Why would you want to upset her? She can’t change it. You’ll only make her suffering worse.”

“What do you think?” Otto asks you, and you know that he isn’t seeking counsel. He’s summoning you like a dog to perform a trick, like an actor to recite a line. He’s waiting for you to say that it’s a smart strategy, because it is. He’s waiting for you to bend to Aemond’s will as your station requires you to, as moons are bound to their planets.

“I think it’s wrong,” you murmur; and Aemond is thunderstruck by your treason.

Without another word, you walk into the bathroom, turn on the sink, and gaze down at Aegon’s blood on your palm. For some reason, it’s very difficult to bring yourself to wash it away.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s mid-August now, the world painted in goldenrod yellow and sky blue. The Democratic National Convention is in two weeks. You and Aemond are posing on the beach at Asteria, surrounded by an adoring gaggle of journalists who are snapping photographs and jotting down quotes on their notepads. You’re sitting demurely on a sand dune, you’re building sandcastles with the children you borrowed from Aegon and Helaena, you’re flying kites, you’re gazing confidently into the sunlit horizon where a glorious new age is surely dawning.

“Mr. Targaryen, what is it that makes your partnership so successful?” a journalist asks as flashbulbs pulse like lightning. “What do you think is the most crucial characteristic to have in a wife?”

Aemond doesn’t need to consider this before he answers. He always has his compliment picked out. “Loyalty,” your husband says. “Not just to me or to the Targaryen family, but to our shared cause. This year has been indescribably difficult for me and my wife. I announced my candidacy, we embarked on a strenuous national campaign that we’re currently only halfway through, I barely survived a brutal assassination attempt in May, in July we lost our first child to hyaline membrane disease after he was born six weeks prematurely, and at the beginning of this month we learned that my youngest brother Daeron was taken by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war. To find the strength not just to get out of bed in the morning, not just to be there for me and this family in our personal lives, but to tirelessly traverse the country with me inspiring Americans to believe in a better future…it’s absolutely remarkable. I’m in awe of her. And when she is the first lady of the United States, she will continue to amaze us all with her unwavering faith and dedication.”

There are whistles and cheers and strobing flashbulbs. You smile—elegant, soft, practiced—as Aemond rests a hand firmly on your waist. You lean into him, feeling out-of-place, bewildered that you’ve ever slept with him, full of dull panic that soon you’ll have to again.

“How about you, Mrs. Targaryen?” another reporter asks. “Same question, essentially. What is the trait that you most admire in your husband?”

And in the cascading clicks of photographs being captured, your mind goes entirely blank. You can think of so many other people—Aegon, Ari, Alicent, Daeron, Fosco, Cosmo—but not Aemond. It’s like you’ve blocked him out somehow, like he’s a sketch you erased. But you can’t hesitate. You can’t let the uncertainty read on your face. You begin speaking without knowing where you’re going, something that is rare for you. “Aemond is the most tenacious person I’ve ever met. When he has a goal in mind, nothing can stop him.” You pause, and there are a few awkward chuckles from the journalists. You swiftly recover. “He never stops learning. He always knows the right thing to do or say. And what he wants more than anything is to serve the American people. Aemond won’t disappoint you. He’s not capable of it. He will do whatever it takes to make this country more prosperous, more peaceful, and more free.”

There are applause and gracious thank yous, but Aemond gives you a look—just for a second, just long enough that you can catch it—that warns you to get it together. Fifteen minutes later, he and the flock of reporters are headed to one of the guest houses to conduct a long-form interview. This will be the bulk of the article; you will appear in one or two photos, you will supply a few quotes. The rest of the story is Aemond. You are an accessory, like a belt or a bracelet. He’s the person who picks you out of a drawer each morning and wears you until you go out of fashion.

Released from your obligations, you return to the main house and disappear into your upstairs bathroom. You are there for fifteen minutes and emerge rattled, routed. You pace aimlessly around your bedroom for a while, then try again; still no luck. You go back outside and stare blankly at the ocean, wondering what you’re going to do. Down on the beach, Fosco is teaching the kids how to yo-yo. Ludwika is sunbathing in a bikini.

“What’s wrong with you?”

You whirl to see Aegon, popping a Valium into his mouth and washing it down with a splash of straight rum from a coffee mug. “Huh? Nothing. I’m great.”

“No, something’s wrong. You look lost. You look like me.”

You gaze out over the ocean again, chewing your lower lip.

Aegon snickers, fascinated, sensing a scandal. “What did you do?”

Your eyes drift to him. “You can’t make fun of me.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

There is a long, heavy lull before you answer. When you speak, it’s all in a rush, like you can’t unburden yourself of the words fast enough. “I put a tampon in and I can’t get it out.”

Aegon immediately breaks his promise and cackles. “You did what?!” Then he tries to be serious. “Wait. Sorry. Uh, really?”

You’re on the verge of tears. “I’ve been bleeding since I had the baby, and I hate using tampons, I almost never do, but Aemond wanted me to wear this dress for the photoshoot and it’s super gauzy and from certain angles I felt like I could see the pad bulge when I checked in the mirror, so I put a tampon in for the first time in probably a year. I’m not even supposed to be using them for another few weeks because my uterus isn’t healed all the way or whatever. And now I can’t get it out and it’s been in there for like six hours and I’m scared I’m going to get an infection and die in the most pointless, humiliating way imaginable.”

“Okay, calm down, calm down,” Aegon says. “There’s no string?”

“No, I’ve checked multiple times. It must be a defective one and they forgot to put a string in it at the factory and I didn’t notice, or the string somehow got tucked under it, I don’t know, but I can’t get it out, it’s like…the angle isn’t right. I can just barely feel it with my fingertips, but I can’t grab it. I’m going to have to go to the hospital to get it taken out, but I’m scared word will spread and journalists will show up to get photos when I leave and then everyone will be asking me why I was at the emergency room to begin with and I’m going to have to make up something and…and…” You can’t talk anymore. There are other reasons why you don’t want to go to the hospital. You haven’t stepped foot in one since Ari died; the thought makes you feel like you are looking down to see blood on your thighs all over again, like you’ll never have enough air in your lungs.

“Did you bleed through it? Because that should help it slide out easier.”

“I don’t know,” you moan miserably. “I mean, I guess I did, because there was blood when I checked a few minutes ago. I had to stuff my underwear with toilet paper.”

“Why didn’t you just tell Aemond you couldn’t wear this dress?”

You give him an impatient glance. “I’m tired of having the same conversation.” When do you think you’ll be done bleeding? When do you think it’ll be time to start trying again?

Aegon sighs. “Do you want me to get it out for you?”

“Please stop. I’m really panicking here.”

“I’m not joking.”

You stare at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I have fished many objects out of many orifices, you cannot shock me. I am unshockable.”

“I’d rather walk down to the sand right now and strangle myself with Fosco’s yo-yo.”

“Okay. So who are you gonna ask to drive you to the hospital?”

You hesitate.

“I’d offer to do it,” Aegon says, grinning, holding up his mug. “But I’m in no condition to drive.”

“But you are in the proper condition to extract a rogue tampon, huh?”

“Two minutes tops. That’s a guarantee. My personal best is fifteen seconds. And that was for a lost condom, much trickier to locate than a tampon.”

Perhaps paradoxically, the more you consider his offer, the more tempting it seems. No complicated trip and cover story? Over in just a few minutes? “If you ever tell anyone about this, I will never forgive you. I will hate you forever.”

Aegon taunts: “I thought you already hated me.”

You aren’t sure what you feel for him, but it’s certainly not hate. Not anymore. “Where would we do it?”

“In my office. And by that I mean my basement.”

“Your filthy, disease-ridden basement? On your shag carpet full of crabs?”

“You’re in luck,” he jokes. “My crab exterminator service just came by yesterday.”

You exhale in a low, despairing groan.

“Hey, would you rather do it on the dining room table? I’m game. Your choice.”

You watch the seagulls swooping in the afternoon air, the banners of sailboats on the glittering water. “Okay. The basement.”

You walk with Aegon to the house and—after ensuring that no one is around to notice—sneak with him down the creaking basement steps, the door locked behind you. Aegon is darting around; he sets a small trashcan by the carpet and tosses you two towels, then goes to wash his hands in his tiny bathroom, not nearly enough room for someone to stretch out across the linoleum floor.

You’re surveying the scene nervously. “I don’t want to get blood all over your stuff.”

“You’re the cleanest thing that’s ever been on that carpet. Lie down.”

You place one towel on the green shag carpet, then whisk off your panties, discard the bloody knot of toilet paper in the trashcan, and pull the skirt of your dress up around your waist so it’s out of the way. Then you sit down and drape the second towel over your thighs so you’re hidden from him, like you’re about to be examined by a doctor. Your heart is thumping, but you don’t exactly feel like you want to stop. It’s more exhilarating than fear, you think; it is forbidden, it is shameful, it is a microscopic betrayal of Aemond that he’ll never know about.

Aegon moseys out of the bathroom, flicking drops of water from his hands. He wears one of his usual counterculture uniforms: a frayed green army jacket with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, khaki shorts, tan moccasins. He kicks them off before he kneels on the shag carpet. He checks the clock on the wall. “2:07. I promised two minutes max. Let’s see how I do. Ready?”

You rest the back of your head on your linked hands, raise your knees, take a deep and unsteady breath. “Ready.”

But he can see that you’re shaking. “Hey,” Aegon says kindly, pressing his hand down on the towel so you’re covered. “Do you want me to go to the hospital with you? I’ll try to distract people. I’ll pretend I’m having a seizure or something.”

“No, I’m okay,” you insist. “I just want it out. I want this over with.”

“Got it.” And then he begins. He stares at the wall to his left, not looking at you, navigating by feel. You feel the pressure of two fingers, a stretching that is not entirely unpleasant. He’s warm and careful, strangely unobtrusive. Still, you suck in a breath and shift on the carpet. “Shh, shh, shh,” Aegon whispers, skimming his other hand up and down the inside of your thigh, and shiver like you’ve never felt before rolls backwards up the length of your spine. “Relax. You alright?”

“Fine. Totally fine.”

“Oh yeah, it’s definitely in there,” Aegon says. His brow is creased with comprehension. “No string…you’re right, it must either be tangled up somehow or it never had one to begin with. Maybe you accidentally inserted it upside down.”

“Now you insult my intelligence. As if I’m not embarrassed enough.”

“I should have put on a record to set the mood. What gets you going, Marvin Gaye? Elvis?”

“The seductive voice of Richard Milhous Nixon. Maybe you can get him on the phone.”

Aegon laughs hysterically. His fingertips push the tampon against your cervix and you yelp. “Sorry, sorry, my mistake,” Aegon says. There are beads of sweat on his forehead, on his temples; now his eyes are squeezed shut. “I’m gonna try to wiggle it out…”

As he works, there are sensations you can’t quite explain: a very slow-building indistinct desire, a loosening, a readying, a drop in your belly when you think about the fact that he’s the one touching you. Then he happens to press in just the right spot and there is a sudden pang of real pleasure—craving, aching, a deep red flare of previously unfathomable temptation—and you instinctively reach for him. You hand meets his forearm, and for the first time since he started Aegon looks at your face, alarmed, afraid that he’s hurt you again. But once your eyes meet you’re both trapped there, and you can’t pretend you’re not, his fingers still inside you, his pulse racing, a rivulet of sweat snaking down the side of his face, his eyes an opaque murky blue like water you’re desperate to claw your way into. You know what you want to tell him, but the words are impossible. Don’t stop. Come closer.

Aegon clears his throat, forces himself to look away, and at last dislodges the tampon. It appears dark and bloody in his grasp. “No string,” he confirms, holding it up and turning it so you can see. “Factory reject.”

“Just like you.”

He glances at the clock. “2:09. I delivered precisely what was promised.” He chucks the tampon into the trashcan and then grins as he helps pull you upright with his clean hand. “So do you like to cuddle afterwards, or…?”

You’re giggling, covering your flushed face. “Shut up.”

“Personally, I enjoy being ridden into the ground and then called a good boy.”

“Go away.” You nod to where he disposed of the tampon and say before stopping to think: “You’re not going to keep that under your ashtray too?”

Aegon freezes and blinks at you. He smiles slowly, cautiously. “No, I think that would be a little unorthodox, even for me.” He pitches you a clean washcloth from the bathroom closet. “That should get you upstairs.”

“Thanks.” You shove it between your legs and rise to your feet, smoothing the skirt of your dress. “I owe you something. I’m not sure what, but I’ll figure it out.”

“Hey,” Aegon says, and waits for you to turn to him. “Maybe I’m not that bad.”

“Maybe,” you agree thoughtfully.

Just before you hurry upstairs, you steal a glimpse of Aegon in the bathroom, the door kicked only half-closed. He has turned on the water, but he’s not using it yet. Aegon is staring down at the blood on his hand, half-dried scarlet impermanent ink.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hi, it’s me again. I’m in solitary confinement. There’s a guy in the cell next to mine; we talk to each other with a modified version of Morse code. Tap tap tap on the wall, he taps back, etcetera etcetera, you get the idea. You’re not going to believe this, but he says his name is John McCain. Well, actually, he told me his name is Jobm McCbin, but I think that’s because I translated the taps wrong. I might be in the Hanoi Hilton, but at least they have me in the VIP section! Hahaha.

Every few hours the guards show up to do a very impressive magic trick: they wave their batons like wands, I turn black and blue. Sometimes one of my teeth even disappears. Isn’t that something? Houdini would love it. There’s a rat that I’m making friends with. I give her nibbles of my stale bread, she gives me someone to talk to. She’s good company. I’ve named her Tessarion.

Allow me to make something absolutely fucking clear.

I would very much like to be rescued.

[mingirn]

only lovers alive

song mingi x reader

synopsis: you return back home after graduating college to a new relationship you have to navigate with your childhood best friend

warnings: smut, a lot of mentions of sexual acts, drinking, insecurities, jealousy, dirty talk, phone sex, sort of (very brief) exhibitionism, gender neutral reader

word count: 20,3k

notes: hello. i’ve had this sitting in my drafts for 1-2 years and saw a tweet that said ”i’d pick you up from the airport in every universe” and decided to let this out of jail bc of that. although the fic itself is inspired by this song. fic title comes from this song. i’m gonna schedule this to post while i’m asleep because i’m terrified to post after not being on here for such a long time. please be gentle with me >:(

It’s dark outside your window, but the streets are lit up by countless glimmering lights. Even though the day is turning into night, there’s still plenty of traffic. Beaming headlights join the streams of light from street lamps, and it’s just your apartment that is missing a glow from a lamp on its windowsill. You’ve got all yours packed up and sent away already, and you’re taking in the city for the last time.

”Are you going to miss it?” Mingis's voice is soft on the other end of the phone. You’ve got him on speaker, lying right next to you.

”I guess, yeah. It’s been nice, even though I haven’t spent much time exploring or enjoying the city.”

It’s true. You’ve just finished your last semester and finally graduated after moving hours away from your hometown to go to your dream school. It feels like eons since then, when you had to say tearful goodbyes to your friends and family and settle down in a cramped little dorm room. You’d been lucky enough to get student housing in your last year, a bigger place where you’d been living for the past two semesters. This city wasn’t just a stark difference to your hometown, it was the definition of complete and total opposite.

The town you grew up in was the type to hide, not really forgotten, just barely there. Small and tucked away between long stretches of forests and fields. You’d be blessed to live there your whole life, yet lucky to get away. You’d go home to visit during summer break and just bask in how simple life was back home, but beyond all, how it was still home to all the things you held most dear. Top of that list: Mingi.

”You’ll always be able to go back, maybe we can go during the summer and you can take me to that Chinese place you’ve talked so much about,” Mingi says. He’s starting to sound a little sleepy, and it’s a reminder that you should probably get to sleep soon. You’ve got an early flight to catch, then it’s just a span of a few hours separating you and Mingi. He’ll be coming to pick you up, so you suppose you better let him go too so he can get some sleep.

”You know I’d love that,” you smile, and slump down on your bed. ”I think we should head to bed though, maybe we should leave this future talk for some other time.”

He hums in agreement, and the line goes quiet for a minute. You can hear his breathing through the speaker, slow and steady. When you close your eyes it’s almost like he’s here.

”Hey, uh,” he begins, and he swallows audibly. ”Do you think it’s gonna be weird?”

Ah, there it is. You’ve almost been waiting, expecting, him to ask it.

”No, I don’t… It’s not like we haven’t seen each other since I moved away. We’ve spent almost all of the last three summers together, right?” you reason. It’s not really what Mingi is referring to, but you have to start somewhere. Soften him up, reassure him.

”Well yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just different because we weren’t doing those things then, and now it’s… well, different.”

”Mingi,” you say with firmness in your voice. ”It would only be different if you said and did all those things just because it was over the phone. If you didn’t mean any of it.”

Mingi takes another moment of silence, and you can imagine that he’s probably chewing nervously on his bottom lip. It makes you a bit nervous as well, the fact that you can’t see him. You’d always been so good at reading his face and figuring out what he was thinking. You need that more than ever now, the ability to read him, because so much has changed.

”I’ve meant every word I’ve ever said,” he says, and something about the words feels so heavy and serious, and he seems to realize it too. ”I really, really want to fuck you, not just over the phone.”

Mingis voice is normal when he says it, not a hint of underlying desire or desperation, but the words themselves send a flash of warmth through your body. It’s become regular at this point, this shift in your friendship. The first time you guys crossed over that invisible line had been under the influence of alcohol, you had come home drunk from the bar after celebrating good test results with some friends and Mingi had been celebrating getting a new job with your mutual friends back at home. It just sort of happened, you dialing his number and gushing about how much you missed him. The conversation went on for half an hour when you started trying to undress from your bar clothes and Mingi had asked what you were doing. He’d asked about what you were wearing, and what color your underwear was, then he informed you that he was just in his boxers, and for some reason you found yourself telling him about how sexually frustrated you had been lately in hopes that he’d offer help. And he did.

That first night it was quick and needy, neither of you initiated it, it just happened in perfect symbiosis. You checked the call log the day after and saw that you guys had been on the phone for hours, the last of which you had both eventually fallen asleep on call until your phone battery died. Tentatively, you had called him during the afternoon and asked him if he had any recollection of yesterday night's events. His voice had been raspy and breathy, throat raw from drinking and moaning, and you can still remember every inflection in the tone of his voice when he asked if you had liked it. That had been the start of it all, of an almost full year of phone sex, sexting, and swapping pictures.

”I’m glad to hear that,” you say, trying to sound just as casual even though you can feel butterflies swirl through your stomach. ”I really can’t wait, Mingi. Can’t wait to fuck you and can’t wait to see you, I’ve missed you so much.”

”I’ve missed you too… Get some sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow at the airport, just look for a handsome tall guy!”

You fall asleep with Mingis laugh ringing in your ears.

The next day, your plane lands at a far emptier airport than the one you’d set off from. It’s early in the day and the sun is high in the sky, occasionally passing behind weak and thin clouds. The air is so different out here than in the big city. The sounds are clearer, the people are kinder, and everything feels so much more simple here.

You sit on a hard airport bench and wait as your phone connects to the internet after having been turned off, seeing all your missed messages coming in. You’re just about to type up a response to Mingis ’You there?’ when a call from him pops up on the screen.

”Yeah, I’m here!” you chirp into the phone.

”’Here’ where? I’m just walking around and-”

”Mingi, you idiot, turn around!” you call out loud enough for him to hear it on the phone and in person, though he’s quite a distance away from you. You could recognize the back of his head anywhere, even though it’s short and bleached blond right now, it’s undeniably Mingi.

He spins around and spots you right away, making eye contact with you across the big, open space. Seeing Mingi in person for the first time in months washes away all nervosity, all the same as it stirs up a new sense of anticipation. You jump to your feet and you're both rushing towards each other, crashing together in a tight hug.

You find yourself closing your eyes, tucking your head into his chest, and inhaling his scent until it makes you lightheaded. He smells just like your Mingi, that same cologne he’s worn since he was 15, the same laundry detergent, and he smells faintly of sunscreen. It’s not the first time you’ve hugged him, not by a long shot, but it feels like the first time you’ve held him like this. Your arms around his middle, taking note of how big he feels in your hold, and you’re thinking about every little detail you’ve missed out on by being away from him. His warmth, his touch, his size, his voice.

”Hi there,” he murmurs, and his voice is so different up close. It’s deeper and darker, it reverberates through his chest. ”Was the flight okay?”

Something about the conversation he’s initiating makes you feel like now is the appropriate time to pull away, and that in turn has you questioning how appropriate that hug had been on your part. Mingi, however, feels cool as ice when he grabs hold of your bag and slings his arm around your shoulder to guide you out of the airport.

”Uh,” you begin, feeling a bit stumped. You continue, ”It was as good as you can expect, but the food sucked, I can’t wait to get home and eat my mom's cooking.”

”Tired of ramen and takeout?” he asks, chuckling.

”You could say that.”

You try to move on past your own weirdness. Mingi is normal and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be as well. Still, there’s a sort of buzz igniting under your skin from being in Mingi's presence again. You suppose it’s always like that, this initial excitement of seeing each other again and getting to update each other on all the things you’ve been up to while knowing you’ve got all the time in the world to hang out. But there’s this nagging voice at the back of your head that is frantically going through all the conversations you’ve had with Mingi on the phone. Late at night, underneath your covers, with Mingi moaning and speaking filth on the speaker. It doesn’t match up with the Mingi in front of you, the Mingi that has been your closest friend for years, and it makes you feel electric.

Mingi pops his trunk open and you load your bags into his car, then get inside and start the half-hour drive back to your hometown.

You only dare to steal little glances over at him. Watching him in the rearview mirror, seeing the sun set his brown eyes ablaze and paint his skin golden. His fingers strum along to the song on the radio on the steering wheel, he’s wearing a single ring on his right hand and his skin is already tanned even though summer has just begun. It’s almost like you’re meeting him all over again with the way you’re soaking in every inch of him, yet it’s forcefully clear to you that none of this is new. Perhaps that would have made it easier if he had just been a stranger where the slate was clean, but this is Mingi and there are things you’re both gonna need to navigate.

You’d foolishly expected that he’d lean in and steal at least a kiss but perhaps more right away, when you were still parked at the airport. More accurately, you had hoped so. It’s all you guys had been talking about for the past months, all the ways you’d want to ravage each other when you finally were face to face again. Apparently, Mingi thinks that can wait.

So you turn your head away, try not to look over at him or imagine his hand holding your thigh instead of the steering wheel. Instead, you focus your attention on the trees outside, and Talking Heads on the radio.

”Do you still like this song?” Mingi asks you. He takes a turn, and this is where the road gets lonesome and there’s more nature than buildings. The song playing is ’This Must be the Place’, and you know Mingi is asking because you’d been the one that bought him this CD for his birthday.

”I could never outgrow Talking Heads, you know that,” you smile at him. You’re starting to settle in now. The fields and the trees are so familiar, the air smells like your childhood, and Mingi is humming along to music you’ve listened to for years. You can do this, it’s not going to be weird, it’s still your best friend Mingi.

The ride back home starts to fill up with idle chatter. You’d think that you’d have run out of topics to talk about by now, seeing as you’d talk on the phone almost every day, but you still find new things to bring up. He parks his car in the driveway outside your house and helps you carry your luggage, all while giggling and joking with you.

It’s only been a year since you’ve been home, you hadn’t been able to come during Christmas, but that’s the longest stretch of time you’ve spent away from this very house. Not much has changed, your parents have kept your room exactly like you had left it, but something just feels different. It feels smaller, or you feel bigger. You catch a glimpse of Mingi in your doorway as you start unpacking your bags and for a second your abdomen flutters when you notice just how much of the door opening he can shield with his body. He has filled out a lot, and this shouldn’t be a surprise because you’d noticed it plenty of times before when you came home to visit. You suppose it’s not a surprise, but it’s the first time you’ve felt appreciation for it.

Of course, you had fantasized about his body since you entered his whole thing, and he had sent a lot of pictures that had helped you out with that, but seeing it in person is an entirely new ordeal. You feel your face heat up as your mind flicks through memories of pictures he’s sent you of himself naked, knowing what he looks like underneath his clothes. You have to wonder if Mingis mind is running in the same circles, if he’s as hyperaware of your skin as you are of his, and how he’s able to contain himself as well as he does if that’s the case. You hardly can’t.

”So,” Mingi begins. Your stomach lurches and plunges every time he pauses between words, fearing what may come next. Maybe this is when he breaks your heart and tells you he can’t do what you’ve been speaking about, that it’s just not the same when you’re face to face. You try to seem unbothered by your racing thoughts and decide to hear him out first. He continues, ”Uh, what now? Do you need any more help?”

”No, I’m all good, Mingi,” You’re rifling through clothes and belongings, lining them up on your bed. You can physically feel him behind you in your room as if he’s radiating this electricity and warmth that has your skin tingling.

”Maybe I should get going then. You know, to let you settle in.” You can hear him shift his weight between his feet. It suddenly feels unbearably awkward and strained between you two, and you know that if you keep your back to him it will only get worse. You need to face this head-on, cut through the tension, or at least pretend like the heavy atmosphere isn’t weighing you down.

You don’t want to let Mingi leave like this, without either one of you addressing things. If he leaves like this, with things unspoken and forgotten, the next time you see him it will be like nothing has ever happened. He’ll be right next to you but somehow further away than ever.

You guess you shouldn’t have expected to jump each other's bones the second you saw each other. Maybe that was unrealistic, but it had just felt that way on the phone. You suppose this is more natural, maybe you just have to stick it out until you’re used to being in the same room.

This Mingi in front of you is an entire world different than the one you’d grown up with. Despite the fact that everything is the same, that he’s in your childhood room and the sun is shining through the window just the same. The beam of light illuminates him directly, making his tan skin radiate.

You’re admiring him when he steps forward and closes the distance between you. Only the birds are singing outside your window, but in the total silence of your room, you can hear Mingi suck in a shaky breath before he leans forward and kisses you.

Time stills, the earth feels like it’s tilting or tipping, as if the very makeup of the universe is now irreversibly changed. Mingis mouth is warm and gentle but he’s keeping a pressure that has your mind whirling, just the way he’s kissing you with so much intent. You’re both breathing heavily and the air escaping his nose is so sweet that you can’t stop yourself from inhaling as much as possible, dizzying yourself to consume every bit of him that you can.

He’s already close, but he shuffles even nearer without breaking apart from the kiss. You can now feel his body against yours and Mingi moves his hands up to hold each side of your head, keeping you in place as he kisses and licks into your mouth. For some reason you’re so very present inside your head, thinking about each little detail of the way he kisses, reminding yourself to remember this moment forever.

You can feel when he starts to pull away so you chase after him, deepening the kiss for another second before he parts from it entirely. He’s just as breathless as you are, and there’s something in Mingi's eyes that you’ve never seen before. He focuses on your lips and leans in for another kiss that ends a moment too quickly.

Mingis hand ruffles your hair up, and his voice is laced with a laugh when he says a drawn-out ’bye’ and leaves your room.

You can feel your heartbeat in your throat, can hear the blood pumping and wooshing from it all the way through your body, throughout each delicate vein in your ears. Your lips are tingling when you reach up to touch them, almost in disbelief at the fact that Mingi had just been kissing you right there. Your mouth is slick with his spit, and your finger moves cardinally to gather it up and plunge into your mouth so you can savor it.

You fall down on the bed, staring up at your ceiling, and close your eyes to relive the kiss as you imagine what it will be like the next time you see Mingi.

Almost a full week passes until you see him again. Your family practically swarms you for the first few days, your parents being overjoyed to have you back invite your grandparents to welcome you home and your favorite aunt comes to see you with your two young cousins. You get unpacked quickly enough, when you manage to find time between family visits and long drawn-out meals, and before you know it five days have passed. Mingi stays busy too though, he sends a few occasional texts about work and though he lives right across from you, you never even catch a glimpse of him.

Sometimes you lay in your bed at night and feel your heart race up at the thought that there is only a few yards of grass and asphalt road between the two of you. It’s a massive change from the last three years when you had been miles and miles apart. Now, it feels almost like you can sense him. Just across the street, breathing and shuffling in bed. You can picture him so well, long eyelashes resting against his cheekbone, his skin flushed from sleep, his long limbs tangled up in a thin blanket. Your hand slips inside your underwear with a hot fire fueled by embarrassment and insecurity burning in your stomach.

Your imagination moves between recollections of words he’s spoken and pictures he’s sent, to the image of him in his bed right now. He’s so very close, but so very unaware of how much that precise fact affects you. Each day away from him only tightens the strings in your body and you grow more frustrated that you haven’t actualized any of the promises you’d made on the phone. At the same time, you find yourself quietly thankful for the imposed distance. Mingi isn’t even here, but he still has such an impact on you that it has you rushedly getting yourself off with your face buried in your pillow to keep quiet.

You’re so deeply affected by all this, while Mingi is fine. You’re the one busy, but when Mingi comes home from work and has some downtime he doesn’t even text to see if you can spend time. Seemingly, he doesn’t care to find out when you can see each other again.

On day six you’re sitting in your garden with your mom and aunt. Your cousins are playing in the grass in front of you and calling for your attention. The sun is high and hot in the sky, and Mingis car has been home for a few hours. You’ve checked your phone multiple times to make sure it’s not on silent, or if you’ve somehow missed a text from him, but it’s been quiet all day.

Then, a car pulls up to Mingi's house. You recognize it in an instant, it’s Yunhos old Camaro that he had inherited from his dad when he got his license, the same car he’d posted a thousand pictures of on social media. He had even let you drive it for an entire block two summers ago. The paint job has sparkles of blue in it that glimmer in the sun, and you somehow feel like it’s taunting you. The front door of Mingis house opens and he emerges in a pair of short shorts and a t-shirt that he has cut the sleeves off of, and he’s got a pair of sunglasses sitting on his face. A feeling worse than rejection rushes through you when Yunho rolls down the window and waves to you, finally prompting Mingi to also notice you sitting there.

Mingi raises his hand to wave but the movement is cut shorter than Yunho's enthusiastic full-bodied gesture. Mingi gets in the car and the engine roars as Yunho drives away. The warm air feels bittersweet when it’s filled by the smell of exhaust fumes.

That night you’re lying in bed and you’re inching close to sleep when your room lights up for a second. In the haze of sleep, you assume it to be the headlights of a car, but it happens again until the stream of light persists entirely and you finally get up to look outside your window. It’s clear instantly where it’s coming from because Mingi is hanging halfway out his window with a flashlight in his hand.

Though he’s quite a distance away, you can see him well enough to tell that he’s shirtless and his hair is messy, but your focus is pulled from that to trying to decode what gesture he’s making with his hand. You shrug, and he disappears from his window for a few seconds before he pops back with his phone and starts pointing to it.

You search for your phone and open it to find 4 missed calls from Mingi. His contact picture pops up on your phone and you hurry to answer.

”What the fuck, Mingi?” you whisper into your phone.

”Were you sleeping?” he chuckles, and you can see his shoulders shake with laughter. Every little bit of this makes you want to hang up, or scream, or march right over to his house and have a go at him. How dare he go days without speaking to you, then call you up in the middle of the night and laugh as if you haven’t been in agony this past week? How dare he kiss you breathless in this very room and make no attempts at reliving it?

”No, I was just about to fall asleep!” you huff.

”Why are you whispering?” Mingi asks.

”Because my parents are asleep, dumbass.”

”Hm,” he ponders. ”So that would be a no if I asked you to sneak out and come over?”

You hope he doesn’t hear your breath hitch at the thought that he wants you to come over in the middle of the night.

”Of course, it’s a no! My mom is already peeved because of Yunho coming by earlier today. She hates how loud that car is. She’s gonna think you’re a bad influence, riding around in that and making me sneak out.”

”Imagine her reaction when she finds out you drove that car before you got your license, and I wasn’t even there. It was all Yunho,” Mingi jokes.

”Shut up! God, my mom has been warning me about him for years. She used to be convinced I was going to end up with him and it was her biggest nightmare,” you say. Your window is cracked to let in some air now that it’s cooler outside. The night is quiet, and all you can hear is Mingi breathing at the other end of the call. It’s quiet for a moment, and you can see that Mingis face is scrunched up.

”You and Yunho?” he scoffs. ”Why would she think that?”

”I don’t know, it’s not like she had any reason to. She’s just weird like that, you know how my mom is.”

It’s silent yet again, Mingi just sighing.

Your stomach does a somersault when a thought strikes you and you have to ask, ”You’re not jealous, are you?”

”Jealous? Of- of Yunho?” Mingi laughs breathlessly. You just hum, and you can’t take your eyes off of him where he’s sitting in his window. Mingi sucks in a deep breath and regains his voice, ”I have no reason to be jealous of him when I’m the one with your nudes in my phone.”

Something about that makes you curl up on yourself, suddenly feeling very shy that you’re only in your underwear and a thin old tank top. It brings up another thought that has plagued you. The pictures you’d sent were all meticulously posed and manipulated to be as appealing as possible. It had been your body, yes, but the most perfect version of it possible. Here, in your pajamas with your skin glistening from sweat, hunched over yourself, you hardly think Mingi can find any resemblance between the picture-perfect version and the one in front of his eyes.

”Oh yeah?” you murmur. You can’t let him see you falter, can’t let him call your bluff. You straighten your back and pretend to be more interested in something under your nails. ”You could have a lot more than just pictures, you know.”

Mingi lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a moan and a breath, just audible enough for his phone to pick it up.

”Fuck, look at me,” he says, and you do. You just do.

Mingi stands up, keeping his phone pressed to his ear with one hand while his free hand moves in a long, slow caressing motion down his upper body. It’s your turn to feel jealous now, stupidly jealous of Mingis own hands for getting to touch him. His fingers reach the waistband of his boxers and you nervously stop breathing as you imagine them dipping inside. His hand moves just a bit further down though, where Mingi wraps his entire palm around his dick.

”Can you see that?” he asks. He uses his hand to move his hard cock under the light material of his underwear, making sure to jut his hips out towards the moonlight so you can see every second of his show.

”I can see you, oh my god. Are you out of your mind? Mingi, what if-”

”No one’s around, no one’s gonna see except for you,” he assures you. You lick your lips, thinking back to what Mingis mouth had tasted like.

”You’re crazy,” you whisper to him.

”You make me crazy,” he says with a smirk. ”Would you lift your shirt up for me?”

Your fingers have dug into your thigh without you noticing until now that Mingi is directing attention to your body. There’s so much tension inside your body that your breathing feels labored as if there are coils fastened inside you and everything Mingi says and does tighten up every bit of your internal structure. He has you feeling lightheaded with words alone.

Sensing your hesitance, Mingi speaks again. ”You don’t have to, I just really want to see you.”

The last sentence has you moving without thinking, getting up on your knees on the seat under your window. You take a quick glance around the street and in the windows of nearby neighbors. The whole world is asleep, only you and Mingi are awake.

You use your free hand to pull your tank top as high as possible, exposing your stomach and chest to Mingi who has stopped touching himself and is keeping razor-sharp focus on you.

”You-… Thank you, you’re gorgeous, do I ever tell you that?” Mingi’s voice is low and hushed. Until now he has sounded loud and confident, and if you didn’t know any better you would think that Mingi has gotten shy. He probably didn’t expect you to follow through with his request.

You haven’t spoken in minutes and you’re not sure if you could make any noise without it coming out as a whine, but luckily Mingi speaks up once more.

”Can you get into bed? I’m gonna lay down, please join me, please, would you touch yourself with me?” Mingi pleas. He waits a second for the words to register, for you to spring into action before he does so himself. Part of you wants to stay and keep drinking in the sight of his body, but the expectations of what he’s going to have you doing has you obeying his words.

”I’m in bed now,” your voice is still hushed, and there’s a layer of excitement in it that brings on a wave of embarrassment.

”I am too, I’m gonna- I’m taking my underwear off. It’s been so long, I just need to…” Mingi trails off. His end of the call is muffled, and a little distorted, and you can hear him shuffling to get his boxers off.

”It’s been so long since what?” you ask to clarify.

”Since we last did this, since I last came…” he answers. Fuck.

”Have you not been cumming since we last had phone sex?”

Mingi quiets down for a second before he lets out a breathy laugh.

”Have you?” he asks with a tone in his voice you can’t make out, but it has your cheeks heating up and your entire body running ice cold.

You turn silent now, but it’s clear from how Mingi is laughing under his breath that he doesn’t need an answer from you to know the truth.

”Oh my god. Well, tell me then, how many times have you made yourself cum since our last call?” Mingi asks. He sounds so cocky, so full of himself that you don’t know whether to roll your eyes or shove your hand between your legs and revel in this stupidly hot version of Mingi.

”Maybe two or three times,” you mumble, hoping that he doesn’t catch it.

”Let's just pretend I believe that. What have you been thinking about?”

You whine, feeling your entire body surge with shame and humiliation. Despite all of it, you’ve bunched up your blanket between your legs and without thinking about it you’ve started rutting against it slowly.

”Mingi, please…”

”Tell me.”

”I think about you. I always do. I’ve been thinking about that kiss, and-…” Your thought is interrupted by a sound on the other end of the line, along with Mingis soft hums. ”Mingi, are you jacking off to me telling you I fantasize about you?”

”I’m jacking off to your voice,” he says so matter of fact it knocks the air out of you. He continues, ”The fact that it’s about me only makes it better.”

”Oh my god,” you sigh, closing your eyes and letting your hand move where you need it most. Mingis voice is sweet and gentle as he moans with each stroke, and his phone is so close to his mouth you’re tricked into believing he’s right next to you, breathing and huffing.

”I wish you were here right now,” he says, sort of under his breath, a little quiet. It feels a little secretive when he says it, like when you were younger and he would have you turn your back to him as he did the same. With your backs pressed together, he would tell you all his deepest secrets, and when you’d turn around again you would both pretend like nothing had happened. It’s a memory you have replayed a lot more recently than ever before, just due to how similar it feels to this arrangement you have with Mingi. As long as you aren’t faced with each other, as long as your backs are turned you can do and say whatever you want.

Instead of sulking about it, you force yourself to play along.

”I do too, I need you so bad,” you whisper, and none of it is a lie.

”Need to see you cum for me, fuck, I need you to make me cum,” he moans. It echoes through your entire head, that moan and those words, and it has you rolling onto your back and pulling your underwear down your legs so you can touch yourself properly.

”You’ll make me cum just by saying that, Mingi,” you say, pathetically so. Something about Mingi has you reaching the edge faster than anything else.

”Fuck, me too. Just hearing you say my name is enough to make me cum right now. I’ve never felt this fucking good,” Mingi groans.

”Mingi,” you let out again, out of pure instinct. ”Mingi, please give me permission to cum, I need it, please!”

He does, in a string of words and breathless moans he allows you to cum with him. Your orgasm rolls through your entire body in a blinding flash, and by the time it’s over you can’t gauge if multiple minutes or just a few seconds have passed. Your phone is pressed so tight to your ear that pearls of sweat coat the screen.

”You there?” Mingis voice is raspy, all fucked out.

You come to, clearing your throat, ”I’m here, sorry. Holy shit.”

”What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks. You don’t have time to feel overjoyed or even finish your train of thought (of oh, fuck, it’s finally happening) before Mingi continues, ”Yunho’s throwing this… thing, at his house. There’s gonna be a barbeque, we’re gonna get drinks, and he says it’s going to be chill but you know how he is. It’s gonna end up being a party by the end of the night.”

You’re staring up at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers Mingi helped you set up when you were 15, and the answer is so obvious you don’t have to think about it.

”Yeah, I’ll go with you,” you respond.

”Well… I’ll take you, but maybe we shouldn’t make it too obvious when we’re there. All of our friends will be there, maybe it’s best to lay low?”

You clench your eyes shut. It makes you want to scream so loud it’d pierce your wall and travel across the street and through to his bedroom. A week ago he had been so concerned about things turning weird between you two and you’d written it off as a worry about your friendship, about how things would change after all the words and naked pictures you had exchanged. You hadn’t considered for a second that Mingi would be concerned for his reputation.

”Yeah,” you mutter. ”No, yeah, you’re right.”

”Okay then,” he says, so cheerily that you feel shame wash over you. ”I’ll pick you up tomorrow at five then?”

You hum in response and swap goodbyes before he ends the call and the beeps ring through your ear.

Your sleep that night is weighed down by a worry you can't dispel even after you wake up. You hardly feel rested, and your parent's voices barely register when they speak to you at breakfast. A lot of thoughts linger in your head, unshakeable doubts about whether things with Mingi are really going to be as okay as you had thought when you were in school.

Things had felt so much simpler then, like this steadfast belief that it would be just as it had always been. You had returned every single summer and were able to pick back up your friendship with Mingi with no trouble, despite all the months you had spent apart.

At least you would get to see all your friends again. Summer being in full swing would mean that everyone would be at their happiest, most free, possibly stupid, and risky behavior.

The day passes by sluggishly, you're merely counting down the hours. You try to read a book while lying in the sun in your backyard, but find that the words just flow together. You check your phone and see the half-hour call in your log from yesterday night, you’re just staring at Mingi's name and contact picture. It's just letters and numbers on a screen, but it's also a journal of your entire relationship. You can go back and see every single one, remember where things had started and where things had escalated. It took you weeks to send the first suggestive pictures to each other and they had been modest back then. A picture of your dark silhouette in the mirror, and Mingi replying with a blurry picture of his thighs in the dark of his room.

It's just another reminder that what you've got with Mingi is all contained in this piece of technology you can fit in your hand. Nothing is real or tangible, except for a few minutes of kissing. That's all you've got that counts as something; Mingi kissing you in your childhood bedroom for a few very good minutes before departing and ignoring you for days.

The kiss lives vividly in your head as you shower and get dressed.

You're sitting on your windowsill and watching the clock tick closer to five when the front door of Mingis house opens and he walks outside. He's got a pair of sunglasses on that he lifts off of his nose to peek up at your window, and when he spots you he waves and motions for you to come down.

You float down the stairs and out your door. The air is light and breezy outside despite the way the sun has been beaming down all day. Mingi is dressed in yet another shirt that shows off his arms, the slight tan line from his work t-shirt that he tries to even out is obvious to you up close and you squeeze his arm to tease him for it.

Both of you sit down in his car. The windows are rolled down to let air flow through and Mingi sets the car stereo to a low volume so you can faintly hear Tears for Fears play in the background. The engine hums pleasantly in comparison to Yunhos Camaro when Mingi starts the car. You watch his hands, waiting for him to shift the stick into first gear, but it doesn't happen.

Instead, time moves in both directions, very slowly but all too quickly as he wraps his hand around the back of your head and pulls you in for a kiss. Every single thought that has plagued you throughout the day vanishes the second his lips are on yours. It's replaced by the fact that these same lips had moaned your name less than 24 hours ago, that he had sounded so desperate when he told you he wished you were there.

Mingi deepens the kiss this time, letting it go on for longer than last time. When you have to part from it to take a breath Mingi trails his kisses from the corner of your mouth to under your ear. The kisses are chaste, barely there, but every single one leaves your skin tingling.

He doesn't return to your lips, he pulls back and regains his breath and his smile is so cocky when he reverses the car out of the driveway. You can't help but giggle then, and Mingi turns up the volume to let the music blare through the entire car. This is the Mingi you've missed, the one that drives through your neighborhood and ignores all the grouchy people who turn around and stare disgruntedly. He sings along too loudly, straining his voice to hit notes that sound awful even though you know that he's a great singer.

Everything feels as it always has when you pull up to Yunhos house and there are cars parked up and down the street. Mingi parks and as you're unbuckling your belt you see him look in the rearview mirror, grooming his hair and then wiping his mouth to remove your lip balm. It stings for a second but you don't let it persist. You just get out of his car and the two of you walk towards Yunhos backyard.

There is a voice in the back of your head that reminds you of the distance Mingi puts between you, this very conscious measurement that would leave no doubt for all your friends that you're strictly platonic. You push that away too, and make way towards all your old school friends instead. Seonghwa is the first to pull you into a hug, and it's all you need for the bubble to burst on all your worries.

Soon enough you're all laughing, the backyard is quickly filling with people and Yunho is having a hard time keeping up with all the people demanding a burger. The afternoon air smells just like high school, and the cheap alcohol mixed in the punch is just like the one you used to drink back then. The only difference is that everyone looks so much older, and the conversations have switched from homework, crushes, and drama to future plans and jobs.

"So what now?" Seonghwa asks you when a few hours have passed and the sun is setting. It's not getting dark, the sun is just changing from blue to lilac. You turn to him, feeling the way the alcohol has affected your vision, the way it's swimming a bit.

"What now?" you ask.

"I mean, are you back for good? Are you gonna settle down, get a job, do the whole small-town thing?" he jokes, but the question he poses is a valid one.

"Hm," you ponder for a second, looking up at the sky as if an answer is gonna rain down on you. "I guess I don't know. I need to get a job, but I'll give myself the summer to figure it out. It feels like the last one before things truly.. you know.."

"Change," Seonghwa interjects. "Before we truly grow up."

The conversation quiets for a moment before you both burst into laughter.

"Jesus, we always get so somber, don't we?" Seonghwa laughs.

"Remember prom? We went out for some air and you couldn't stop talking about the universe because you looked up at the stars for a second," you say.

"I don't remember that, I just remember Hongjoong going off on me because I teared up and ruined the makeup he spent an hour doing on me," Seonghwa recollects. You could remember that. You also remembered the eyeshadow Hongjoong had smeared across Mingis's eyelid, the messy dark brown he had lined his eyes with because Mingi refused to stay still for too long.

None of you had brought any dates that night, your entire friend group had decided to just go together and spend the night dancing with each other. When you had gotten a dance with Mingi towards the end of the night his makeup had started running and you had brushed your thumb under his eye. Nothing about that action or the dance, or the night as a whole, had been close to romantic. He had just been Mingi, the same Mingi as always, he walked you home that night with his arm around your shoulder just like he had every day after school.

It's only with the wisdom of hindsight you can identify little actions to speak otherwise. You can't recall what Sans eyes had looked like when you danced with him, but you remember in great detail how the lights had twinkled in Mingi's irises. All you remember from your dance with Wooyoung is that his hands had been too sweaty to hold, but you can go back in your memory to when Mingi had leaned his head on your shoulder and sang along softly to the song that was playing.

"What is it like when you talk to Mingi?" Seonghwa pulls you out of your thoughts. You don't know when your eyes close, but when you open them again the sky is starting to burn a vibrant pink.

"Well... I don't know. It's good. We talk about all sorts of things," you try to sound matter of fact, very casual. Reminding yourself of Mingis words, lay low.

"Yeah, you must," Seonghwa remarks, a chuckle sounding through his voice. It has you turning to him, eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

"Meaning?" you question.

"Just that there must be substance to your conversations, seeing as Mingi excuses himself from every night out when you call," he says.

"Yeah," you attempt to brush it off as a meaningless piece of information, but it feels like a lot more. You didn't know Mingi would rush home to talk to you.

Seonghwa hums, and your eyes are pulled to the ground where you've been digging your heel into the grass.

"I guess you guys have always been closer than the rest of us. Living across from each other, being childhood friends, all that," he says. There's no hidden meaning or intention behind his words, you know Seonghwa well enough to deduct that, but it still feels like he's trying to catch you out.

"Yeah," you repeat, absent-mindedly. "Suppose so."

Seonghwas mouth twitches a little as if he wants to say something else, but he keeps it shut. You're thankful, because even if he can read between the lines of your and Mingi's strange relationship, the fact that he doesn't say it out loud serves as reassurance to you. It's the same thin veil that you and Mingi drape yourselves in. Unspoken meaning unchanged.

A friend comes over and offers to top off your and Seonghwas glasses, and you decide to get up on your feet and move on from the sudden gloom that took over.

The music is loud and the air gets chillier as the clouds twist amongst pink and orange. You’re talking to Yunho and telling him the story about your mom's disapproval of his car when he notices your shoulders quiver with the drop in temperature. He fetches one of his flannels for you, helping you thread your arms through and telling you that you need another drink to warm up. Yunho makes you something stronger than the diluted punch, and it goes to your head with haste.

It does warm you up, and it pulls you from reality a little. It’s easier to laugh along with Yunhos jokes this way, without thinking about the tension between you and Mingi. It feels good and safe to just be worriless, to feel the wind in your hair and be surrounded by the sound of your friend's voices mixing together.

Your legs are getting wobblier, but Yunho catches you before you fall and he lets you stay posted against him.

You’re just watching the conversation your friends are having without joining in when you feel two hands on your waist. You don’t have to look back to know that it’s Mingi. The smell of his cologne is familiar enough to alert you.

”I think I better get them home,” Mingis voice is warm and round behind your ear. For a second you feel a little bitter, you kind of want to shake his hands off of you and scoff at him because he’s intervening just when you’re truly starting to enjoy yourself without spending a single thought on him. Is that not what he wanted? You’re keeping the secret, you’re not drawing any eyes towards you two. He’s doing that all on his own.

Had it been three years ago, you think your friends had been protesting your leave. You’re all grown up now though, and everyone is understanding when Mingi wraps his arm around your waist, and you both wave goodbye.

Mingi helps you into his car. Tears for Fears is still playing when he turns the car on and starts driving, and you feel a sort of agitation that you can’t place. He doesn’t speak a single word for a minute or two, and the mood inside the car is unbearable.

”I don’t think anyone could tell,” you say. Mingis face is bare of emotion, and you find yourself with an urge to placate him. ”We did well, don’t you think? I didn’t make anything obvious.”

You don’t know what response you expect to get from Mingi, but there’s a palpable shock within you when he pulls the car over to the side of the road and turns to you.

”What?” you ask. Mingis eyes soften when they flick over your entire body, to then end up at your face.

”Did you really.. worry about that?” Mingi wonders softly.

”Huh? I thought-… Yes, I worried about it, because you did. I mean, you told me we needed to lay low.” You’re starting to get thoroughly confused and frustrated.

”I know, but I didn’t think you’d drink so much and cuddle up to Yunho because of it,” Mingi says, his tone quickly working up to a sharpness you’ve never heard in him before.

”Drink so much?” you gasp. ”I was just having fun! It had nothing to do with you! Not everything is about you, Mingi, or about us. I don’t worry about it as much as you do. Believe it or not.”

”I don’t worry about it,” Mingi sounds accused.

”Clearly you do though. You take me to this party and give me instructions on how to behave, then spend the whole time ignoring me. Just like you did all of last week. Clearly, you have to feel ashamed, or- or…” you trail off, feeling your voice crack. Mingi sucks in a deep breath and leans closer, putting his hand on your knee.

”Please,” he urges, and there’s something in his voice that breaks your heart. ”Please, don’t think I could ever be ashamed of you.”

”Then what, Mingi?” you ask quietly, starting to feel yourself break now. Tears are starting to well up and cloud your vision. You continue, ”Do you just not want me? I get if it’s different when we’re face to face, I know it might not be what you expected, I understand if you don’t find me-”

”Stop it!” Mingi is almost shouting now, startling you. ”It’s nothing like that, you have to believe me. Stop saying these things.”

His hand lifts from your knee to hold your face where he wipes away a tear from your cheek. You don’t know what to say, even though there’s a part of you that wants to keep insisting. Mingi isn’t offering any kind of explanation or even an excuse, he’s not saying anything to quell your worries, and his hands on you are not enough.

”Kiss me. Please,” you whisper. There’s more you want to say, like prove it, prove that you want me. Kiss me and mean it.

”I’m not going to kiss you when you’re drunk and I’m sober,” Mingi says, offering up a solemn smile.

”I’m not though,” you argue. This entire conversation has been sobering. You’re still tipsy, your head feels a little heavy and your vision is still floating but you think you can blame it on your tears as much as you can blame it on alcohol.

”Well, you’re drunk enough that I don’t feel comfortable kissing you.” Mingis thumb strokes over your cheek to comfort you. It’s enough to calm you a little, because that you can take. You don’t think you’d want to kiss him either if the roles had been reversed.

”Okay,” you mutter. ”Are you sure it’s not because you don’t want me?”

Mingi sighs, ”We’ll talk about it tomorrow when you’re not-”

”I’m not drunk, Mingi.”

”Okay, okay. But I still want to do this tomorrow, when we’re both thinking clearly. We’re just misunderstanding each other, and this isn’t how I wanted it to go,” he tells you. He leans forward and kisses the top of your head instead, just above your hairline. It must be calculated on his part, to kiss you where your skin can’t feel the warmth of his lips.

”Okay,” you say again. This time Mingi lets out a little laugh at your dissatisfaction.

He starts the car back up and takes off to go home, leaving his hand on your thigh throughout the drive. When he pulls up to his house and you get out of the car your legs feel like jelly, and you realize you’re probably not as sober as you’d like to believe.

”Mingi?” you ask. He rushes to your side to hold you up, though that’s not what you meant. ”Can I sleep here tonight? You know how my mom is, she’d flip if she saw me-”

”I wasn’t planning on letting you go home like this, don’t worry,” he laughs.

So, with his arm around your waist, Mingi guides you inside and up the stairs to his room. It’s dark and you have to remind yourself to be quiet to not wake Mingi's family. While he leaves the room to fetch another blanket you sit down on his bed and look around his room.

It’s been a while since you’ve been here but not much has changed. You know for a fact that Mingi is still just as entertained by his action figures now as he had been at 13. It makes you laugh to see them all lined up on his shelf, right next to a couple of books that you had gifted him. He had forced his way through a couple of them and called you to complain about every choice the main character made.

You’re comforted by how much of his room remains the same. This is a place where you can remember and picture Mingi. By his big stereo, switching CD’s. Cutting out pictures of his friends to add to his collage wall.

Mingi comes back to his room with a blanket and a pillow that he throws next to you on the bed.

You’re watching his every move. When his eyes land on you he lets out a sound you can only read as disgust.

”Of course he gave you that,” he complains, more to himself than to you.

You can’t help but follow his line of sight though, finding that he’s looking at Yunhos flannel shirt.

”What’s so bad about it?” you wonder. Being under Mingis gaze always fills you with a sort of insecurity that has you twisting and turning.

”It's like, his move. Lending out his shirt. And then letting you lean on him like that..” Mingi mutters.

”Why would Yunho ever pull a move on me?” you ask incredulously.

”For the same reason I would, I assume,” he says. ”You’re really hot.”

A heat rushes to your abdomen and you can’t meet Mingis eyes anymore. Today has left you feeling anything but desired by him, but you don’t think he’s lying right now. He wouldn’t lie about finding you hot just minutes after refusing to kiss you.

”It wouldn’t matter what Yunho thinks of me. Like you said last night, you’re the one who has my nudes. Right?” you say.

Mingi sits down next to you, looking at his hands in his lap instead of at you.

”What if he wanted more than just your nudes?” he asks. This, too, feels like he’s asking himself the question. And you don’t know what to answer.

You don’t think Yunho poses any threat whatsoever, he’s just friendly and flirty by nature. But you let yourself think about what Mingi is implying for a second. What if he - or anyone else - would want more of you than Mingi does? Someone who could offer you a relationship that wouldn’t require secrecy. Someone who would bring you around his friends and hold your hand for everyone to see. Someone who would properly date you and want a relationship, as opposed to dirty phone sex at odd hours of the night.

You realize you’d always pick Mingi above all that, no matter if you had to have him only partially. If he was never yours.

You open your mouth to respond but shut it again when you can’t find the right words.

Mingi looks over at you. He speaks, ”Can’t you take it off?”

”Take it off of me,” you whisper back.

His mouth twitches into a small smile.

”It’d be a lot sexier if I wasn’t taking Yunhos clothes off of you the first time I undress you,” he still sounds displeased, but his hands work the shirt off of you anyways. He discards it to the floor, as far away as it can come.

”These are all mine,” you say, meaning the clothes you have on. ”You can take those off.”

Mingi lets out a drawn-out breath, something to collect himself. His hands pause at the hem of your top even though you’ve already given consent, waiting for you to nod until he starts pulling it over your head.

Silence permeates in Mingis bedroom as he continues undressing you. It’s just the wind rustling his curtains that disrupts the quiet. He guides you to lie down so he can unbutton your shorts to take them off. His hands are so gentle and his touch is soft, when he has finished taking your socks off and all your clothes are on the floor except for your underwear he leans down and presses a sweet kiss right above your knee.

”Take yours off too, please,” you say softly. He’s not quite as delicate with himself, he doesn’t make a show of it. You can’t help but stare though, trying to really commit this to memory since it’s the very first time you’re seeing him strip for you, even if you know it won’t be followed up with all the things you’ve talked about on the phone.

Your eyes flick all over him, down his toned arms and up his torso as he pulls his shirt over his head, across his broad chest. You watch his fingers work the button on his shorts open, revealing his dark underwear. He’s not hard, at least not fully, and it’s strangely intimate to be so close to his dick for the first time but not in a sexual manner. Everything about it makes your heart feel heavy, you’re somehow aware of each pump of it, how it’s speeding up at the mere sight of Mingi.

Mingi, your Mingi, that hasn’t ever been yours. Not really, not properly, but still somehow.

You want him on top of you so bad, to finally feel him in the ways you’ve dreamt about for a full year. Instead, Mingi climbs in bed with you and pulls you close.

He is soft and warm in all the spots your bodies are connected and intertwined. You fall asleep to the sounds of his breath coming out slow and steady.

You wake to a breeze of air over your face. At first, all you can hear is the chirps of birds outside and the distant noise of cars driving around. You don’t need to open your eyes to know that it’s the middle of the day, the sun is bright in that midday way, bright enough that there isn’t a total blackness even when you screw your eyes shut further.

You just turn around and try to escape from it by burying your face into the pillow. The texture of the pillow feels strange and unfamiliar, and the more you come to you realize it also doesn’t smell like your bedding. It smells like Mingi, you realize, and shoot up in a startle.

You don’t have time to wonder why the bed is empty next to you, because you can hear steps on the stairs and seconds later the bedroom door creaks open. Through a squint you can see Mingi in the same state you remember him falling asleep. In just his underwear he walks up to the bed and sets down a glass of water and a plate, before petting his hand over your hair.

”Good morning,” he greets you, smiling big.

”Mm, yeah,” you hum back, still drowsy. It’s far more comfortable to let your eyes close again and just lean into Mingi's affection.

”You okay? Are you hungover?” Mingi asks.

”Yeah, but not from drinking,” you murmur. ”It’s from you yelling at me.”

”I wasn’t yelling!” There’s an undertone to his voice, an actual worry and fear that you’d be feeling a certain way today after last night's conversation.

”I know you weren’t, Mingi. I’m just messing with you, I remember every bit of that conversation,” you assure him. He lets out a sigh of relief, his thumb stroking over your temple.

”That was going to be my next question,” he tells you. ”So you remember the whole night then?”

You nod your head under his hand.

”Do you want to talk about it?” he asks you.

The question stabs at something inside your sternum. Of course, you want to talk, in reality, there are a thousand times you’ve held yourself back from saying to him and there would be nothing more freeing than telling Mingi all of it. There’s just never a time and place for it though and you’ve come to terms that there never will be. It would take astronomical changes to allow you to say what you want. Yes, Mingi, I’m in love with you and probably have been all my life. Mingi, it took us sexting to make me realize you’re the only one I could ever picture myself with.

You had of course let yourself fantasize a couple of times, but the details of any imaginary and hypothetical relationship between you two would quickly obscure, and Mingi was often a perpetrator in that. It would present itself on days when you lived in the afterglow of a nighttime call. You’d walk on clouds with the memories of Mingi moaning your name, then check social media and be greeted with photos of him with his arm around your lifelong friends and strangers you would get nauseous picturing Mingi talking to. Your name wouldn’t even come up in conversation, he’d appear single to them because after all, he was.

So you wouldn’t often entertain the idea of being something more. You’d just treat it as a passing thought, boil it down to what it was, a neuronal connection gone to grief.

You guess you had hoped to see something in Mingi to completely deny these thoughts. Like, a first kiss that you wouldn’t be able to break away from. Or the moment you finally have sex for the first time and it being this out-of-body experience that ends with both of you crying and confessing your love. Like a scene out of a movie.

You could even have survived the opposite. If the first kiss had gone sour and the spark died before it even ignited. At the very least, you would have an answer to all your questions. Instead of being tethered to this middle ground where there’s an undeniable passion and need for each other, but a considerable distance keeping you apart.

Though there were things you’d want to say, there are none you could verbalize.

”I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” you say, finally. To convince Mingi of this, you open your eyes and roll onto your back so you can look at him. He looks unconvinced, so you continue, ”I think I was just confused and upset. I don’t know why. Maybe because you’ve barely spoken to me since I came back home. I had just… expected more.”

You find yourself surprised that you’re telling the truth. It’s not what you had meant to say, but it’s true and innocent enough. Mingis hand rests on the side of your face, where his fingers fiddle with your hair, and for a second his eyes focus on that, before coming back to yours.

”I don’t have any excuse,” he says. ”I guess I could say that I kept seeing your relatives show up at your house and I thought it’d be rude to whisk you away from all that just to fuck you. But I think the more time passed, the harder it got to..”

”Yeah,” you agree. ”To fuck.”

He smiles at your choice of words and nods.

”Have you not happened to notice I haven’t initiated a single kiss between us, Mingi? I’m nervous too. It’s different in real life. It was much easier on the phone to just do things,” you say.

”Would it make it easier if I told you I’d really like to kiss right now?” Mingi asks.

There won’t ever come a time when the prospect of Mingi wanting to kiss you won’t send a jolt of electricity through each and every vein in your body. Nor will there ever be an instance where you won’t act on that will, especially since it seems that there will be a finite number of them. As you prop yourself up and lean in to kiss Mingi you realize that, along with this being the very first time that you initiate a kiss with him, you’re also one kiss closer to the last kiss you’ll ever have with him.

Because there will be a last time. If you keep going like this there is no other possible outcome, there will simply come a day when Mingis's eyes set on someone else and your arrangement is concluded. There’s not an if, it’s simply a when, and every kiss from now on is going to lead up to that last one. You can’t decide if you should hold out and stave off that last one for as long as you can or fit in as many as possible until then.

All these thoughts disperse when your mouth meets Mingis and he kisses you back. It’s hard to think of anything other than his warm lips or his tongue softly licking against yours. It’s more playful this time compared to the last two, today you’re both feeling each other out and learning what to do, what feels good.

You find yourself out of rhythm at times, the position you’re in is a little awkward, and you fumble through a few kisses to lean closer to Mingi. You feel your stomach swirl when you realize that none of this deters Mingi, that you can in fact feel him smile and breathe out something between a hum and a moan every time you come crashing against his mouth. His big hand comes up to your jaw, long fingers curling around the back of your head to deepen the kiss.

Things get heady so fast with Mingi, he works you up so incredibly quickly, and it’s obvious from the sounds he’s making that he’s just as affected. He doesn’t pull away for a second, his hand keeps your head in place and he continues to clumsily kiss you as he guides you down onto the bed.

The air in Mingi's room is hot from the summer sun shining through his window. It’s not until now you realize that the only thing separating you from Mingis body has been his thin blanket. He starts peeling it away, and it’s then you remember that Mingi had undressed you the night before. A jolt of panic shoots through you now that Mingi can see you, entirely nude except for your underwear, in the warm, bright light of his room. You find comfort in the fact that he’s undressed too, but with Mingis eyes taking you in it’s hard to feel relaxed.

Mingi leans in for a long, passionate kiss, and against your mouth he muffles, ”You’re so fucking beautiful.”

Your head is swimming, Mingi keeps on kissing you, getting softer and more careful as he moves down your neck and continues to lavish you with compliments. So pretty, kiss, gorgeous, kiss, breathtaking, kiss. And if you had any doubts, he squashes every single one when he kisses from your collarbone, over your chest and down your stomach, all the way down to your hips.

He plants his hands on each of your thighs, not grabbing or putting any pressure, but you can still feel the weight of them.

”Is this okay?” he asks quietly. He kisses just above the waistband of your underwear, and at the same time, his hands nudge your legs apart. Your breath catches in your throat and you can only nod and let his hands move your legs to where he wants them.

”What about your family?” you ask him, suddenly realizing the reality of where you are.

”No one’s home. It’s just us,” he says. ”So don’t hold back on me please.”

His shoulders are big and broad between your legs. The sun illuminates him so prettily, his tan skin glows, and every little hair on his body is lit up by the sun. The heat has left a thin layer of sweat on his skin and it highlights his muscles in just the right way. He’s just glowing, near angelic, and you’re moved with the need to worship every part of him.

Mingi is still so tender with all his kisses, there’s no sense of rushing as he takes his time by really letting his lips linger. His mouth trails along your entire thigh, stopping now and then to lightly suck your skin into his mouth and have a taste of you. He only falters when he gets to the junction of your thigh, to where your skin is covered by the fabric of your underwear.

You’ve been short of breath for a while now, but when Mingis fingers dip into the waistline of your underwear you cease to breathe entirely. Your head is rushing, watching as Mingis hands pull your underwear down your legs, leaving you completely naked. You’ve sent him pictures before, he knows what every little inch of your body looks like, but Mingi looks at you as if it’s the very first time.

A thousand thoughts whirl through your head between the seconds your underwear hits the floor to when Mingi springs into action. A thousand worries now culminating, whether he’ll realize that it was better over the phone, if he’s disappointed by what he’s seeing, or if he’s repulsed by how aroused you already are.

”You’re,” Mingi begins, stopping to press a kiss at the seam of your thigh. He adds, ”Beautiful.”

His eyes aren’t even on yours, he’s single-mindedly focused on what’s right in front of him. His breath is fanning across your entire crotch, tickling your inner thighs, and as you feel it get closer and closer you instinctively close your eyes and let your head roll back when Mingi finally puts his mouth where you need it most.

He’s still so gentle, using his tongue and lips to tease you and explore what you like best. It feels like hours pass of Mingi lightly sucking and pressing wet kisses all over you, he’s really and truly taking his time and you have to believe it’s for his own sake because he’s only building up a frustration within you.

”Mingi,” you whine, reaching down to grab hold of his hair. It’s an objectively insane feeling, to have his hair in your hand and head between your legs, after all this time of dreaming of it. It’s enough to have you getting close, even though Mingi is still lapping carefully at you, and it's nowhere close enough to what you crave.

When you start bucking your hips against his mouth it’s like he releases all restrain and just goes for it. His hands wrap around your legs at first, pressing them towards his head, to then wedging underneath your ass so he can get all of you into his mouth.

Mingi moans out ”You taste so good” with a mouthful of you at the same time you tell him how good he is with his mouth, prompting him to smirk against your pelvis. It really doesn’t take long for him to learn what gets you closest to the edge, just where he should put his tongue and where to apply some pressure.

”So good, Mingi, you’re so good. Oh my god,” you sigh. You tug on his hair hard enough for your fingers to cramp, and Mingi only moans against you. Every sound you make seems to spur him on further, Mingi only getting more eager with the way he’s circling his tongue around you.

His tongue is getting you closer and closer, your stomach is splitting in two to hold onto the edge and trying not to cum. You’ve been waiting for this for so long that it feels a shame to cum just minutes after Mingis mouth is on you, but there’s no holding back. His hands grip your hips, pulling you flush to his face, and the second you lift your head to look down at him between your legs you start orgasming in his mouth.

He understands what’s happening before you do, applying enough pressure to get you over the edge before letting up and licking you slower to help you come down. All while he keeps his eyes on yours, letting your fingers scratch his scalp. Mingi listens to every little noise you make and stops the second your heavy breathing turns into an overstimulated hiss.

”Mingi, Mingi,” you whine. His cheeks are flushed a deep pink and his lips are slick with his own spit and your cum, and you can’t stop admiring him. All you can do is pray that Mingi looks into your eyes and mistakes your all-consuming love as the afterglow of a great orgasm.

He pulls himself up enough to crawl on top of you, and though he’s just spent minutes between your legs, this feels a lot more daunting. He hesitates for a moment as if he’s unsure if he’s allowed to kiss you, so you wrap your hands around the back of his head and pull him towards you.

Mingi is breathing heavily from the effort he’s just put forth, and instead of letting him catch his breath you only grow more desperate. Your hands clammer onto his shoulders, pulling him against you, then down to his waist, and finally around his ass so you can pull him against your core. He’s got his underwear on, but you don’t let it stop you as you grind up against him. He’s hard and you’re still wet with spit and cum, it doesn’t take long before you’ve soaked his boxers and the barrier between you both is practically nonexistent. You can feel every bit of him against you.

”Mingi,” you moan into his mouth. ”Fuck me, please.”

He pulls away and sucks in a deep breath.

”Don’t you want me to… uh, prepare you?” He sounds small and insecure. You watch his brows burrow and his eyes flick across your face, and you’re struck by how much he looks like Mingi. Your best friend Mingi, who you’ve built up in your head as a confident sex god, even though you’ve always been aware that he’s more careful and vary than any other person you know.

You suppose you’d just assume that that version of him would disappear in the bedroom, that he’d be the same as he is over the phone when he’s telling you all the different ways he wants to fuck you.

”I’m- I’m embarrassed to say this, but I’m so worked up you could just slide inside me,” you tell him, and Mingi moans in response.

”Are you sure?” he asks. You pick up motion again, sliding yourself against the entire length of his dick.

”I’m not just sure, I’m begging,” you plea. You hook your fingers into his boxers, trying to tug them down even though you know the position you’re in won’t allow you to undress him. You just need him to act, now, you can’t wait any longer.

It happens fast, Mingi pulling his boxers off and getting back on top of you, to then lining up his dick to enter you.

”Fuck, I forgot how big you are,” you mumble. The sight of him in comparison to you, lined up against you, is enough to make you cum untouched.

This is what you’ve been dreaming about for a whole year, this very moment. For Mingi to push inside you, hook your legs over his shoulders and fuck you until you can’t see straight. Actually being here, with the tip of his dick against your hole, it feels much different. It’s not the actual sex you’re looking forward to, it’s the fact that he’s finally going to be inside you. It feels like you’re claiming him, that the moment is finally here and he’s going to be yours.

”Are you okay? Are you ready? Can I-?” Mingi asks, searching your eyes for uncertainty.

”Please,” you nod.

He starts pushing inside, watching his dick slide with ease until he’s got the entire tip in. The stretch feels amazing, you could take all of him in one go but the fact that he stops and leans down to kiss you as he slowly thrusts his entire cock inside is way better. And god, he kisses you as if he’s not currently buried inside you. His lips barely brush against yours, and the kisses are short and sweet. Finally, he pulls back to watch himself bottom out.

The sun is shining on the side of Mingis face, and this is just not at all how you had pictured it. In your fantasies, there had always been a dark bedroom and Mingis body had been on top of yours, only distinguishable by faint lights outside the window. It was quick, rushed, and dirty, maybe Mingis hand would be clamped over your mouth to keep you from making any sounds since it would have to happen at one of your homes. Sometimes you’d imagine it happening in his car, parked somewhere secluded at night, it would be bumpy and awkward and sweaty and the focus would just be on both of you cumming as soon as possible.

You hadn’t pictured it like this. Like, Mingi looking at you as if he’s seeing you for the first time.

His hair is messy from your hands grabbing it, and the sunlight lights it up like a halo. Time feels unmoving, you’re drinking in the sight of him and trying to memorize every small detail.

He starts thrusting carefully and slowly. His back is upright, leaning away from you so he can watch his cock go in and out of you. You can’t stop watching him though. He’s so beautiful, his hair is a mess, and beads of sweat are starting to trickle down his chest. You reach your hands up, caressing his skin.

You wonder if you’re breaking some sort of unspoken rule. The two of you hadn’t discussed or set any boundaries, but when you slide your hands over Mingis chest and stomach, you wonder if you should have. This isn’t just fucking, you’re worshipping him and looking at him with intense adoration. He’s going so slow too, really taking his time. You’re not fucking, this is making love.

”I’ve never felt this good, you feel so good,” he moans under his breath. He curls his hands under your ass, picking you up so he can get better leverage to thrust as deep inside as possible. The new angle makes him groan, ”Fuck, you were made for me, weren’t you?”

It has you sobbing with pleasure. Mingis fingers are digging into your flesh, and he fucks you at this torturous pace for tens of minutes. You can truly feel the drag of his dick inside of you, when he bottoms out all the way inside to when the tip of his dick is at your entrance.

”You’re so good, oh my god! So good, you’re so handsome, Mingi,” you praise him, causing Mingi to pick up the speed.

You’re grabbing at his arms and shoulders, trying to pull him down, to get him closer. He lets you down on the bed and leans down, coming chest to chest with you, shoving his arm under your head instead. Your bodies are flush with each other now, Mingis pelvis rubbing against you and getting you close to cumming again stupidly quick.

His mouth is right by your ear, pressing a few sloppy kisses to your neck and temple. He is moaning your name and though his voice is hushed and strained you can still feel it reverberate through his chest, right against yours.

It’s precisely that which has you cumming, the sound of his voice calling your name over and over, telling you how good you feel. Your ears start to ring when your orgasm rolls through you and Mingi only picks up the pace to intensify it. You can faintly hear him, somewhere far away now, this otherwordly being showering you with so much affection it has tears forming in your eyes.

”You’re so perfect,” he’s telling you, fucking you faster. ”Just for me, all for me, you’re all mine.”

Somewhere through it, you realize he’s picked up the speed because he’s close too, but he wants to make it good for you before he pulls out. His eyes are on you, watching your breathing return to normal and feeling your hands unclench from his shoulders, and only when he’s certain that you’re coming down from the orgasm he leans back and pulls out. He only manages to get his hand around his cock before he cums all over your stomach, cumming so hard he shoots all the way up to your chest.

Mingis other hand is grabbing your waist and you can’t stop looking at the way he’s marked you up. There are red marks on you from the tips of his fingers, and little marks from his nails all over your hips, and you’re covered in his cum. Just seconds ago he’d told you that you’re all his, and in this moment you feel it.

”Fuck, that was…” Mingi is the first to speak. ”Shit, let me get you cleaned up.”

He scrambles for his underwear, starting to wipe his cum from your stomach.

You’ve managed to blink away the tears that welled up when you came, but there’s still a sob within your chest that you’re fighting to choke down. Everything about what just happened was about a thousand times more intense than you had ever dreamt of. Had he not pulled away you think you might have confessed to him right then and there.

”How are you feeling?” you ask him, clearing your throat and hoping Mingi reads it as just being fucked out.

”Very good,” he responds, without a hint of hesitance or a second of stalling. There’s a faint laugh in his voice, and he’s starting to smile. Nothing about him looks like you currently feel.

”Oh,” you say, struggling to find words. It’s not like you had expected him to just bare his heart and pour out confessions. You’d just expected something more to follow, after all of that. You had made love. There’s no other word for it.

Mingi leans down and kisses you once, so chaste you barely have time to kiss back.

He gets up and pulls out a pair of new boxers from his dresser, stepping in them.

”Fuck, I made you breakfast earlier and forgot all about it,” he tells you. You look over at the nightstand, where your breakfast sits forgotten.

”Oh,” you repeat. Your head drops back down on Mingis pillow. You speak again, ”I think I’d rather have a shower.”

It’s all so thoroughly strange. Mingi clasps his hand in yours and pulls you up from the bed, and you feel perturbed. You’ve seen Mingi greet Yunho with more affection than the way he helps you up on your feet. At least he joins you in the shower, but you feel weirdly disconnected from him. Even when he jokes and suds up his hair into silly hairstyles you can only manage halfhearted laughs.

Your body aches to have him closer, to feel him pressed against you and to have his lips back on yours again. The kisses he’s giving you now feel cheeky, as if he’s kissing you just because he can, and not because he truly wants to.

You suppose there’s reason to feel thankful, because at the very least Mingi hasn’t rejected you. His casualty is worth a lot more to you than the possibility that he could have pulled back and realized that everything about this was a mistake. He ruffles your hair after the shower, and it stings, but each second you continue to remind yourself that this is how things are supposed to be.

He lets you have one of his shirts after the shower, and he cooks you a very late lunch, then Mingi has to leave for work. Your legs are still unsteady when you make the walk back home to your house.

You prepare yourself to be ignored again. You busy yourself with cleaning your room, reading a book, cleaning out weeds in the garden, sending out job applications, anything you can to make the hours go by. You don’t want to check your phone, but your fingers itch to see if Mingi has texted you.

Nothing.

It’s not until late that night when you know Mingi's shift has ended that he calls you.

”Hey,” you answer, walking over to your window. Mingis car is in the driveway, but you can't see him in his room.

”Hi there,” he greets you. ”Busy day?”

”Oh you know, the usual,” you say. ”Mom wasn’t too happy with me spending the night but she was very relieved to hear it was with you.”

You’re still dressed in his t-shirt, and throughout the day you've been bringing the collar up to your nose to smell him on it. You find yourself doing it now too.

”Her head would explode if she knew what you were doing at my house this morning,” he teases you.

”Good thing no one will ever know then,” you joke, though it is the truth. It was always meant to be a secret.

”Right,” he says. ”So, do you think maybe you could come over tomorrow? My parents will be gone, I start working in the afternoon again, I was thinking maybe-”

”Yes,” you interrupt him.

Mingi laughs, ”Okay. Uh, do I sound desperate if I say that you can come over as soon as you wake up?”

”A little, but I like it,” you giggle.

”Good.”

”I’ll see you tomorrow then!”

You sleep so much better when you know that you’re seeing Mingi tomorrow. You wake up feeling completely rested, and you’re giddy as you sort out your bedhead and get dressed.

Mingis parents aren’t home, and there’s a spare key resting atop the frame of the front door that you use to let yourself into their home. It’s still early, early enough that you know that Mingi is probably fast asleep in his bed. You try to keep your steps light as you trudge up the stairs and into his room. The curtains are drawn, only letting in a stream of sunlight that lights up a sliver on his bed. The orange morning sun is casting a few inches of light on his thigh, so you let it lead you.

It’s where you first press a kiss. He smells of sleep and Mingi, you inhale the scent of his skin between kisses you trail all over his thigh and over the front of his underwear. Mingi sighs softly in his sleep, hips twitching when your lips kiss the tip of his dick through the fabric of his boxers. You’re looking up to watch his face, but when he’s still asleep as you mouth over his entire cock, you crawl up and kiss his lips.

Mingi huffs and puffs, twisting underneath you. You continue to kiss all over his sleepy, confused face. He cracks an eye open, transforming from a groggy confusion to a content smile.

”Morning,” he mumbles happily.

”Hey,” you whisper, kissing the corner of his mouth. ”Can I suck you off?”

He lets out a drawn-out moan that tapers off into a sigh, nodding fervently. His hands are weak and his fingers fumble to find purchase in your hair when you pull his underwear down his legs and take him into your mouth right away.

He sounds so lovely, all raspy and deep from his sleep. Even though he’s just come to consciousness, Mingi makes sure to tell you how good you are making him feel. He moans your name, over and over, giving you so much praise it’s making your head swim.

It doesn’t take him long to get close, so you choke out permission for him to cum in your mouth, and Mingi listens eagerly. Even as he cums he’s vocal, talking you through it and reminding you to breathe all while he praises you for how well you take it. He’s so gentle it’s making you moan as you swallow, and when you pull off his dick you scramble to get his thigh between yours.

Mingis hands guide your hips over his thigh, setting the pace for you to hump him. He keeps the praise coming, and when he feels you getting close he pulls you down for a numbing kiss. You cum on his thigh while deep in a kiss, and Mingi holds you close to his chest as you come down from it.

Somewhere in the post-orgasm haze, you both fall asleep. It’s peaceful and quiet, Mingi lulls you to sleep with the sounds of his breath and his fingers drawing patterns on your back. When you wake up again it’s in a sweat. His little bedroom is swarming with heat, so you decide on a shower, where Mingi has your chest pressed against the white tiles while he fucks you until you’re cumming a second time, this time while full of his cock. He bites down on your shoulder to keep from cumming until he knows you’re fully satisfied, and only then does he pull out and let himself cum on your ass.

When you’re pulling his shirt over your head 10 minutes later while he cooks you lunch, you catch sight of marks on your shoulder. His teeth had dug hard enough to bloom bruises on your skin, and your mind reels at the fact that he has marked you up.

Mingi has you coming over the next morning too, after you’d spent the previous night sending him pictures of the bruises his teeth left on your skin. His responses had been sporadic as he focused on work, but it didn’t stop you from going into detail about all the things you want Mingi to do to you.

It’s like all the limits have finally vanished, neither of you are held back by the fears and worries of before. It’s just like it had been before you moved back, when you only had phone calls to rely on. Back then, the comfort had come from the fact that you didn’t have to actualize all the things you spoke about. You had time to feel each other out and discuss what you want, all without having to put yourself on the line for possible failure. Now, you’ve found reassurance in the fact that you do have a physical relationship.

You know each other in your bones. You can read all the queues his body gives you, and you know what every little expression on his face means. You can sense differences in his sighs and you know what his voice sounds like when it’s getting to be too much. There’s no room for doubt when Mingi is in front of you, you just intrinsically know what he needs.

The two of you fall into a routine. When morning comes, you skip over to Mingi's house and usually he’s still asleep, tired from his shift the day before. You wake him up with kisses or gentle touches, and if he’s hard by the time you get there, Mingi loves to wake up to you already taking care of him. Some mornings you simply lay beside him, tracing his face with your finger. His hair sticks to his forehead so you brush it back, giving soft kisses to the side of his temple. Your pointer finger follows the contour of his nose and lips, feeling the warmth of his breath exit his nose.

Even though he’s asleep and unaware of your worship, you can’t bring yourself to stop. It’s in these moments you can be fully truthful with your affections. Letting your hands linger on his chest for a moment longer, focusing on his heartbeat underneath your palm. You whisper things to him you’re too afraid to say when he can hear you, just to release yourself from the need. It satiates you enough, like this airing out of your system, enough to keep you going until the next morning when you once again get overwhelmed with the sight of his sleeping form blanketed by sunlight. There is only one thing you forbid yourself from saying, three words that you vow to never let yourself speak.

A full two weeks pass of this. Every day you explore something new, things you’ve spoken about on the phone over the last year. With Mingis parents working daytime, you have full freedom to be as loud as you want. Mingi also takes full advantage of a free house. One morning he bends you over the kitchen counter while breakfast is still cooking. His mouth is always right by your ear, moaning and telling you how bad he needs you, despite fucking you upstairs in his bedroom just an hour earlier. Another day he has you ride him on the couch right before he leaves for work. You love it most when Mingi randomly decides to go down on you, whether it’s in the shower or he makes you lie down on the kitchen table. When he’s got his mouth on you he’s possessive, making sure to mark up your thighs and hips. It happens so often that he sometimes ends up darkening the hickeys he left a few days earlier.

Then Mingis schedule changes, and he has to work in the mornings. It doesn’t stop you, but it puts a damper on things as you know them. You have to meet in the afternoons instead, and with Mingi's parents home you end up sitting through long dinners with his parents, reminiscing and talking. It makes sex a little difficult, and Mingi hates the fact that you have to be quiet. He picks you up in his car a few times, but quick head while parked at the edge of the woods is a harsh contrast to the hours of sex you’d been able to have a few weeks earlier.

You’re caught by surprise one day when your phone calls and you rush to pick up only to find Yunhos voice at the other end. You’re so surprised that you pull your phone away and check the name on the screen, and sure enough it’s Yunho's contact name.

”Hey,” you reply, trying to play off the shock.

”Not happy to hear from me?” he teases.

”Shut up, you know I am!” you joke back.

He laughs in return and makes some small talk, telling you how much fun it was to see you and asking you how you’ve been.

”But, hey, uh,” he interjects. ”You ended up leaving with my shirt, is there any chance I could get it back?”

”Shit,” you curse, squeezing your eyes shut in embarrassment. ”You’re right, I totally forgot. Uh, do you want me to bring it by today?”

”That’d be perfect, thanks!”

When Yunho hangs up the phone, you chew nervously at your lip. Getting the shirt back to Yunho wouldn’t be an issue, it’s just that it’s in Mingi’s room somewhere, and asking him to locate it would probably lead to another weird moment where Mingi says something petty. You’re pacing around your room when your eyes land on his driveway and you remember that Mingi is at work. You’re just about to call Yunho and tell him today’s gonna be impossible, before the solution hits you.

Mingis mom opens the door to their home when you knock, and beams at the sight of you on their doorstep.

”Sweetheart! Hi there, Mingi is at work right now, I’m afraid,” she tells you while wrapping her arms around you for a hug. She always does this, even though you’ve been spending a lot of time over at their house recently, Mingis mother hugs you every time she sees you.

”I know, it’s just that I left something in Mingi's room that I need to get if that’s okay?”

So she lets you run up to his bedroom. You feel a little bad while rummaging through his room, but it doesn’t take you long to find Yunhos flannel shirt bunched up halfway underneath Mingis dresser. Mingis mom tries to convince you to stay for dinner, but you tell her you have to get going, and within moments you’re in your car on the way to Yunhos house.

It’s another picture-perfect day outside, the sky is a pristine blue and the wind is blowing just enough to bring some relief in this heat. Yunho is outside in his front yard, with the rear of his car jacked up.

”Hey, you!” you call, getting out of your car. ”Car trouble?”

You can tell by the fact that he has picked apart the entire wheelhouse that it’s not just something routine, but Yunho shrugs his shoulders.

”Not something I can’t fix,” he smiles. ”Dude, you’re quick. I called you, what, 30 minutes ago?”

You nod, sitting down on the tire Yunho has removed.

”Honestly, I was losing my mind at home. I’ve been doing jack shit for days now, I think I might die out of boredom,” you complain.

”Oh, so you’re saying you left the minute you got my call just because you had nothing better to do? It’s not just because you love me?” Yunho quirks an eyebrow, wiping grease from his forehead.

”Can’t it be both? And anyway, I had to go over to Mingis to get your shirt, so I didn’t leave ’the minute I got your call’,” you say, sticking out your tongue at him.

”It was at Mingi's house?” he asks.

Something comes over Yunhos face that you can’t pinpoint.

”Yeah.. I left with him during the party, and we went to his house afterward.” You hope he buys it as a reasonable enough explanation, it’s at the very least true. Just not the entire truth.

Yunho shrugs, and his eyes lose the edge they just had. He smiles, ”Leaving in one man's shirt to go to another dude's house, all in one night.. Impressive, I’ll give you that.”

”Fuck off!” you huff, kicking Yunhos shoe.

He laughs, slapping down a greasy hand on your knee to let you know that he’s just joking, even though you already know that.

”Although…” you trail off. ”Mingi did say that it’s your move.”

”Oh yeah, it is. I wasn’t expecting you to fall for it, though.” Yunhos's voice is still teasing, but not in the same way that Mingis usually is. You can tell that Yunho is just friendly, that there’s no flirting laced in his words or tone. It makes you miss Mingi.

”I don’t fall for things like that,” you retort, but quickly find your mind going to all the shirts Mingi has let you borrow these past weeks. You wear them all day, every day, even when you come back home after spending time with him. You even sleep in them, and you frequently bury your face in the collar to smell his laundry detergent. The few times he gives you a shirt he’s already worn you end up getting so worked up about it that you think you’d be getting yourself off while smelling it, if it wasn’t for the fact that Mingi now has you cumming at least twice a day.

So, perhaps you do fall for tricks like that. But only when it’s Mingi.

Yunho goes silent, and you can see that he’s chewing on the inside of his lip.

”What’s wrong?” you ask him.

His eyes flick over to yours for a second, then he looks at his hands. You’ve never seen Yunho this deep in thought outside an academic setting, and something about it is making you uneasy.

”You know,” he begins, but the words die as quickly as he says them.

”Yes?” you try again.

He pauses, looking up at you.

”You know that Mingi is my best friend,” he says. ”And I love him, I do, but sometimes he acts like an idiot. And I can’t- I just hate seeing it, you know?”

”Okay,” you mumble, only growing more confused with every word Yunho says.

”I don’t think it was right how he came here with you, then spent the whole night talking to everyone but you. But, he just gets so weird sometimes, right? And like I said, I love him, he’s my best friend, but- we just thought it would be different when you came back home. So, Wooyoung and I decided to see what would happen if I lent you my shirt, and-.. Yeah.”

”What… What are you saying?” Your voice is getting quieter. The cheery happiness from before has retired, and there’s something strange in the atmosphere now. You can’t understand what Yunho is getting at, but there’s a part of you that wonders and wishes. A part of you that can read between the lines of what Yunho is too afraid to say out loud.

”It’s not my place to say,” Yunho says, looking everywhere but your eyes.

”At least tell me what you intended to do with this shirt.” It’s still in your hands, his flannel, and your fingers are tightening around it.

”We just figured that maybe he needed a push,” he tells you, sounding so sheepish.

”You wanted him to get jealous?” you finally say it out loud. Yunho doesn’t meet your eyes, but it’s a clear enough answer. So you ask, ”What do you know about me and Mingi?”

”In all honesty? I don’t know anything. And it used to hurt me because Mingi is my best friend and I’ve known him since we were kids. But that’s what clued me in because I know for a fact that he would have told me if you were dating,” Yunho says. You’re holding your breath while listening to him. He continues, ”I, uh, I accidentally saw the preview of a text you sent him once. Something about.. well, that’s not important. But, I realized it then. We all thought it was just a matter of time, and that you’d make it official when you moved back home.”

You’re hearing every single thing Yunho is saying, but the words just won’t stick. You’re becoming more aware of the birds singing and the sound of the wind among the treetops.

”Mingi is in love with you,” Yunho says. At last. The rest of his words blur together. He has been, a long time, doesn’t know it. Yunhos mouth is moving, and you know what he’s saying, but the rational part of you that knows this can’t be true has stopped listening long ago.

Mingi is not in love with you. He’s just not, that can’t be true.

Yunho scrambles towards you, hands landing on each of your knees. He looks so concerned and his mouth is still moving.

”-you okay? What’s wrong?” You hear once your brain stops blocking your ears. You’re crying, tears falling from your cheeks down onto your hands.

”What did I say?” Yunho asks frantically.

And the confessions start rolling. You tell Yunho about everything, from that first night to everything that has happened since you returned back home. You tell him about the weird moment when Mingi drove you home after the party.

”Don’t you hear it though? He’s in love with you! My god, I think he always has been,” Yunho says.

You scoff, ”He ignored me for four whole months during my first semester away. He’s not in love with me, this is just.. out of comfort, it’s just easy.”

”You’re both in denial. You know what I’m hearing? That Mingi was so heartbroken when you moved away that he couldn’t even be a good friend. That didn’t just extend to you, by the way. He barely hung out with us during that time, and it only changed when you came home for Christmas,” Yunho tries to lay it out for you.

”You’re wrong. You’re wrong-”

”I can’t tell you what to believe,” Yunho says. His hand squeezes your knee, leaving dirty marks of grease on your skin. It’s a gesture of comfort, and you appreciate it for what it is. ”You need to talk to Mingi. Maybe disarm him by telling him that you’re in love with him first.”

The air feels different when you drive back home. It feels heavier, somehow. Yunhos words bear an incredible weight and no matter how many times you run them through your head they don’t get any easier to process. It would be different if it had come from Seonghwa or Hongjoong, who would say practically anything to comfort you. You don’t think Yunho would sweeten his words like they would, or even at all.

You sit through a quiet lunch with your mom, unable to get your thoughts in any other direction than the conversation you just had with Yunho. For some reason, you feel absolutely stuck there, and you can’t see a way for things to work. It feels as if time has been suspended in wait for your next move. The hours tick on though. You lay in your bed and watch the numbers on your alarm clock change. Seconds turn into minutes, and then hours, and your mind is still stuck in the same place as it has since you left Yunhos house.

You don’t realize when the clock indicates that Mingi is ending his shift. The numbers are just ticking, hypnotizing you. You startle when your phone calls and the pit in your stomach grows when you know that it’s probably Mingi.

Your fingers move on pure muscle memory as you pick up your phone and swipe to answer the call, then raise the phone to your ear. Through the phone, you can hear Mingis car running.

”Hello?” Mingi asks. ”You know, it’s usually the person who picks up the phone who speaks first.”

”Sorry,” you croak. You don’t even recognize the sound of your voice.

”Are you okay?” Mingi sounds so concerned it makes your stomach twist. It’s still the same Mingi you have known all your life, and he’s the same man you’ve been fucking the past weeks, but something feels as if it has fundamentally changed. You try to listen to his voice, read it for any hint of tenderness you’d have previously missed. You can’t make out any, it’s the same Mingi as always.

”It’s been a weird day,” you settle for.

”Then what do you say about changing into your swimsuit and we go to the lake? It’s so hot out, I can’t stand to be home. And maybe it can take your mind off of things?” he suggests.

”Yeah, sounds good.”

”I’ll pick you up in 5, better hurry!”

Mingi hangs up. Your head feels all fuzzy and distant, but you pull yourself out of bed and get changed. While putting your clothes over your swimsuit you realize you’re in one of Mingis t-shirts. Every single bit of this feels like a divine punishment. To be dressed in Mingis clothes and have marks in the shape of his mouth decorate your chest and the insides of your thighs, to be so thoroughly claimed by him but yet not be his, is agonizing.

You’re aware that Mingi would park in your driveway and come knocking at your door, wanting to impress and appease your parents at every turn. You just can’t deal with that today, so you hurriedly make your way down the stairs and out your door to wait for him outside. You’re just in time, because Mingi is making the turn up your street and it’s only half a minute before he’s pulling up to your house and you’re getting in his car.

”Hey, I missed you!” Mingi sounds cheerful, sporting a smile so big it’s splitting. You hate the way that time and space curl around Mingi each time you see him as if he presents to you in technicolor and slow motion. Your eyes pass over each feature, trying your best to handle what just seeing him does to your body.

Mingi keeps a pair of extra sunglasses in his car for you, and when you’re sat down he leans over to place them on your face. The gesture is enough to make your breath hitch, but he uses it as an opportunity to lean in for a swift kiss, and you feel as if you’re floating.

Today, Mingi has Fleetwood Mac playing softly throughout the car.

You’re just looking at Mingi with this pit in your stomach, this sense of impending doom sitting heavy in your abdomen. The world feels slow and strangely saturated. The seconds stretch on infinitely, allowing you plenty of time to watch the sunlight adorn Mingi's skin.

You’re aware that you can’t stop staring. When Mingi parks the car and you start making the short walk through the trees to get to the lake, your eyes are always set on him. From the towel slung over his shoulder to the sweat that has broken out and is trickling down the nape of his neck. You’re trying to make sense of the sight in front of you, the same Mingi you’ve made this walk with a hundred times, the only difference being that he’s had you in the most intimate and tender ways now. It forces you to rewrite history, the memories of your childhood innocence are permanently changed. If only you had known then, while sitting on the big rock and throwing pebbles out to break the still surface of the water if you had only known that the boy handing you rocks would end up being the man you fall in love with fifteen years later.

Your stupid, stupid heart. Sometimes you think the ribs, flesh, and muscle containing it won’t be enough to keep it in place. It beats so hard and fast it billows from your chest, through your arms, and out to the very tip of each finger. You have to flex them to stop that lovesick tingle from numbing you.

The water is beautiful. The lake looks just like you remember it, the wind is blowing slight ripples upon the surface and the trees are swinging lightly. Besides the gentle hum of nature, the place is completely undisturbed and it’s just you and Mingi here today.

You're placing your towels down and undressing in silence, barely glancing at each other. You sneak little glances at him in the corner of your eye, wondering what he’s thinking. Yunhos words are still echoing through your head, getting louder and more unbearable for every minute that passes.

Mingi is wading into the water before you know it, covered up to his knees, then thighs, then his waist, and eventually he points his arms and dives in entirely. He erupts back through the surface with a shriek that echoes over the lake, and you can’t stop yourself from laughing.

He rushes back up to where you’re laying on your towel, shoulders bunched up in reaction to the cold water. Mingi shakes his head above you to force droplets onto your bare skin, laughing loudly when you yell in protest. Things feel so extraordinarily regular, it’s as if you have transported back ten years in time. Even when Mingi gets down on his towel and leans over to kiss you, it still feels so normal. It just feels so right with Mingi, like this is what you’re meant to be doing.

Mingis's mouth is cold and wet from his dip in the water, and his hair continues to drip onto your face, but you find it hard to care when he wraps you up in a long, passionate kiss. He’s on his stomach on his towel now, as close to you as he can get. Your heart beats with a discernible nervosity at the fact that you are laid out in the open with Mingi making out with you. There would be quite a walk for anyone else to get here, and you would probably be able to hear branches breaking or even a car parking way before anyone could walk upon the scene and spot the two of you. The risk of getting caught here is low, but you still feel like you’re on display.

Mingis cold fingers wrap around your jaw where he keeps you firmly as his tongue enters your mouth. The kissing goes to your head very quickly, dulling all your senses as all your thoughts are replaced by what Mingi is doing with his mouth. He knows you so well that he pulls away seconds before you lose your breath, letting you regain it while he kisses the corner of your mouth softly. His hand trails over your chest and down your stomach carefully, feeling the way your ribcage heaves as your breaths get steadier.

Mingis eyes follow the path of his hand before he abruptly stops by your knee.

”What’s that?” he asks you. You have to crane your neck to see what he’s looking at. Not much remains of it, but there are still faint marks of dirt and grease on the top of your knees. Just on the outside of your leg, there’s an unmistakable fingerprint.

”Oh,” you mumble. Mingi detaches himself from you with a quickness that makes you lose your breath, and you scramble to get up too.

”I don’t- I feel like I don’t even need to ask who left that on you,” Mingi says.

”It was Yunho,” you rush out, wanting so badly to resolve this before Mingis thoughts spin and twist so bad that you can’t untangle them. It’s clear from the look on his face that your words and their haste only have the opposite effect.

”Yunho?” he questions, getting quieter.

”It’s not all what you think. He called me about that shirt he let me borrow a few weeks ago, remember? I went to his house to give it back and we got to talking. You know, just.. stuff, about life. I ended up getting emotional and he comforted me. I was crying and he put his hands on my knees, that’s all.” You read Mingis's face for any changes, but nothing happens. He only looks at you, taking in your half-truth excuse of an explanation.

”What is it that Yunho can comfort you about, but I can’t?” Mingi asks, his eyes staring into yours with so much intensity you feel like crying. You had expected everything but that. You’d rather Mingi accuse you of getting intimate with Yunho, that you’re lying and it’s a terrible cover story you’re spinning. You could defend yourself from all that, but not this.

”That’s not… Mingi, it’s not like that. I didn’t just choose to go there for comfort. It just happened, I just started crying, and that’s it,” you urge.

Mingis legs are drawn up to his chest and his arms are wrapped around them. He looks so small and vulnerable. His eyebrows are starting to furrow together, and you’re finding it hard to tell if it’s anger or sadness that is starting to show on his face. Both possibilities terrify you equally.

”Why?” he wonders, simply. ”Why did you cry?”

You can physically see the restraints he’s putting on himself to hear you out, to not race away with his worries. You wish it means what you want it to mean. That Mingis vulnerability was an act of love instead of self-preservation. He’s probably sat there worried at the threat of Yunho taking you away and replacing his role. That the fun you’ve had the past weeks, and the year before that, would be over, just like that. You wonder if he views it as a hindrance more than anything. Mingi has finally scored a way to have sex on the regular, without the commitment or worries of starting with someone new. What you have is a lot of comfort, and you suppose he doesn’t want to lose that.

Still, even this feels like a lot more than you deserve of him. If you can’t have Mingi in the ways that you want, you’ll have to do your best to preserve the arrangement you have now.

”It’s not important,” you mumble. You know it’s not a good enough answer.

Mingi lets the word hover in the air for a moment, pondering on whether he should let it go.

In the end, he decides to speak. ”There’s nothing you can tell me that would scare me off. You know that, right?”

”That’s not true,” you whisper, so quiet it’s almost a hiss. ”There is something I can’t ever tell you.”

Tears start to fall down your cheeks and it’s now a conscious effort to keep your sobs contained within your chest. The lake is still breathtaking, the wind is still and the sun is bright in the perfect blue sky. It’s a beautiful day to get your heart broken, at the very least.

Mingi stretches his fingers and you watch the tendons twitch and flex. You’re brought back to what you were doing earlier, shaking off your nerves.

”What if I say it first?” he says. You look up at his eyes.

”What?”

”That I love you,” he tells you. His eyes are big and dark, brimming with tears of his own. ”If I say it first, will you say it too?”

”Mingi-”

”I do love you,” he begins. ”It’s stupid, looking back, because I think I’ve loved you since before you left. I loved you that first night, I already knew it, and I felt so stupid when I woke up the morning after. Doing that with you when I was drunk out of my mind made me feel like shit. And then I felt even more like shit, because- because, it made me realize that it hadn’t been the way I wanted it to be. So I took comfort in the fact that it was over the phone, and I still had time to do it right. To start right, with you, I mean. I wanted our first time to be perfect. I knew I loved you when I kept thinking about it. But then, when you finally came back, it truly clicked. For a while, I had figured that I’d know how I felt about you when we had sex for the first time. But I was wrong because all it took was me seeing you to know that I’m in love with you.”

”Mingi,” you whisper, again, over and over. It’s all you can bring yourself to say, like a prayer, before you crawl over to him and press your lips to his. It doesn’t matter that it takes him a beat to respond, you don’t care at all anymore about how things get awkward or strange. You continue to kiss over his mouth until he’s ready to kiss you back, when time finally catches up to you and it dawns on you both that this is real.

You can’t stop kissing him, breathing out his name every time you part.

”I love you,” you mumble into his mouth. ”I’m so in love with you.”

Mingi smiles into the kiss. Your senses are overwhelmed with the taste of both your tears and the fact that you’re both now smiling and giggling, repeating ’I love you’s until the words merge.

He pulls you into his arms, tumbling over into the grass. He stops kissing you to just look at you, and you watch him too. Your Mingi, in the grass by the lake. Finally, your Mingi.