#day seventy six | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nereidprinc3ss · 30 days

Text

do you believe me now? | 4

in which spencer reid and inexperienced fem!reader are interrupted at the most inopportune of times. he calls you on the first night of his case. dirty talk turns into a hard conversation. we get a glimpse into spencer's past, and we finally learn why he's so hesitant to sleep with you.

series masterlist

18+ (smut) warnings/tags: dirty talk, phone sex/mutual masturbation, softdom!spence, obligatory he talks u through it, lots of graphic discussions of sex, established relationship, angst (sorrryyy!) a/n: so remember how i said you'd need the bonus chapter to fully appreciate/understand this part? i was wrong!! it will come in handy probably in the next part tho:) also idk how these parts keep getting so long im sorry! anyway, i love you all so bad. thank you for bearing w/ my craziness. PLEASE let me know your thoughts on this part!! i adore hearing from you!! kisses

(also special thank you to @fliesforeyes who convinced me phone sex w/ spence could be done!! i will link his phone sex blurb here :)) thank u binx!!

“Three million six hundred eighty four thousand three hundred thirty two times fourteen million seven hundred sixty one thousand nine hundred seventy one.”

You’ve lost count of how many stupid math questions you’ve asked your human calculator boyfriend, just to see if he can actually do them. Spencer is silent for a second, and you think you’ve finally stumped him.

“That one is complicated.”

You sit bolt upright in his bed, looking down at him and pointing an accusatory finger. His brows raise at the manic look in your eye.

“You don’t know.”

“I do know. I meant it would be hard to explain if you aren’t a math person.”

“Bullshit!” You scoff, “you don’t know!”

“It would display on a calculator as five-point-three-eight-eight-E-thirteen. It’s a really big number.”

“Oh, really big, huh?” you mumble, searching for your phone blindly in the sheets and scrambling to open the calculator app. “Um… what numbers did I say?”

Spencer repeats them back to you and you press the equals sign.

You look at it.

And then you set your phone down.

“I was right, huh?” he smiles up at you, probably reveling in your pouty wrongness.

Too proud to admit it, you collapse on top of him, burying your face in his shoulder.

“I don’t like this game anymore. What the fuck even is an e? Why are we doing algebra?”

Spencer laughs, brushing your hair aside.

“The e stands for exponent. It’s to the power of ten.”

“Ever heard of a rhetorical question?”

“Yes, I have.”

It’s hard not to snort even at his dumbest jokes.

“You’re annoying. Let’s do something else.”

You roll over onto your back again, letting your head flop over to look at Spencer, whose hair is exactly the right amount of messy after a long day, falling in impossibly soft waves over the perfect lines and contours of his face. Despite lounging, he’s still in his suit from work—he’d left Quantico and immediately picked you up. There were no solid plans for the evening, so after both of you pretended that you wanted to go out for a while, you ended up back at his apartment.

He looks good. Almost too good.

“Something like what?” he smiles lazily, reaching over and tracing his fingers over your cheek.

“Something… naked?”

His grin widens and he shakes his head.

“Me naked or you naked?”

Pretending to think about it, you roll your bottom lip between your teeth.

“Mm… why not both?”

“Hm. Why do I feel like I know where this is going?”

The mattress sinks underneath your elbow as you prop yourself up, dropping your head over Spencer’s to kiss him.

“Because you’re so smart, and you think it’s a great idea.”

He entertains your kiss for a moment. Just a moment.

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“Because I am!” You finally give in to your impulses, tangling your fingers in his hair and looking at him meaningfully. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to have not had sex. I don’t care about any of your weird, cryptic moral reasoning.”

He grabs your wrist carefully.

“It is not moral,” he scoffs. “We haven’t even talked about it yet.”

“Really? Because I feel like we’ve talked about it a lot.”

He begins to reply, but you realize you don’t want to get into a debate over whether you’ve technically talked about it yet. “I don’t even care! If that’s all that’s standing in your way, then let’s talk about it. Right now.”

Spencer sighs, his eyes darting between yours as he reaches up to cradle your cheek.

“Fine. But I have things to say you’re not going to like.”

“So business as usual?”

He rolls his eyes. You allow yourself a tiny self-satisfied smirk, forever relishing in his poorly-hidden soft spot for your constant teasing. Spencer ignores this. Which is probably for the best.

“I know you probably won’t see it this way, but—sex is different than everything else we’ve done so far. It can be really fun, obviously it feels good, it facilitates deeper feelings of connection—that’s all true. Which is why, in my opinion, it’s incredibly important that you be selective with who you sleep with. Because it’s so easy to do something you regret, and sex is vulnerable. It should always be with someone you trust and—and… care about.”

A pink flush stains his cheeks like watercolor as he stumbles over the last few words. It makes your heart flutter against the confines of your chest.

Maybe best not to think about the absence versus presence of certain four-letter words and what they may or may not mean. You’ll move on to more pressing matters and pretend like it doesn’t ache just a little in your whole body.

You cover his hand with your own.

“Are you going to break up with me anytime soon?”

Spencer’s eyes widen, filling with genuine horror and confusion.

“What? No!”

“Are you going to cheat on me?”

“Absolutely not, I—”

“Then I’m not going to regret it. Issue resolved. Moving on.”

“Honey, I just want you to be 100% sure that I’m what you want.”

“Oh my god,” you groan, flopping onto your back once more. “I have begged you to sleep with me on multiple occasions. We have been dating for months and I liked you even longer before that. I think about it literally every time I see you. I don’t know how to be any surer.”

It’s quiet for a moment as you study the imaginary pattern on the ceiling. The rebuttal you’d been anticipating doesn’t come—instead, the mattress shifts next to you. Spencer enters your field of vision, now leaning over you with a little smile on his face that gives you butterflies.

“Every time?”

“…yes, every time,” you agree, voice considerably thinner than it had been a moment ago. Spencer glances at your lips as he speaks.

“Interesting. And what is it that you think about exactly?”

You groan again, attempting to roll facedown, but he pins your shoulder to the bed. The way he’s sweetly kissing down your cheek and jaw is infuriating because you know it’s a false pretense.

“Ugh, I don’t know! Don’t make me answer that!”

“You said if talking about it was all that was standing in my way, we would talk about it. Now I want to talk about it. Come on,” he says, voice low and cloying against your throat as he attempts to tease the answer out of you. “Tell me what you think about when you think about us having sex.”

You let out a shaky breath at the feeling of his lips skimming your neck, hating how easily he can reduce you to this.

“I… I always wonder what it will feel like. Sometimes I wonder if it will hurt.”

Spencer sighs, interrogation by way of seduction momentarily forgotten. You silently curse yourself for saying something so un-sexy.

“It might, sweetheart. That’s one of the reasons we’ve held back. I… really don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even know if I can.”

You grab his face in both hands, forcing him to look at you with more confidence than you feel.

“Sometimes I worry about it, too. But I like you a lot more than it scares me. I still want to.”

He kisses your palm.

“You’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt for everyone, and even if it does, you’re resilient.”

“Exactly. So you have to get over yourself.”

Spencer laughs like he wasn’t expecting to, eyes sparkling as he regards you.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe I do.”

He’s smiling again as he leans down and kisses you—a slow, lingering thing which tastes like spearmint as you part your lips for him.

“Please?” you whisper against him after a long moment. He hums, keeps kissing you.

“What is it that you think you want? You don’t even know what you’re asking for.”

“Tell me,” you beg, chasing his lips. “Tell me what you’re going to do with me. We can talk about it. This is talking about it.”

Spencer exhales deeply, wedging a thigh between yours. Immediately you clamp around it, trying not to grind against him too overtly.

“You want to know what I’d do to you?”

“Yes—” you paw at his jacket. Surprisingly, he doesn’t stop you from pushing it off. Your heart pounds.

“Well… we both know how anxious you get,” he muses, pressing his lips so delicately to your fluttering pulse-point in emphasis, and then back to your mouth. His thigh pushes harder against you to supplant the absence of his lips as he speaks, though he kisses you sporadically and between sentences. “You’re hard to get out of your head when you’re nervous, you know that? I watch it happen. One minute you’re with me, and then you start overthinking, and getting self-conscious. The only thing that seems to relax you is letting me touch you—so first I would touch you like I’ve touched you before. I’d make sure you know how pretty you are and how good you deserve to feel.” You whimper inadvertently at his words, arching into him and grinding against his leg as he pauses to kiss the sensitive soft spot below your jaw. “You’re going to need to be really ready to let me in. Do you know what I mean by that?”

As he asks, he pushes his thigh against you harder. Your body responds immediately, arching into him and seeking more friction. When you squeak, he takes it as a no.

“I mean I need you relaxed and wet. You’ll excuse my crude language.”

You pull at his tie, breathing heavier now and so turned on it’s almost painful.

“What are you gonna do after that?”

“What else is there to do but fuck you after that?” he breathes. “You want me to tell you how I’d fuck you?”

Something about it makes you whine salaciously. You’ve heard him curse—you’ve even heard him talk about fucking you. But it feels more real now; when it’s low in your ear and you’re covertly undressing him and he’s pushing your shirt over your stomach promisingly.

“Yes, please.”

He hums against your jaw, nipping and brushing his lips over the skin as he considers. Leaves you waiting.

“I would have to take my time with you. You’ll be overwhelmed. I know you think you won’t, but you will. I’m going to have to be so, so careful with you, angel. It’s going to drive me insane. But it will feel good for you.”

“Why careful? I don’t want that.”

He chuckles. A chill runs down your spine.

“Yeah, you do. You’re going to want me to be careful when I’m—” he pauses, pressing his thumb to your bare lower tummy and dragging up to a spot below your belly button. He presses down lightly again. “Right here. Approximately.”

The surface of the sun has nothing on the temperature of your skin in this moment, as you writhe underneath him in both arousal and embarrassment. Mostly, burning need. You feel almost sick with it.

“Please don’t make me wait anymore. Just do it, please, Spencer. I need it to be you, I don’t want it to be anyone else. I promise I’m ready.”

It’s silent for a moment. Your heart quickens. You sense his walls wearing away, his instinct to keep you intact for god knows what reason crumbling. He’s finally going to give you what you’ve been begging for.

Spencer opens his mouth, eyes glimmering—

And then his phone rings.

You both freeze—he melts dejectedly before you do, more accustomed to an ill-timed phone call and realizing the finality it can present.

He’s breathing heavily against your neck, as if maybe whoever it is will just hang up. But the phone keeps ringing.

“I’m sorry.”

Your stomach sinks as he sits up, grabbing his phone from the side table and rubbing circles on your inner thigh as he answers.

“This is Reid,” he says, lackluster.

If you wanted, you could hear what Penelope is saying—but you don’t bother listening. It’s going to be a case. Spencer is about to leave. The details are his problem.

“Okay. I’ll be there in an hour.”

He hangs up, tossing the phone onto the mattress and not speaking for a moment, just continuing to rub your leg apologetically. Watching you almost mournfully—taking in your disheveled hair, your likely blown-out pupils, the shirt pushed almost over your chest.

“I have to go right now,” he finally manages with a heavy sigh, gently pulling your shirt back into place.

You sit up, shedding all the hopes that had been building for the evening, and try to sound chipper—though all you feel is bitter disappointment that goes deeper than you understand.

“I know. Go ahead, I can get a cab home.”

He frowns, running his hand over the back of your hair.

“I don’t love the idea of you standing on the sidewalk waiting for a car in this part of town so late. Do you just want to stay here for the night and go home tomorrow?”

You force a smile. Great. So you’ll be spending the night in his bed after all—just without him.

“Sure. Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of you are feeling particularly grateful.

Soon you’re walking him to his own door. Both of you come to a stop in front.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs again.

“Spencer, it’s fine. It’s your job. You don’t need to apologize. You were very clear about this part when we started dating.”

“I know, but… it’s easier in theory than in practice.”

You smile. If Spencer is a reflection of you, it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. His hair is still messy from your fingers running through it and he’s missing his tie. You hope all his coworkers see and feel bad about taking him away from you.

But it’s not their fault. You just want someone to blame.

Instead you mould yourself to his body, wrapping around him like you belong there. He returns your embrace, pressing his lips into the crook of your shoulder and rubbing your back in that way he always does with you.

In that moment, your affection for him becomes so profound it’s like a chemical reaction—everywhere he touches burns and you love him so fucking much it aches in every inch of your body the way your muscles do when you have a bad fever. Love is the most terrible of afflictions, you realize. It is a fever dream. It’s every fiber of your being screaming to tell him how you feel, to beg him on your knees not to go because you love him like a child loves a parent or a bee loves honeysuckle or the ocean loves the horizon. Pared down to your most basic components, the barest version of yourself, you require him. Your soul needs his soul.

“Spencer?”

“Hm?”

It’s nothing more than an absentminded hum against your skin.

“I…”

Should you be looking him in the eye when you say this? Should you say it right before he has to leave? Just because you say it doesn’t change the fact that he’s about to be gone for several long days. Maybe this is a terrible time to admit something that suddenly feels so true and so consequential.

He senses your internal conflict, pulling back despite your resistance and holding your face between his hands.

“You what?” He murmurs, soft eyes bouncing back and forth between your own. Fuck—you feel so observed, now. Like he can read your mind.

“I forget.”

FUUUUUUCK.

Spencer blinks. Processes. You watch the disbelief crystallizing over his eyes like ice freezing over a lake.

He knows.

He knows you didn’t forget, and he probably knows what you were going to say, and he’s going to tell himself he was wrong to spare your dignity.

Everything hurts when he kisses you. You wonder what regret tastes like.

“Well, let me know if you remember.”

It’s too gentle and at the same time he can’t hide the edge with all the tenderness in the world. You nod as if in a trance, already looking forward to dissociating as you lie in bed and stare at the dark ceiling.

Two small goodbyes are exchanged, slightly stifled now, as if shared between drunk strangers who have sobered up and are mutually embarrassed about how candidly they’d interacted before.

You close the door behind him, doing up all the locks, and meticulously flick every light switch in the apartment off before climbing into his bed—though you don’t really feel like you deserve to be there anymore.

But perhaps this is all an overreaction. It’s not like you owe it to him to say I love you, or anything—it was bad timing, anyway. And why can’t he say it? In fact, why hasn’t he said it?

Maybe you have it all wrong.

Maybe he doesn’t feel that way about you.

You fall asleep before you allow these questions to make you sick.

24 hours go by.

24 hours go by and you really had meant to leave his apartment—it was just that you woke up late, and your phone was dead so you couldn’t call a car, so you charged it while you made breakfast, and then you ate, and then you decided to take a shower and wash your clothes, and then it was two in the afternoon and you hadn’t left yet and you decided to walk to the store and replenish the groceries you’d used up.

Maybe you got a bit distracted looking at flowers and other beautiful things at the market and by the time you got home it was 5:00, so you decided to wait until seven to skip rush hour. And then eight, just to be sure.

Before you know it, it’s midnight, and you’re dozing off in his bed again (teeth cleaned with the brush you’d bought at the store—maybe this whole situation hadn’t been entirely unwitting on your part.)

Throughout the day, you tried to let all your anxiety about the previous night melt away. If it’s something that needs to be addressed, Spencer will address it. Everything will work out in the end. That thought is how you’re able to doze off.

You’re almost asleep when your phone lights up and begins buzzing on the side table. You wince as your eyes open, not adjusting well to the harsh bright display and unable to discern who’s even calling you at this hour. Stupidly, probably because you’re half asleep, you answer without checking.

“Hello?”

Your voice is groggy, quiet with sleep.

“Shit, did I wake you?”

“Spence?” you whisper, stomach flipping at the sound of his voice on the other line. You feel caught, still sleeping in his bed.

“… yeah,” he chuckles. “Did you not check who was calling before you picked up?”

“I was asleep,” you pout. “Kinda.”

“Okay. Go back to sleep, honey. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

You sit bolt upright, phone balanced between tense fingers and speaking directly into the microphone.

“No! No, I’m awake. What’s up? Why did you call?”

A longer stretch of silence—you’re too sleepy to comprehend what it might mean, though never too sleepy to worry about it. With a pang of pain, you recall your strange goodbye, the words you hadn’t said.

“I just needed to hear your voice,” he sighs. You frown, staring at nothing in particular in the pitch black room.

“Oh. Is everything okay?”

“As much as it can be.”

“Right.”

More quiet. You chew on the inside of your cheek, stricken with a sudden feeling of awkwardness that you haven’t had with Spencer in a while.

“I’m sorry… I don’t really know what to say.”

“That’s okay,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice which makes you feel a bit better, “why don’t you tell me about your day? Or you can absolutely go back to sleep, if you’re too tired.”

“Don’t ask me about my day,” you whisper, flopping down on the bed once more. Shame seeps into your voice. He laughs.

“What? Why?”

“Because if I tell you you’re going to think I’m super weird and you’re going to break up with me.”

Laughter tapers off into gentler tones.

“I already think you’re super weird. It’s actually one of your most attractive qualities.”

Blood rushes to your cheeks.

“But it’s like… borderline crazy.”

Immediately, he replies, “for better or worse, I also frequently find myself attracted to crazy.”

“Thank you for calling me crazy and super weird,” you grumble.

“I also called you attractive twice. Tell me.”

When his tone takes on that easy, assertive quality, and it’s sort of raspy and low because it’s late and he’s been talking all day, and you can hear the lazy smile on his face—you imagine him laying on his hotel bed, arm slung over his eyes in the dark as he grins into the microphone—you have a very difficult time saying no.

“Fine. Guess where I am right now.”

“Um, I would hope you’re in bed?”

You smile to yourself, basking in the victory of successfully throwing him off his game even slightly.

“Guess whose bed.”

Silence.

“What an interesting question.” That cocky smile, the low drawling is back, and you chew on your lip, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine. “If it’s not mine or yours, we’re going to have issues.”

“But if it is yours? You’re not going to call the police on me?”

“Why would I call the police? To tell them there’s a pretty girl in my bed and I don’t want her there?”

“To tell them your psychopathic girlfriend broke into your apartment and might be holding hostages there.”

Spencer laughs; a brittle, drawn out thing, flat and quiet as the desert.

“If you were a psychopath, calling the cops would be a waste of time. I would handle you myself.” The idea of being handled has your thighs clenching. “But—yeah, don’t invite anyone else in.” More humor finds its way into his voice, momentarily relieving some tension that had sneakily begun to build. “Having people in my space makes me anxious.”

“But not me?” Your whisper is half flirtatious, half insecure. Spencer’s reply is soft, as if he’s picking up on this from hundreds of miles away.

“No, not you. You are always the exception.”

“Good,” you say, cheeks aching as you half-bury your warm face into his pillow. “Because I made myself really comfortable. You have a nice shower, by the way.”

Spencer groans.

“You’re killing me.”

“What? What did I do!”

“Don’t talk to me about my bed and my shower. I might start to think you’re intentionally being a brat.”

“You asked me about my day! I’m just telling you what I did!”

But you’re also intentional teasing him for sure. After a pause, he sighs in defeat.

“You’re right. I did do that. Tell me what else happened.”

“Well,” you begin, all too eager, “I had to put my clothes in the dryer after I got out, so I borrowed some of yours. But then they were way comfier than mine, so after I went to the store I put them back on, and—”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” you frown.

“Tell me what this is.”

“I—I don’t know what you mean.”

Lying to a profiler is usually pointless.

“I’m not stupid, sweetheart. Tell me why you keep talking about my shower and my bed and my clothes.”

Caught red-handed. Your skin heats up.

“I don’t know. I miss you.”

He hums in a way that blurs the line between sympathetic and patronizing. Even through the phone you can feel the bass of it in your bones. It changes the frequency you’re vibrating at. It’s hypnotic.

“But that’s not really why you’re being intentionally provocative, is it?”

“No,” you admit quietly. “I’m still upset you had to go last night.”

“So you’re frustrated and you’re taking it out on me?”

Your brow furrows. Well, when he puts it like that…

“I’m not taking anything out on you.”

“I think you are. And I don’t appreciate that, because I’m on your side, honey. Do you think I prefer being in a hotel bed by myself or being in my bed with you?”

Somehow, he makes you feel like a scolded child. But he makes it appealing in ways you don’t understand.

“Your bed with me,” you murmur, skin prickling with the coldness of his absence even as you curl under the blanket.

“Right. So why don’t you tell me what I can do for you right now, instead of punishing me for things that are beyond my control?”

“I wasn’t punishing you,” you mutter.

“No? You weren’t intentionally talking about using my shower and sleeping in my bed and putting on my clothes so that I’d have to think about what I can’t have right now?”

“I—”

“Believe me when I tell you I have been thinking about what I can’t have, all day. Your efforts are entirely redundant and you can’t say anything about yourself that is even close to as dirty as the frankly disrespectful thoughts I’ve been having about you for seventeen hours.”

The lack of air is making you so dizzy your vision goes gray at the edges.

“What… what thoughts?”

“None that you need to concern yourself with.”

“You can’t just say something like that and then not tell me!” you insist. He’s obviously giving you a taste of your own medicine and it’s fair but it doesn’t mean you have to like it.

“I can do whatever I want,” Spencer corrects cooly in a way that pisses you off beyond belief because he’s right. It triggers some adolescent immaturity within you—a desire to get back at him, so to speak. He wants intentionally provocative? He can have it.

“Fine. Then so can I. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it even if I could.”

“Spencer,” you warn. “If you don’t tell me what you were thinking I’m gonna—” you look around the room for ammo. “I’m gonna look through your nightstand!”

“Go ahead. I’ll warn you, it’s not very interesting.”

“Sounds like what someone who has something hide would say,” you mumble, crawling across the mattress through tangled sheets and using your phone flashlight to open the drawer.

Spencer is patient and silent as you take in its contents—a small blue leather-bound notebook (full of what looks like Russian), a fountain pen, a glasses case, various kinds of vitamins, and—

“Spencer Reid,” you say, dragging out his name and pretending nothing is fluttering in your stomach, “what are these?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see what you’re referring to.”

“Take a wild guess.”

“Oh, I have one. But I’d like to hear you say it.”

You realize you may have gotten yourself in deeper than you meant to by going through his stuff. Well—they don’t say karma is a bitch for nothing.

“What are you doing with a box of condoms?”

He chuckles and you feel it in your whole body, warm as you stretch across his mattress and eye the box like it might jump out at you.

“Those are years old. I’ve used three since I bought them.”

“Don’t tell me that,” you whine. “I don’t wanna think about all the other women you’ve seduced.”

“You wanted them to be for you, huh?”

You flush. Honestly you hadn’t even thought about that.

“I… I don’t know. I kind of just assumed…”

It’s silent for a second and you frown, realizing you hadn’t even considered protection when you’d imagined sleeping with him before.

“You assumed what, honey?” he asks, voice soft.

“It’s dumb. I can’t tell you.”

“You can tell me anything. I’m not going to think it’s dumb, I promise.”

You chew on your lip, letting your eyes unfocus on the box as you muster the courage to be honest.

“Whenever I imagined it… we didn’t… use anything.”

The words make you cringe even as you’re saying them. So does the quiet that follows.

“When you imagine us sleeping together, we don’t use a condom?”

“Ah!” The phone drops to the mattress as you cover your ears and roll onto your side, curling into yourself once more. “You didn’t have to say it! You make me sound so weird!”

“It’s not weird,” he laughs, because he can probably imagine exactly what you just did, “I just wanted to make sure I was understanding you. That said… we would definitely use protection.”

“Do we have to?”

The quiet words take even you by surprise—and they seem to stun Spencer as well. Several false starts are punctuated by a sigh as he gathers his thoughts.

“We really should, baby. That’s the kind of thing we need to take seriously.”

“But you’re… you’re good, right?”

Thankfully he picks up on your meaning.

“I am. I wouldn’t touch you if I weren’t.”

“And I’m good. So...”

“Hm. And has anyone ever explained to you where babies come from?”

You groan in frustration.

“Spencer, I’m being serious! There are ways to negate that.”

“Honey,” he murmurs, “I understand that. But it would be irresponsible of me to say yes. We can talk about it in the future, but—”

“I’m telling you it’s already dealt with. The chances of an accidental pregnancy are slim to none.”

The new information hangs in the air for a moment until Spencer speaks—to your surprise, his voice is low and humorous.

“That is… good to know. But even so—I’m setting a dangerous precedent if I always let you get exactly what you want.”

“Is it such a bad thing that I just wanna—I wanna know what it feels like? You don’t want that?”

“That’s not what I said. I want to know exactly what you feel like. I’m just hesitant to give in so quickly because it makes me look weak.”

You laugh breathlessly, caught between being turned on by the first part of his sentence and amused by the sarcastic second half. Your thighs clench and your hand absentmindedly wanders between them.

“You know what I was thinking about?” you ask. Spencer hums curiously. “I was thinking about when you let me, um… when you let me touch you how you touch me.” He hums again, but you can hear the amused curve of a smile in it now.

“When you had your mouth all full of me and you looked so pretty?”

“When I—yeah,” you agree, too caught up to deny his compliment as your fingers brush your most sensitive spot through clothing. “And how you got me all messy after. And I was wondering what it would feel like… inside me.”

He sucks in a breath. Your legs brush against each other and you twist slightly as you pretend like you’re not touching yourself just a little bit.

“You want me to come inside you?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, brain short-circuiting at the way those words sound in his voice.

—

On the other side of the line, Spencer isn’t doing a fantastic job of thinking clearly either. His dick is half-hard already and it’s only getting worse with each little noise you make that you don’t seem to realize you’re making.

“Really? That would be very messy, baby. I’m surprised that’s what you want.”

“But I really want it,” you breathe. He’s not even looking as he slips his hand under the waistband of his pajamas and palms himself, his other hand rubbing tiredly over his face as his phone rests on his chest. This was not how he intended for this call to go, believe it or not—but he’s here now.

“Yeah? Is that why you’re touching yourself right now?”

You go silent—which is more or less exactly the reaction Spencer had been expecting. Patiently he waits for you to deny it, in three, two—

“’M not.”

Now, he could explain how he knows that’s a lie. How your breathing pattern changed, and your voice got softer and airier, and how you started speaking with smaller words in fragmented sentences. But he doesn’t feel like explaining any of that.

“I know that’s not true,” he murmurs. “You know what? It wasn’t fair to get you all worked up last night and then leave. I don’t want you frustrated, honey. I want you to do whatever you need to do.”

You make a little gasping noise, and Spencer can imagine the way your back would arch when you did it. His own hips buck slightly as his dick twitches under his fingers.

“Where are you touching?”

“Um—over my clothes.”

Cute.

“Go under them for me. Tell me how it feels when you’re touching yourself like that.”

It takes a moment, in which all he hears is the rustling of fabric, until you’re whispering, “feels… it feels good. I wish you were here.”

He inhales, freeing his cock and squeezing the base.

“I know. Just listen to my voice, pretty. I’m right here.”

Spencer allows himself a few slow tugs as he imagines what’s happening in his bed. You make a squeaking noise, like a held-back moan, and his eyes screw shut.

“I need them inside,” you whine, and he knows you’re referring to his fingers—the ones currently stroking his own leaking cock.

“You can use your own, just give yourself a minute first. Remember what I said about needing to be ready?”

“I am ready—” judging by the surprised chirp you interrupt yourself with, you’ve proven yourself right. What surprises Spencer is the weak sound of disappointment you make next. “Spence, it doesn’t feel the same.”

“We’re different sizes, honey. Your hands aren’t as big as mine. But you can still make it feel good.”

He almost says, 90% of the nerves in the vaginal canal are located in the lower third—in other words, within approximately 2.36 inches from the opening, which you can most certainly reach—but he refrains. He’s not sure if that’s good dirty talk.

“You have a really sensitive spot about three inches up, right in front. It’s going to feel a little different than the rest of you when you touch it. I want you to try and find it for me, okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, ever-eager to please even from a great distance. There’s a quiet moment. “I can’t—I don’t think I can r—oh,”

The moan is so pretty Spencer can’t help speeding up the motion of his hand, hissing slightly as his fingers brush against the angry tip with every pump.

“Did you find it?”

“Yeah,” you whine, a weak, high-pitched thing. “Oh my god.”

“Be gentle,” he warns with some effort as his own hips jump slightly. “You’re really sensitive there. If you’re not careful you’ll make yourself sore.”

“I don’t care—holy shit—” the way your voice rises and tightens to a squeak at the end has Spencer moaning as he fucks his fist. A black hole forms and warps time, turning every minute into a second and every second into an infinity until he has no idea how much time is going by. He drags his thumb over the tip, smearing precum over his cock and whining as his jaw drops at the feeling. “Oh my god, Spencer,” in that same strained, high voice. “’M gonna—ah!”

He gets the general sentiment.

“What, baby? You’re gonna make yourself come all over your fingers? Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“Mhm!”

“Yeah, I bet you are. It feels good, huh?”

“Yes,” you cry.

“See? You don’t need my fingers to feel good. Mine barely fit, you know that? I have to hold your fucking hips down whenever I put my fingers in you because you can’t stop squirming. I don’t know how you think you’re going to take my cock.”

“Spencer!”

He knows.

“Come, baby. Let me hear you.”

The delicate sounds you make as you bring yourself to orgasm tip him over the edge of his own—grunting as he comes all over his fist.

“Jesus,” he strains under his breath, the word dragging out into two long syllables as his hips buck involuntarily and cum drips down his knuckles. He’s lightheaded and he’s created a mess and it all happened so quickly. “Fuck,” he breathes, a rasping chuckle as he reaches for the towel he’d dropped on the bed after his shower earlier. “You conscious over there?”

“I’m conscious,” you slur, breathing heavily. “I’ve never had an orgasm by myself before.”

“Are you proud of yourself?” Spencer smiles, wiping his hand off and making sure he’s otherwise clean. “You should be. I am.”

He’s barely kidding.

“I’ll be proud when I can do it without your help,” you tease.

“But I’ll always want to help you with that.” His already warm face flushes further as he goes over what he’d said. “Sorry I was so vulgar.”

You laugh. He blushes even more.

“Are you? I think you secretly love being vulgar.”

“I don’t know why! I have no idea where it comes from. I would never speak that way in any other context. I should probably work on that. Sometimes I look back on the things I say and I’m genuinely appalled.”

“Well, don’t stop on my account. Personally I enjoy it.”

“Yeah, I think I’m corrupting you. You probably shouldn’t enjoy it.”

The truth of it weighs heavy on his mind, but he’s pretty sure his voice alone doesn’t betray that and you can’t sense it through the phone.

“Oh, my god. Do not do that falling on your sword shit. I like being corrupted by you. If you stop I’ll be very upset.”

“Well god forbid you get upset,” he teases gently. Idly he wonders if the reason he’s suddenly feeling so depressed is because his cortisol levels were already high from the case, and then he jarred his system with an orgasm, spiking his dopamine and ultimately causing it to plummet without the oxytocin release that post-coital physical contact would usually provide.

Or if it was something else. It could also be something else.

For the millionth time, he wishes he was with you. Part of him also wants to go to sleep. But mostly he wishes he was with you.

—

A comfortable silence settles over the conversation. In the ditch between words, you’re mapping constellations in the texture of Spencer’s ceiling. If you squeeze your eyes almost shut, you can imagine it really is the night sky. You can imagine he’s really here.

You think about what he said—his apparently mindless vulgarity. Did it mean anything? Or was he just rambling to get you off?

“Spencer?” you murmur.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He sounds earnest, perhaps a little tired, as he replies, “always,” through the little metal rectangle on your chest. He likes me and my questions are important to him, you repeat to yourself silently as you work up the strength.

“If Penelope hadn’t called, last night… were you going to have sex with me?”

Your lip tastes like his toothpaste as you chew it. Spencer sucks in a breath of air like he’s about to speak—and lets it fizzle out like foam on a carbonated drink.

“I don’t know,” he finally admits, lamely. “That wasn’t my plan, but you can be extremely convincing when you want to be.”

“But why can’t it be your plan?” It’s an almost whine, pouty and childish—but the next words are quiet and pained. “Is it something I’m doing wrong?”

“No, no! It’s not you. You’re perfect. It’s—it’s complicated. It’s a me thing.”

Such trite words—such a ubiquitous, simple excuse sounds almost comical from his mouth when you know he’s capable of all the eloquence in the world. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s ridiculous.

“Okay. Let me simplify this for you,” you begin with an uncharacteristic assertiveness that surprises even you. “I want to have sex with you. Either we are going to have sex or we’re not. So your future branches in two diverging paths. In one, we have sex, and then we keep having sex. In the other we never have sex ever. If you want to ever have the privilege of fucking me, then we just have to do it. Otherwise it simply will never happen. And I’m not eternally patient, Reid.”

Go me, you think, slightly breathless from your monologue.

“Watch your mouth,” he says dryly. Something about the chastisement makes your stomach flip and your whole body tingle. “When you talk to me you call me Spencer. I will also accept Doctor Reid.” You wrestle down a smile, refusing to let him change the subject. A delayed sigh from him sobers up the conversation. “You know what I want. I’ve been very clear with you about that. But…”

“But…?”

Another sigh. A deeper, shuddering sigh, like his breath is searching for balance. Like Spencer is in a precarious position for which he was unprepared.

“But—but to be completely honest… I worry that you’ll regret choosing me. And I know virginity is a social construct and I’m not implying that your worth will somehow be diminished if we have sex but regardless of my views on virginity as a construct, having sex for the first time can be weird and scary and it’s incredibly intimate and I don’t want you to regret your first time like I regret mine because you chose the wrong person.”

The words come at you so rapid-fire it takes you a moment to process them. And aside from all the ways you want to reassure him that you will not regret choosing him—that you could never, ever regret anything about him—one thing stands out.

“You regret your first time?”

Something between a scoff and a sigh travels through the line. You can tell he’s not annoyed at you for asking so much as he’s flustered himself with all his own words as he occasionally does.

“Yeah. Yes. Sometimes I do. The person—she didn’t… like me as much as I liked her. And I was really, really in love with her, and she knew that and she knew she wasn’t in love with me—or maybe she was, I don’t know—but my point is, when one person likes the other more than the other person like them, things get complicated. And however you feel about me—that’s fine. It’s fine. I don’t want you to feel bad if we don’t feel exactly the same way about each other. I understand that this is newer for you, it’s different, I—I just don’t want us to do something we can’t undo because I don’t want to relive that. And I’m not saying it will never happen but I just don’t want you to make this choice when… when right now, I think we’re in different places emotionally. Regardless of that, I want you to choose the right person. I don’t want you to choose me and then find out that we feel differently after we sleep together and leave you feeling like you signed up for something you didn’t understand. I’m sorry. Maybe telling you this is selfish. But I’ve been thinking about it and trying to ignore it and I think I just have to be completely honest.”

Your ears ring like Spencer just fired a blank right into the microphone. Like you just got backhanded across the face and now you have the world’s worst case of whiplash.

Every finger is numb and your blood is so cold it feels blue as it slithers thick through your veins.

What you want to do is scream. What you want to do is go back to last night and stop yourself from almost telling him I love you, slap yourself and keep your cards a little closer to your chest. Because now he knows, and he doesn’t feel the same.

You want to scream bloody murder.

But when you try, when you unhinge your jaw and part your chapped lips and expect a bellow to come hurdling up the corridor of your throat with so much force it rattles your bones, all that falls out is a small, “oh.”

Maybe that’s worse.

Spencer doesn’t reply. You hate yourself for feeling obliged to fill the silence.

“I didn’t realize you…”

I didn’t realize that you don’t love me back.

I didn’t realize I like you more than you like me.

I didn’t realize you’d tell me to masturbate in your fucking bed and then drop this not even five minutes later.

If Spencer Reid was able to talk to you over the phone with the same amount of affection and familiarity as always, like everything was still okay, knowing you love him and he doesn’t love you the whole time, he is not who you thought he was.

“I’m sorry,” he lamely says again, like it could ever help.

More silence. Now you can’t bring yourself to speak, so Spencer does.

“I realize how awkward this is. I really didn’t mean to put you in this position. Especially not over the phone when I—god, I’m stupid. I’m sorry. But can we—can we talk about this in person when I get back? Please?”

Is that what grownups do? Is the proper etiquette for him to take you out to dinner and explain why he’s not in love with you? Is he going to break up with you?

What does one even wear to a breakup date?

“Okay,” you whisper. Your eyes sting, your everything stings, like you’ve been wrapped in a shroud of briar. Sheets that were soft a moment ago feel like sandpaper on open wounds. You feel like an open wound.

Spencer sighs. It’s a sound of relief that confuses and hurts you even more.

“Okay. I—okay. Thank you. Um—I’ll let you go back to sleep, now.”

“Okay,” you repeat—as if any of this were okay. But you can’t keep being that stupid girl who feels it all so much harder, who loves easily and begs to be loved in return, too naive to assume that someone who treats her so kindly might not reciprocate her feelings. It has to be okay, because if it’s not, you’re silly and dramatic and you’re just proving him right.

“Goodnight,” Spencer whispers, and you can’t help but feeling that it’s the last time you’ll ever hear those words from his mouth while you’re in his bed. And he’s not even fucking here.

So you pull the blanket a little higher. You let your tears stain his pillow because they’ll be invisible by the morning. It will be like they were never here. Like you were never here.

“Goodnight.”

part five

#spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x self insert #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #criminal minds smut #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds fic

2K notes · View notes

187days · 1 year

Text

Day Seventy-Six

Who had quiet and engaged ninth grade classes three days before vacation?

They’re in the middle of the current affairs assignment I wrote about in yesterday’s post, so they’re working independently, going at their own pace, piecing together information from different sources in order to understand something that’s happening in the world right now. I won’t say everyone was on task 100% of the time, but, for the most part, they were really good. And a bunch of them told me they liked the assignment, or they’d learned something interesting. They asked great questions, too, if they needed clarification.

So I’m pretty proud of myself and them right now.

My GOV class was great, too, of course, and definitely amused by my spirit week outfit (today was “ski joey” day, so we all dressed like stereotypical “masshole” tourists who act like fools on our mountains; in my case, that meant jeans, tall socks, a zebra print hoodie, goggles around my neck, sparkly blue eyeshadow). After we had a laugh about that, I lectured on the role of political parties, then had them read the preamble of each party’s platform and discuss the differences with me. Lastly, I gave them a quick review assignment about campaigns and elections because I wanted to get that information back to the front of their brains.

One of the GOV students also came in during flex block to ask how to study more efficiently He told me he’s best able to retain information if he writes it down, but that he was studying by reading, so I asked him to pick a topic and jot down some notes about it instead. He chose court cases, so I had him write down the basic facts and rulings for each, and then review by actually tracing over his writing as he was reading. No one had ever suggested that to him before, and he was skeptical about it, at first, because he tried to review six cases at a time. I had him do three instead, and then the details stuck; then I had him do the next three, and they stuck. And he was so happy about it.

I’m happy, too, because it’s a huge moment of triumph any time a student who’s struggled with something finds a way to be successful.

So, basically, I’m saying it was a really good day for learning.

The day ended with track practice: last one of 2022! The Head Coach and I put all our athletes through a stair workout, and I also helped the 55m dashers work on their block starts. Then we wrapped up with core work, stretching, and Christmas cookies courtesy of The Head Coach’s wife. Can’t ask for a better end to the day than that!

#teaching #teacher #teachblr #edublr #educhums #education #high school #social studies #conversations about current events #cue the music of triumph #so much fun #so much joy #coaching #indoor track #the head coach #spirit week #day seventy six

3 notes · View notes

elodieunderglass · 11 months

Note

Hey bestie whats a narrow boat? I saw you tag that on something you reblogged and I'm pretty curious now!

- Terry Darlington, Narrow Dog to Carcassone

A narrowboat (all one word) is a craft restricted to the British Isles, which are connected all over by a nerve-map of human-made canals. To go up and down hills, the canals are spangled with locks (chambers in which boats can be raised or lowered by filling or emptying them with water.) As Terry says above, the width of the locks was somewhat randomly determined, and as a result, the British Isles have a narrow design of lock - and a narrowboat to fit through them. A classic design was seventy feet long and six feet wide. Starting in the 18th century, and competing directly with trains, canal “barges” were an active means of transport and shipping. They were initially pulled along the towpaths by horses, and you can still see some today!

Later, engines were developed.

Even after the trains won the arms race, it was a fairly viable freight service right up until WW2. It’s slow travel, but uses few resources and requires little human power, with a fairly small crew (of women, in WW2) being capable of shifting two fully laden boats without consuming much fossil fuel.

In those times the barges were designed with small, cramped cabins in which the boaters and their families could live.

During its heyday the narrowboat community developed a style of folk art called “roses and castles” with clear links to fairground art as well as Romani caravan decor. They are historically decorated with different kinds of brass ornaments, and inside the cabins could also be distinctively painted and decorated.

Today, many narrowboats are distinctively decorated and colorful - even if not directly traditional with “roses and castles” they’ll still be bright and offbeat. A quirky name is necessary. All narrowboats, being boats, are female.

After a postwar decline, interest in the waterways was sparked by a leisure movement and collapsing canals were repaired. Today, the towpaths are a convenient walking/biking trail for people, as they connect up a lot of the mainland of the UK, hitting towns and cities. Although the restored canals are concrete-bottomed, they’re attractive to wildlife. Narrowboats from the 1970s onward started being designed for pleasure and long-term living. People enjoy vacationing by hiring a boat and visiting towns for a cuter, comfier, slower version of a campervan life. And a liveaboard community sprang up - people who live full-time on boats. Up until the very restrictive and nasty laws recently passed in the UK to make it harder for travelling peoples (these were aimed nastily at vanlivers and the Romani, and successfully hit everyone) this was one of the few legal ways remaining to be a total nomad in the UK.

Liveaboards can moor up anywhere along the canal for 28 days, but have to keep moving every 28 days. (Although sorting out the toilet and loading up with fresh water means that a lot of people move more frequently than that.) you can also live full-time in a marina if they allow it, or purchase your own mooring. In London, where canal boats are one of the few remaining cheapish ways to live, boats with moorings fetch the same prices as houses. It can be very very hard for families to balance school, parking, work, and all the difficulties of living off-grid- but many make it work. It remains a diverse community and is even growing, due to housing pressures in the UK. Boats can be very comfortable, even when only six feet wide. When faced with spending thousands of pounds on rent OR mooring up on a nice canal, you can see why it seems a romantic proposition for young people, and UK television channels always have slice-of-life documentaries about young folks fixing up their very own quirky solar-powered narrowboat. I don’t hate; I did it myself.

If you’re lucky, you might even meet some of the cool folks who run businesses from their narrowboats: canal-side walkers enjoy bookshops, vegan bakeries, ice-cream boats, restaurants, artists and crafters. There are Floating Markets and narrowboat festivals. It’s generally recognised that boaters contribute quite a lot to the canal - yet there are many tensions between different kinds of boaters (liveaboards vs leisure boaters vs tourists) as well as tensions with local settled people, towpath users like cyclists, and fishermen. I could go on and on explaining this rich culture and dramas, but I won’t.

Phillip Pullman’s Gyptians are a commonly cited example of liveaboards - although they were based on the narrowboat liveaboards that Pullman knew in Oxford, their boats are actually Dutch barges. Dutch barges make good homes but are too wide to access most of the midlands and northern canals, and are usually restricted to the south of the UK. So they’re accurate for Bristol/London/Oxford, and barges are definitely comfier to film on. (Being six feet wide is definitely super awkward for a boat.) but in general Dutch barges are less common, more expensive and can’t navigate the whole system.

However, apart from them, there are few examples of narrowboat depictions that escaped containment. So it’s quite interesting that there is an entire indigenous special class of boat, distinctive and highly specialised and very cute, with an associated culture and heritage and folk art type, known to all and widely celebrated, and ABSOLUTELY UNKNOWN outside of the UK - a nation largely known around the world for inflicting its culture on others. They’re a strange, sweet little secret - and nobody who has ever loved one can resist pointing them out for the rest of their lives, or talking about them when asked to. Thank you for asking me to.

6K notes · View notes

en-ternity · 2 months

Text

⋅ GENRES: best friends (to strangers to friends) to lovers; angst, fluff & smut

⋅ PAIRING: neighbor!Sunghoon x fem!reader

⋅ WORD COUNT: 27.4K

⋅ WARNINGS: idiots in love, but make it slow-burn; forgive their dumb decisions at some points, they were scared; i caught myself being bias wrecked by Sunghoon, so don’t say you haven’t been warned; soulmates references although it’s not a fantasy au; mentions of alcohol and drugs; unprotected sex

TRACK 02 OF TAKE MY HAND

There had been a time when Sunghoon thought that you and he were meant to be forever.

And to be fair — his assumption used to make sense. For years, you had been best friends, halves of a whole, and the downfall of your friendship certainly was something no one could have predicted.

But that’s the thing about life — one moment people think they know exactly where they are headed, and the next, everything changes. The wind drifts the other way and suddenly, it is five am at the beginning of another Saturday. Sunghoon is clinging to his couch, wondering who he is looking for because you don’t go to parties anymore.

You were only ten when you first met Park Sunghoon.

While some parents ventured to the bustling cities in search of better opportunities, your parents decided to take the opposite turn and move to Uljin. About two hundred twenty-four kilometers southeast of Seoul and bordering the Sea of Japan, it was a county of sand-dirtied streets, a single commercial avenue, and no twenty-four hour parlors.

The breezes always carried the brine scent of the seashore, and the houses were built in the same bungalow style. No one within the limits of the county escaped the low-pitched roofs with wide eave overhangs nor the exposed rafters at the front porches. But a lucky person could have the beach just one deck away, and a luckier one could have Park Sunghoon as the boy next door.

And well — you were as lucky as luck could be.

The first time you had ever seen him, he stood on the sand with Yeji, a telescope stuck nearby, and the moon softly bathing his features as he looked up at the vast expanse of the night sky.

It was too cold to be outside, honestly, an autumn night that felt like winter on your bones, but you also had heard about the meteor shower that would happen that night. A celestial orbit that passed the Earth once every seventy-six years, and it had been the only reason you decided to sneak out that night, wandering to the beach with a scarf rolled around your neck not just once but twice.

Although his little sister had been the first to acknowledge your presence, it had been Sunghoon who offered to share the telescope with you, the corners of his mouth shyly tucking with a smile as dimples flirted at the soft skin of his cheeks.

Looking at him then, you didn’t know what he would become to you — how important he would become to you. But on the next morning, he rang the bell of your new house and asked if you wanted to go to the main avenue with him, and just like that Park Sunghoon became shared cakes in the autumn, snowball fights in the winter, bike rides to the school in the spring, and your whole summer. During the bright days, Sunghoon would laugh heartily with you, his eyes gleaming with mirth as his dimples never failed to appear, and then when the night fell, he would whisper into the darkness of your room. His back side by side with yours until the sun broke and colored the walls tangerine and pink because you never bothered to close your curtains.

Throughout the seasons that turned into years, Sunghoon became your best friend, and as foolish as it could be — your other half.

ULJIN-GUN, NORTH GYEONGSANG

SUMMER OF 2020

It was later than usual when Sunghoon called that night. Your parents’ television always turned into some reality show until ungodly hours had already been turned off and the house was nothing but the sea breezes coming through the opened windows and softly blending in with your phone’s ringtone.

“Sunghoon.”

“Can you come outside?” he asked at the other end of the line.

You leaped off your bed, moving as quietly as you could to the window. It wasn’t as warm as it had been, autumn already pressing onto the late august nights, and tingling your skin, but when you spotted Sunghoon standing at the end of your family’s deck stairs, his jacket was hanging in one of his hands instead of his shoulders.

“I don’t know, can I?” you asked, immediately stealing a smile from him. Even in the distance, you could see it tucking at the corners of his mouth and flirting dimples at his cheeks.

Sunghoon peered up at you, head tilted to the side in a false consideration. During the course of your friendship, you had done it far too often, but still — Sunghoon always started with the same question, and you always replied in the same way. It was a monologue never really planned or written down, but that both of you had accepted and played.

“Just come already, teeny. I brought you a jacket,” he said, slightly shaking the piece in his hands.

You couldn’t help but smile, your heart already pounding in your chest as you tip-toed through the darkness of your family’s house and its back deck, barely making it to the sand before Sunghoon slagged his jacket on your shoulders, a sneering huff escaping through his lips because while you settled on your height at the age of fourteen, he continued growing — his jackets turning harder to fit you with the passing years. But Sunghoon was still careful with it, adjusting it as best as he could despite you being a few good centimeters smaller than him now.

“Teeny,” he whispered, giving his jacket one final pat before he held his hand out for you. His fingers spread so you could fill the small gaps in between as he guided you toward the sea.

Sunghoon stopped just before the water could reach your feet, but still, the breeze caught the cold sprinkles, brushing them against the exposed skin of your cheeks.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” he said.

“At three in the morning?” you asked. “I don’t think there is anything open kilometers from here.”

“No,” he laughed. “It’s going to be our last semester of high school, so I have been thinking, we should go somewhere else after our graduation.”

“Do you want to leave Gyeongsang?”

“It’s just — I don’t think there are many good options here, and my father has been trying to convince me to try a scholarship at Konkuk University.”

“Seoul? Seriously?”

“Well, Konkuk is one of the best for biological science, and — it happens to be one of the best for linguistics too,” he said. “It’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”

Something filled the inside of your chest with his question, so warm and tender. You couldn’t find the words to reply, so you only nodded at him, a smile already tucking at the corners of your mouth because even in his dreams, Park Sunghoon included you.

“I just thought that we should do it together,” he said. Although he didn’t give himself enough time to doubt the wisdom of saying it, the words came weakly — almost getting lost in the breeze before you could even clasp them. You pulled his jacket tighter around your body, tugging the collar up to your mouth and accidentally breathing in everything about it: the citrus perfume blended with the brine scent of the seashore, which was the same as saying Sunghoon’s scent. “You are my best friend, plus — you would miss me too much if we ever went separate ways.”

You looked up at him, but he didn’t return your gaze. Sunghoon was still looking at the sky, watching it with the same intensity as when you first met him years and years ago.

Late august nights were never really warm in Uljin, and the air carried a particular humidity that caused his hair to curl fondly. You were glad your mouth was covered and hid the smile you couldn’t control from forming with the realization that it was true — you would miss him.

“Let’s do it together,” you conquered. “Let’s stay together.”

“It’s a promise now,” Sunghoon said.

He looked down at you, suddenly letting go of your interlaced hands. But before you could sorrow the absence of his warmth, he held his pinky finger at you. The gesture was so silly that you couldn’t help but laugh, the sound tingling across the night as you curled your pinky finger around his.

“It’s a promise now,” you echoed.

But you should have known — some promises were simply meant to be broken.

GWANGJIN-GU, SEOUL

SUMMER OF 2022

Kim Haneul was the messiest person you had ever met, and you told her this.

Konkuk University’s dormitories weren’t spacious — actually, just enough had been the term you used to describe it to your parents, but this afternoon, Haneul seemed to be on a mission to make it unbearable. The floor of your shared room had been cluttered with her old textbooks and past projects, some pinkish post-its sorting their destination between home, donation, and trash in her bubbly handwriting as her clothes took every other space.

You had offered to help many times, but your roommate insisted on doing it by herself. What left you no other option than to stay at your desk chair, pulling your legs up, and wrapping your arms around them in an unconscious attempt to save some more space as you watched her fumbling through a pile of clothes.

“Is this yours?” she asked, completely ignoring your comment.

You looked at the apricot dress Haneul had picked up. It was a beautiful backless thing, and the straps were so delicate, you couldn’t help but wonder how it managed to hold everything in place. However, despite its beauty—

“I have never seen it before,” you told her.

“Being honest, I don’t remember ever seeing this either,” she sighed, long and heavy. “I was about to complain once again about this system of us having to empty the dorms every summer but then I remembered that I have graduated, so I would have to leave anyway.”

“You will manage it — you always managed it.”

“I know, I am just stressed,” she said, abandoning the apricot dress and moving her attention to a buttery yellow one. “You know what? My flight is only tomorrow night and you are only leaving for Uljin on Sunday, we should go out.”

“Like right now?”

“One of my classmates is throwing a party tonight.”

“I don’t go to parties,” you said, immediately receiving a look from her.

It wasn’t a lie — although it hadn’t always been like this.

A year ago, it wouldn’t matter whose party it was or what they were commemorating — if Park Sunghoon was there, you would be there too, hands intertwined and sharing the same doubtful cup until it was hard to tell if it was really late or really early. But you couldn’t go back to the university dormitory without getting a warning, and your only option was to crash in his frat house, slipping underneath his blankets as his arms curled around you and brought you a centimeter too closer to him.

His roommates weren’t even surprised anymore. Heeseung barely batted an eye as he caught you wandering around in the kitchen in the mornings afterward, and Jake already had an extra cup of coffee prepared for you.

But then, Sunghoon started to have flings.

Hyuna at the end of the winter semester, Sunhee at the beginning of the spring, Chaeyeol at the end of it, and some others in the middle of all of this.

He still insisted on taking you to the parties, the black Jeep his father gifted him parked in front of your dormitory’s door and ready to take you anywhere. But his girls were always hovering around, their eyes narrowed and unable to conceal the hate they had for you.

Sometimes they were so good at keeping Sunghoon away from you that you didn’t even see him until the party was over, and you had awkwardly been alone for hours, uncertain of what to do or where to go. So eventually, you didn’t feel like going anymore.

Of course, you were still friends outside the furor of the parties. But with the new reality of Sunghoon and his flings, plus you beginning your relationship with Jongseong, you both drifted apart. Days without hanging out turned into weeks, weeks turned into months of no real conversations, and then, Sunghoon canceled the last plan you ever made together and a shouting phone call was the last thing you remembered before your lives had gone on without each other in them. The new and strange became familiar, and all the promises you once made turned into nothing but a memory of a different life.

“You know you are allowed to go to parties without Sunghoon, right?” Haneul asked.

His name whispered through you, and you tightened your arms around yourself, fighting back the flood of feelings that threatened to overwhelm you at the mention of him.

One thing was to have Sunghoon hovering around your mind, another was to have him verbally put into a conversation.

“Of course, I know it,” you said, forcing out a smile.

Haneul walked towards you, softly wrapping her hands around your elbows, and you could tell she was choosing her words carefully even before she said them.

“You better, because it has been a year since you both stopped talking, and I don’t know. You were never here during the weekends, but now it’s hard to find you outside,” she said. “I don’t want to be that person, but Jongseong spoke some truth in the breakup speech — it seems like a part of you simply disappeared together with Sunghoon.”

“So let’s do something fun tonight. I am going back to the matchbox my hometown is and I have no idea what my life is going to be from now on,” she continued. “Consider this my graduation wish.”

“Wasn’t your graduation wish to get drunk on the university’s artificial lake last Sunday?”

“My graduation wish with you,” she mended.

You breathed in, turning your focus away. Despite it already being seven o’clock, the sun was still hefty outside, and suddenly, you had the impression the room had turned dimmer in comparison. The late june sunset pressed against the windows of your room, and shafts of golden luminescent streamed through the smudged glass.

You could feel the beginning of another summer slowly settling in. And how strange it was — to have the whole season caught in a breath that wasn’t his.

“I will think about it,” you said.

Haneul smiled, giving you a tiny squeeze before she abruptly let you go.

“I know you already have your answer.”

┈┈┈┈

You weren’t sure whose house it was, but there was graffiti on the walls and some lousy music was blasting through a pair of wireless speakers at the corner of the living room. The device long pushed against the wall just like the rest of the furniture so people could dance under the colorful lights, purple and red bouncing on their faces.

By the time you encountered Haneul from your trip to the bathroom, a different song picked up, less lousy but still trembling the floor and stealing the sound of her delighted scream.

“Let’s dance,” she yelled, pushing her cheek against yours because it was the only way you could hear her beneath all the furor of the place.

“You go on and have fun,” you yelled back. “I am going to get another drink.”

“You really need it.”

You playfully rolled your eyes at her, but she only smiled, leaving you to shove past people, and accidentally elbow a few couples who were too busy making out to open space.

The makeshift bar didn’t change from the last time you had been there. Aside from the notable decay of quantity, the options remained cheap beer and even cheaper soju.

You reached for a beer with a crinkled nose — bitter drinks definitely weren’t your favorite choice, and to add to your distress, someone had disappeared with the bottle opener.

It’s not like you hadn’t seen bar tricks already, people opening bottles with their teeth or countertops, but to perform it seemed different.

You didn’t want to take the risk of breaking a tooth, so you placed the bottle cap on the top of the ledge, carefully studying your next move, yet before you could do anything, he reached for you, his hands brushing against yours more like an echo of touch than in fact a thing as he took the bottle away.

“Careful,” he said. “You might hurt yourself like this.”

You knew it wasn’t a real thing, but you could swear your heart quelled at the sound of his voice, that tiny gap where a heartbeat should be.

You had molded the moment you would encounter Park Sunghoon in your mind enough times to believe you would be prepared when it finally came into reality. Yet there was something strange about seeing someone after so long — a sudden uncertainty if time had passed correctly.

A year seemed like an eternity once, but not anymore. When you looked up at Sunghoon, you weren’t sure if a single day had passed ever since you both parted ways.

His gaze felt heavy on you, taking in how you had pushed your hair back due to the house’s warmth, brushing it behind your ears, and allowing your shoulders to be on exposure. Your skin was glowing beneath the colorful light, sparkling with slivers of gold glitter some woman insisted on brushing on you when you left the bathroom. But Sunghoon lingered only a beat on it, choosing to follow the apricot dress Haneul had pulled you in before he finally met your eyes.

Both of you stood there for a second, maybe two, and then Sunghoon cleared his throat and moved, abandoning his own bottle so he could focus on yours. He placed the cap on the top of the ledge, but different from you, he brought his hand down on it with no ado. The beer spilled with the roughness of the act, and the scent of fresh alcohol filled your senses.

“Here,” he said, handing it back to you. Your fingers slipped on his, and although you hadn’t even taken the first sip yet, you were already dizzy.

“Thank you.”

“When Jake said he saw you here, I was about to drag him home saying he had enough drinks for a night,” he said. “But turns out you are really here.”

“It has been some time. How have you been?” Sunghoon asked, retrieving his beer and bringing it up to his lips. You watched as he screwed his face, his nose scrunched because the warmth of the house had accentuated the bitter taste of the alcohol and turned it unpleasant. But he didn’t say anything, his eyes were still on you, shining beneath the colorful lights and waiting for you to talk.

“I have been fine, yes. How about you?”

“Fine,” he said. “Same old thing, classes, the frat house, and parties every weekend.”

The edge of a smile formed on his lips. It was such a small, quiet expression, but it lit him up, and you yanked your gaze to the bottle in your hands, desperate to find something else to put your attention on before the full force of his smile could reach you.

But you had turned your face away too late, and the familiar twinge his smile always made you experience had already occurred.

“Are you going to Uljin for summer?” he asked then.

“I always do,” you replied. You didn’t sound harsh or angry. If anything it was just you saying a factual truth, yet the words seemed to hang longer than it was necessary in the air, and in the rush of the moment, you talked yourself down. “I mean, I have to. They use the summer for inspections and reforms, so we are obligated to leave.”

You made the mistake of looking up, catching Sunghoon’s gaze as it felt on you in the same motion.

Behind him, a man appeared, friendly punching his shoulders before he moved to the makeshift bar and fumbled for a new beer. Sunghoon raised three fingers at the stranger, absently, and barely looking in his direction.

“When?” he asked.

“Sunday,” you said. “June twenty-six is the last day to empty the room.”

“I am also going back to Uljin,” he said. “I could — I could give you a ride on Sunday.”

You straightened yourself at the suggestion, fingers anxiously finding a rhythm against the bottle. It was silly the way your heart was pounding in your chest — silly the way your skin was warm in a way that you knew it wasn’t due to the early summer heat.

It had been a year since you last spoke to each other — a year since you had last made plans together. Everything was starting to feel too familiar beneath the awkwardness of the night, and for another moment, you didn’t know how to respond, choosing to swallow a good amount of the alcohol instead.

In the earnestness of your silence, Sunghoon studied you, his gaze unflinching even as he shrugged away, pressing his back against the cool of the fridge. His whole body moved with the guilt of someone who was taking their foot off the brake and still — was going to pretend what was coming next was an accident.

“Let’s bet,” he said. “Like the old times, c’mon.”

Sunghoon stepped past you, abandoning what remained of his beer at the makeshift bar, and sparing not even a single look back. He simply trusted that you would follow him, and you knew it wasn’t the greatest idea, but perhaps it had been the alcohol already simmering below your skin, or perhaps it had been simply because it was Sunghoon, but you did follow him.

God — you would always follow him.

The living room was even more crowded than a few moments ago, with too many people fighting for the same space on the makeshift dance floor, and Sunghoon reached his hand out behind him. It seemed involuntary, almost as if his body had moved on its own, and he didn’t notice what he had done, but you did.

You wouldn’t lose each other in the middle of the stranger’s living room, but once, when you were thirteen, you had reached out to him in the middle of a crowd, and then, he had never stopped reaching back to you.

Even now.

At first, he just pinched the tip of your fingers, but as he opened space through the living room and moved into the stairs, his fingers found the slots between yours, and you let him intertwine your hands.

He caught the second story just as a group was leaving it. They had that happy air of those who had gone too far on their drinks, the alcohol effects heaving through as one of them nearly collided with you. Sunghoon pulled you closer then, guiding you through the corridor before the other could even apologize.

You didn’t know whose house this was, but apparently, Sunghoon did. He took you to the last room without a hint of doubt, as if he already knew it was a game room. The walls painted in the extravagant tone of maroon as a pool table took the space in the middle, the velvet smooth beneath the dim light.

Sunghoon let go of your hand only to gather the balls in the center of the table, carefully alternating by stripes and solids before he turned to the wall and took two cue sticks from the hangers.

“If I win, you go back to Uljin with me. If you win, it’s your choice,” he said, giving one of the cue sticks. “Do you know the rules?”

He didn’t need to speak loudly nor lend to your side to be heard anymore. The music was quieter up there, almost an echo through your feet, but still, Sunghoon did — his breath brushing warmly against your cheeks as he spoke.

His accent didn’t escape you this time — that faint echo of the North Gyeongsang lull.

Although you had grown up there, you never acquired that way of rolling your tongue through the vowels and stretching the end of the phrases the way people of the province did, and to hear it made your chest ache.

“I don’t think so,” you said.

“Didn’t your boyfriend teach you anything?” he asked, stepping back. The question had been crafted merely as a tease, but you felt like you had been verbatim attacked at the mention of Jongseong.

He hadn’t been your boyfriend for weeks now, yet the news didn’t seem to have reached Sunghoon, and to be honest, you didn’t mind his oblivion on the topic. Sunghoon never tried to mask his ill feelings toward Jongseong — as cruel as it could be. And perhaps it was the reason that although it was an opportunity, you didn’t say anything about the breakup.

“He taught me a few other things,” you said instead. “He taught me how to drive.”

Sunghoon snorted at that, an unpretty thing that he somehow always made it work as cute.

“I don’t believe you. You hate even the idea of driving. You always refused when I asked if you wanted me to teach you.”

“I always had you to drive me whenever I needed. There was no point back then,” you retorted.

Your tongue had come loose, and you didn’t know if it was the alcohol, or simply the duration of Sunghoon’s presence, but immediately, you wished you could take the words back like air into your lungs.

You turned your gaze away, but still, you could feel his eyes on you, that same unflinching gaze he had in the kitchen and your cheeks burned.

“But no,” you quickly added. “He didn’t teach me pool or anything like that.”

“Let’s make the game simple then,” he said. “I am the stripe, and you are the solid.”

“Do I have to pocket all mine or yours?”

“Yours and the eight-ball.”

“I do not like it already,” you said.

“I will teach you,” he said.

You settled over the stick, and he was on you again, chest pressing against your back as his hands found yours, cupping them into disappearance.

When you breathed in and his scent caught in your lungs, the same citrus perfume he used back in the years, and although now he carried the smell of tobacco instead of the brine scent of the seashore, it was all too familiar to you.

“You have to lose your grip,” he said, his voice was right by your ear, lips almost touching the shell of it.

“I told you. I don’t know how to play,” you replied, but Sunghoon only hummed, guiding you through a stroke and drilling the cue ball.

He let you go suddenly, circling the table and taking another practical stroke. This time, he pulled a ball into the pocket, and when he straightened himself back, you noticed he had glitter on him. The golden sprinkles the stranger had rubbed on your skin fetched to his dark jacket.

“You should learn if you don’t want to go with me to Uljin.”

“I didn’t agree on the bet.”

“We are already playing,” he said.

His gaze lifted, finding you still on the other side of the table, considering him, or perhaps, just watching him.

Down below, a mixture of cheers and noises erupted, but there was such a stillness between you, almost as if you were somewhere else.

“Alright,” you determined. “But if I lose, you have to be at seven in front of the dorms’ door — seven sharp, so I still can take the train if you don’t appear.”

“I will be there,” he said, a smile spreading across his face, transforming his features but this time, you did not look away, watching as his bare happiness spread through, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and flirting dimples into his cheeks.

Sunghoon looked so boyish like this, so soft, so — yours.

You had to remember yourself to breathe.

“If I lose,” you said.

“If you lose.”

On the following morning, Sunghoon was waiting for you at the front door of your dormitory, the engine of his black Jeep still on as he leaned on the hood with an apparently unaffected indifference.

His hands had been shoved in the pockets of his dress pants, and a pair of sunglasses had already been equilibrated at the bridge of his nose despite the fact it was barely seven o’clock, the whole campus still in a sleepiness state that only came with the beginning of the summer vacation, and the sky was still a mix of lilac and pink against the clouds.

It had been a year since you fell apart, but it had been years of friendship, and you still could read Sunghoon like no one else. He wasn’t the type to allow his faltering to show easily, but it was only necessary to look a little bit more to notice it was there — a shoulder twitch, hands thumping unrhythmically against his thighs.

When he saw you, he immediately managed to pull a smile, pushing himself away from the car. And everything about it was so compelling — so genuine. You almost could doubt if you had read him right.

He walked toward you, taking his sunglasses off and perching them on the collar of his t-shirt.

“Just those two?” he asked, referring to your luggage, and you nodded, more like an involuntary deed than an answer as Sunghoon was still focused on the objects.

He took both handles, finally looking at you, but your gazes met for a few seconds too long, and it became more awkward than necessary.

Perhaps you should have accepted Haneul’s farewell gift. Although you disliked soju — it doesn’t matter if it had been conserved with the best tangerines from Jeju. A dose of alcohol would do some good on your system now.

“Yeah, just these two,” you finally said.

You trailed closely behind him to the Jeep, not sure what to do aside from watching as he opened the trunk and efficiently hauled your luggage there.

There was something that should be said at that moment, you could feel it trickling through the corners of your mind, but before you could find what exactly it was, Sunghoon had already turned his attention back to you.

“I told you I would be here,” he said suddenly, and almost unwittingly, but the words ached within you so wonderfully that you felt something warm blooming very deep inside of you.

Sunghoon guided you to the passenger side, opening the door and waiting for you to fold yourself into the front of his car before he closed it with a soft slam.

The Jeep felt smaller than you remembered — cluttered with him and his everyday things, and the density of it overwhelmed you. A notebook was thrown at the carpet at your feet, opened to reveal his meticulous handwriting, always in black tint pens and telling something you couldn’t comprehend about marine science or whatever subject biology students had.

You let out a breath you didn’t even know you’d been holding, and when you breathed in, it too, was filled with him, his citrus perfume, and the faint scent of tobacco that you hoped was still from one of his roommates and not his.

“Have you eaten?” Sunghoon asked.

“No, not yet,” you said.

“I thought about stopping at that café,” he said, fingers thumping against the wheel. “The one we stopped when we first came to Seoul.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

┈┈┈┈

Just off the interstate, Daon lived almost like a secret in the middle of the old factories and massive warehouses. Although the café had been running for years, the exterior remained with the same brownstone facade, black roof, and matching glass panels, blending almost imperceptibly with the rest of the neighborhood buildings, but maybe it had been the owner’s intention.

The sign itself had a bit of a marvel in that it was only a black plating with the name written in a Palatino font. And nothing — absolutely nothing, advised it was a café.

You couldn’t remember how Sunghoon found it. Perhaps it had been lucky, maybe it had been a bit of destiny, yet you loved the place.

As soon as you stepped inside, the smell of coffee surrounded the air around you, wiping the harsh exterior with a single intake. The wooden tables lined against the walls, crammed side by side to make room for the amount of plants and crafts scattered throughout the place.

It was a secret — perhaps, a secret within a secret.

Sunghoon trailed behind you to the counter, looking over your shoulder as you fumbled through the menu, and when you were about to turn the page from the drinks to the pancakes, his hand met yours.

“I haven’t finished,” he said, voice winding into your hair. His breath was warm against your exposed shoulders and suddenly, everything on you focused on his presence close behind you. His breath brushed against your ears, and his hand held onto yours, a few seconds more than it was necessary every and each page as if he was reluctant to let it go.

Your skin protested as Sunghoon turned to the waitress, tingling with the sudden coldness, and you had to give yourself a moment before turning too.

“Hey, lovelies. What can I get for you?” the waitress asked. She was in her early fifties, with gray sideburns and a smile on her cherry-tinted lips that made strangers feel like family and perhaps it was the only reason you didn’t falter there.

You couldn’t decide on a smoothie, so Sunghoon ordered both — strawberry and mango. And when he suggested the strawberry walnut tartlet, and you refused, his eyebrows went up beneath his bangs.

“It was your favorite,” he remembered.

“It’s alright,” you said, and Sunghoon hesitated, licking his lips as he looked from the waitress to you a few times.

“Go on and grab a table,” he said then, subtly cleaning his throat “I will pay for the order.”

“I should pay my part.”

“Buy me something in Uljin,” he said.

You looked up at him, and he smiled. The words had left his lips as nothing, but still — they carried a real meaning. Sunghoon wanted to do something together in Uljin, and how could it be so odd yet familiar at the same time.

For a moment, you stood quiet, a furrow of uncertainty pressed between your brows before you nodded, walking to an empty table.

You wondered if it would be awkward if the silence would stretch on too long, and the spaces between words would be filled with awkwardness. But when Sunghoon came after and took the chair in front of you, he was already asking about your classes and Haneul. He asked about the teacher you hated and the project you had even forgotten you had done last winter until he mentioned it. You breathed a little easier at that and asked about his classes and his roommates — Heeseung, Jake, and the younger guy you couldn’t remember the name of.

“Riki,” Sunghoon remembered. “Or mini Jake, whatever you prefer.”

“Except for the part that he is way taller than Jake.”

“Don’t say that,” he asked, but there was a bite of a smile on his lips. “Jake will be hurt.”

The waitress came with your order then, pulling the plates perfectly in front of each of you. You both slid your plates to the center of the table simultaneously and without a single question, arranging them in a way that would allow you to share, just as you had done so many times when you were younger.

And when the silence appeared for the first time between a bite and another, you finally mustered up the courage to ask what you had been wondering about all along.

“Why did you decide to go back this time?” you asked.

“I just — I just felt like it was the right thing, I have been away for too long,” he said, but there was a note in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

It was nearing ten o’clock, and the world was a little more alive. The sun was coming hefty through the windows of the café, bathing over the two of you. It caught on the glass vase in the middle of the table, scattering shafts of light everywhere. Sunghoon opened his palm to it and then closed, almost as if he could catch the light with his bare hands, and you felt the strange desire to study his face in detail, searching for — something, although you weren’t sure what something would be.

Sunghoon didn’t seem to have changed much throughout the year. Although his skin had lost the last remains of Uljin’s sun and he’d grown his hair out, the tips hanging down past his ear in a way you had never seen before, he was the Sunghoon you always remembered — freckled cheeks and dark strands boyish as it was pretty.

His eyebrows furrowed at something, and you wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but you couldn’t remember the last time you had shared secrets, and suddenly, the question got stuck in your mouth — that easy thread within both of you breaking once again.

The waitress returned, carrying a piece of the tartlet you had refused. For a moment, you thought Sunghoon might have ordered it for himself, but she put it in front of you, clicking her tongue against her cherry-tinted lips and calling you “such a cute couple” before she left.

“Did you order it for me?” you asked. Sunghoon nodded his head affirmatively.

“Thank you, Hoon, but I haven’t ordered it because they use walnut pieces. I found out I am allergic to it,” you said, the words trailing out in a breath. “I came here with Jongseong when he drove me to Uljin last summer, and I had the same stretches I did with you. He thought it was strange and took me to a hospital later. We did a few blood tests, and it came out that I am allergic to walnuts—”

You continued talking, but something had settled inside of Sunghoon. Strong enough to make him dizzy, great enough to ache.

The problem itself wasn’t that you had shared this place with your boyfriend but that Sunghoon finally had noticed how your life had kept going without him.

Between one word and another, Sunghoon stood up, desperate to get away, to escape this conversation and all the realization it brought. He made it to the parking lot, somehow finding his Jeep before he bent down. He didn’t hear you walking up behind him, but you were there, making the breeze slightly tender with your sweet perfume.

Neither of you said anything. The echo of the interstate was the only sound for a minute, maybe two, and then Sunghoon sighed, heavy and world-weary as he scrubbed a hand through his hair.

“We have really become strangers, haven’t we?” It had been a question. However, the last two words were spoken so slowly — so humbly. He didn’t want to hear the answer, so you didn’t attempt to give one.

A breeze rushed through the parking lot, scattering the greenish leaves of summer in its wake. You were still kilometers away from Uljin, but you could swear the air already carried that faint brine scent of the seashore.

“I am sorry,” you said. “I could have just eaten it.”

“And have allergy reactions until we arrive home?”

“It would be just minor scratches,” you murmured.

“I don’t care what it is,” he said. “If it’s bad for you or if you simply dislike it, I am not allowing you to take it.”

Sunghoon looked at you, lips parted to say something else, but you were already reaching for him, finding the precise place where his hair had grown above the collar of his t-shirt, and he stopped, mind stuck in the middle of a sentence he would never say. His skin was warm there, already loved by the summer heat, and you could feel his pulse hastily reaching for the tip of your fingers before it came into peace.

“I am sorry,” he whispered.

“It’s alright.”

The motions from there were silent and vaguely awkward. Sunghoon stood up and stepped past you, going to the passenger door to open it for you. He waited until you folded yourself back into the Jeep just like he had done this morning and many other times before. Nonetheless, you couldn’t gather the courage to look at him and thank — not even when he settled himself into the driver’s seat.

Your fingers were still tingling with the memory of his heartbeats against your skin.

Sunghoon paused, his hand hovering over the ignition before he inserted the key and turned it with a firm hand. The Jeep wailed to life, the sound of the engine and the radio filling the air around you.

“Did something else happen through those months?” he asked. “Any other allergies?”

“No — not that I remember,” you replied. “How about you? Anything happened?”

“Not that I remember, but if I do remember something, I will tell.”

“Ok.”

“Ok,” he echoed.

The car fell silent, the radio being the only furor between you as he drove out of the parking lot, but for the first time since the party, neither of you tried to fill it.

┈┈┈┈

Uljin wasn’t your hometown.

Being honest, you didn’t even know the existence of the county until you were ten, sitting at the kitchen counter of your childhood house and listening to your parents telling you they wanted to start fresh, start new — a new clinic somewhere closer to the coast, and then, you were leaving the only life you ever knew by the time summer wittered to autumn.

However, you never sorrowed it. The county had a feeling that could be embedded in any person willing to open their hearts. There was nowhere else like Uljin. The sun seemed to shine softer once you passed through the limits of the county, and the breezes brushed a little lighter. Everything about this part of the world made a little bit more tender.

As soon as Sunghoon drove past the welcoming sign, you rolled your window down, allowing the wind to thread through your fingers as you held your hand out, soft and warm, just like a kiss would be.

Sunghoon sighed, not the heavy and world-weary sigh he had released in the parking lot, but a small, quiet, and ragged sigh, almost as if he had not meant to let it escape. You shifted your gaze to him then, watching as he closed his eyes. The wind caught and mussed his hair — already working to bring the curls you had a long time not seen. And it suddenly occurred to you it was the first time both of you were in Uljin ever since high school.

“Eyes on the streets,” you said, loudly enough to be heard over the wind.

“Yes, let’s not try to cause the first accident in decades.”

Sunghoon drove past the emerald mountains, the greenish field being the only thing spreading beneath the sun until you had reached the main avenue.

Other than the renewal of the ice cream parlor and the opening of a new café, the main avenue was the same as it always had been — the same old stores telling their stories through their facades bleached by too much sun and sea breeze.

The bakery opened the avenue, an inviting display window beckoning anyone closer with crunchy tarts, pieces of bread dusted with sugar, and all the other pastry art. And then came the tiny bookstore and a music school closed and derelict due to the summer months. Laughter rolled everywhere, and you wondered if you should ask Sunghoon to stop, just for a quiet second but he kept heading to the coast — heading home.

Your houses remained unchanging as the rest of the county — two bungalows spared by not even two full meters and bathed in the late june sunlight. When Sunghoon allowed the engine to die, you heard the sea crashing against the shore, the sound resonating with the wind bell your mother kept on the front porch, and all of it whispered the same thing:

“Home,” he said. Back where you both started.

Neither of you needed to knock on your doors. The moment you stepped out of the car, you noticed your mothers and Yeji sitting at the table on the Park’s front porch and sipping on some iced drinks.

Yeji was the first to reach you, her arms coming around your waist as she buried her face in your shoulders. Her hair was still wet from the sea and smelling like salt, a wonderful denotation of how she had spent her Sunday morning.

“You came,” she said.

“I always do.”

“Yes, you are the best sister ever.”

“I am right here, you know?” Sunghoon said.

“Oh, sorry for not including you in our sisterhood, stranger,” Yeji said. However, despite her harsh words, she turned to him, her arms wide and outstretched in an invitation he gladly accepted.

Jiyoung reached for you after, cupping your face between her palms as she took a good look at you. And you took the opportunity to look at her too.

Although Sunghoon always said he looked more like his father, you always defended he also looked uncannily like Jiyoung. It was a fact that Sunghoon had gotten his father’s fair skin and thick eyebrows, but whenever he smiled it was all Jiyoung. The corner of her eyes crinkled, and dimples flirted on her cheeks as she smiled at you.

“How can you get prettier every time I see you?” she asked.

“It’s your eyes, Jiyoung.”

“No sense, darling,” she said. “I bet Jongseong has a lot of problems.”

“Not really.”

“But anyway,” Jiyoung continued, her eyes straying to where her children stayed for a brief second before she moved it back to you. “I am so glad you came. I kept asking Sunghoon how you were doing during the semester, and he always replied ‘Fine’.”

“And she is, isn’t she?” he replied, but it went completely ignored by her.

“We prepared a homecoming lunch,” she told you. “I hope you are not tired from the trip.”

“Not tired enough to refuse your lunch,” you said, immediately stealing another smile from her.

“Let’s come inside then,” Jiyoung said, giving you a tiny squeeze before she abruptly let you go. “Yeji, come help me — Sunghoon, unload the car.”

“Hugs and kisses for her,” Sunghoon murmured. “Unload the car for me.”

“That’s what you earn by never coming home,” his mother screamed from the front porch.

“I came on Christmas!” he screamed back. The information had barely been processed by you before Jiyoung screamed again.

“Almost two years in Seoul, and you only came on one Christmas day!” she said, stepping inside the house, but not before you noticed how the corners of her mouth were still tucked in a teasing smile. And you loved it on them — loved that bickering tenderness only the Parks had.

Your mother approached you then, her arm curling around your waist as she guided you to the front porch.

“Are you alright?” she asked, her accent coming so clipped and low after the previous exchange. “Was everything alright during the trip?”

“We should talk later, but yes, everything was fine,” you confirmed. “Where’s father?”

“Inside with Kwangho,” she said. “And hopefully not burning Jiyoung’s lasagna. She spent the whole morning on it.”

Just like all the houses in the county, the Parks had those open floor plans where the front hall ran into the living room, and the living room ran into the kitchen, and the kitchen ran into a double door that gave access to the back deck. Although you couldn’t see it, you knew the sea was right there — just a few steps away by the way the sun bathed into the house in shafts of white light, illuminating everything from the double door to the front hall.

When you moved to Uljin, you thought that eventually, the scenery would start to fade out of your consciousness — that someday you would wake up no longer amazed by the whiteness of the sand and the immensity of the sea. But it never happened and by now, you doubted it could.

Sunghoon once called it tourist fortes. But you defended that you simply had found a home.

Your father was leaning on the kitchen island together with Kwangho, a cup of his favorite whiskey already hanging in his right hand as he used the other to reach for you, hopping you affectionately beneath his arm and interrupting his conversation with Sunghoon’s father.

“Safe trip?” your father asked.

“With Sunghoon driving?” Kwangho questioned before you could reply. “I bet my son never passed the speed limit. Am I wrong?”

“Absolutely not.”

Sunghoon pushed the front door open, and immediately, the early summer air rushed in, carrying that brine scent of the seashore, and everything smelled like the beach and Jiyoung’s lasagna, still simmering with the warmth of the oven.

He stepped into the house, catching you as you walked to the center of the room. Sometimes, you forgot how tall Sunghoon had gotten until he was standing right in front of you, bottling you in the shadows with his full height and setting a chill on your skin.

“I left your luggage in your front hall,” he said.

“Thank you,” you replied. Sunghoon briefly nodded, before he was gone, further into the house and to where your fathers stood. Differently from you, he was greeted in that manly way. They talked loudly, palms hit shoulders in the middle of half hugs. His father extended him a whiskey cup for a toast, and your nose wrinkled at the exact moment his did. Sunghoon had tried whiskey for the first time at a club near the university campus, his knees brushing against yours at the bar’s counter as he swallowed the amber drink and said it was the worst thing he had tried in his whole life. He had burst out laughing then, and you had laughed with him, your body inclining into his direction, hand on his chest before you had even noticed it, and only when he had brushed the tips of his fingers through the back of your ear did you notice how close you had come.

His gaze encountered yours, and it felt like the months that had passed hung suspended in the fine particles of air.

Your mother passed by you, reaching for the dining table with plates and cutlery pulled in her hands. You used the excuse to help her and turned your back on him, your whole body warmer by the memory.

“Oh, do not bother yourself with it,” your mother said. “Bring a stool from the kitchen instead. We are minus a seat.”

“Is someone else coming?”

“Someone else came,” she whispered, her words barely audible beneath all the chaos of the room. And you knew by the way she had leaned to your side that whatever she was telling you, she wasn’t supposed to. “Until Friday, Sunghoon said he wasn’t coming home. Jiyoung only found out he was coming today when you called a few hours ago — she is fuming.”

“But he told me-”

“The stool,” your mother said abruptly. You looked up at her, ready to question what caused her sudden change in tone. But you noticed Sunghoon approaching from a distance, and you allowed the question to slip and slide with a single inhale.

“I have been banished from the kitchen. Maybe I am more helpful here?” Sunghoon asked your mother.

“Of course, Sunghoon. I will put the plates, and you put the cutlery,” she said. “And darling-”

“The stool, I am on it,” you said.

You brought the stool as Jiyoung set the lasagna in the center of the table, followed by Yeji and the blend of salad she had seen somewhere online last summer and turned into her signature on dining reunions. And before any discussion was made, the seven of you crowded around the table that initially was meant for four.

“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?” Yeji asked, leaning in to whisper the question to you. You didn’t think it would make any difference at all. So many things were happening that you doubted anyone would notice she was sharing secrets with you. At the other side of the table, your father opened the first two bottles of wine, and your mother poured, acquiring a comment from Kwangho, something you didn’t quite catch, but it made all of them burst into a laugh, the sound rolling through the ceiling.

“I am,” you said. “Why?”

“I would need your help — I have been asked on a date,” she confessed, earning a playful gasp from you.

“What are you both conspiring about?” Sunghoon called out. Although his words had been accusatory, you sensed a tease in his tone.

You didn’t notice he had taken the seat by your side until he was leaning in too, both of the Parks siblings scents blending your lungs. Citrus all together with the salty scent of the sea.

“Girl’s stuff,” you said at the same time Yeji declared it was nothing. Your voices piled over each other, and you wished you had said nothing at all. But Sunghoon glanced up at you, and if anything, he smiled and straightened himself back to his seat, promptly accepting the salad his mother was offering.

“I will call you,” Yeji said, her voice barely audibly before she straightened herself too.

Nothing really happened between the salad and the main course. Your father talked about business with Kwangho, and your mother discussed something Jiyoung had heard on the main avenue. Yeji complained about school, and it was so familiar and timeworn by the amount of Sundays you had spent like this — so pleasant that you didn’t notice Jiyoung was requiring your attention until Sunghoon’s pinched at the tip of your fingers.

“How’s things with your boyfriend?” Jiyoung asked. “Jongseong, right? Is he fine? I thought he would come this summer as well.”

“Oh, Jongseong is fine,” you said, subtly cleaning your throat. There was no way you could escape it this time. “But we — we actually have broken up.”

The impact of your words was instantaneous.

In your peripheral, you saw your parents looking at each other, a silent conversation going through with just a raise of your father’s eyebrow. Jiyoung and Yeji hung with their lips slightly parted in surprise, one being the perfect reflection of the other. Even Kwangho gasped, a mess of words that sounded much like “the convertible guy?” but it was Sunghoon’s surprised question that caught everyone’s attention.

“You what?” he demanded.

“You didn’t know?” Yeji asked.

“I don’t think I have told anyone aside from my roommate,” you said.

“But you know what? That’s a good thing,” Sunghoon said. “That guy was just too dumb to realize what he got.”

The words hover steadily and straightforwardly, without a single trace of anything held back. He didn’t even seem to notice the utter silence he had induced. Usually, the house would have been a flurry of activities, glasses being put on the table with audible clicks, dishes being cleared, and two parallel conversations going on beneath the main topic. There would be no room for a single hitch of breath. But now, the soft playlist Yeji put on the wireless speaker was the only sound heard, and in the sudden stillness, Sunghoon’s words echoed through your body, growing heat into your cheeks.

“Well, I agree with Sunghoon,” your father said, raising a cup of whiskey to his lips. “I never liked that guy.”

“Gosh love,” your mother hissed.

“Was it the one with the convertible?” Kwangho asked again, this time directing it to your father in the hope of being answered.

“Yes,” your father replied.

“No way,” Kwangho said, at the exact moment Yeji screamed at your side.

“Exactly!” she said, “She doesn’t fit convertible car guys.”

“What do I fit then?” you asked.

Yeji opened her mouth to respond, but before she could even articulate the words, they stuttered and stammered, preferring to stay on her tongue. She turned her attention to Sunghoon then, silently asking for his help, but if anything, he shook his head, unable to do anything further.

He would never admit how his heart was pounding in his chest.

“You know what? We forgot to toast,” Jiyoung said, already raising her wine glass. “To their return?”

“What else?” your mother asked.

“Summer,” Yeji suggested.

┈┈┈┈

You had known what would come next, but still, it seemed to come too fast.

As you followed your parents out of the Parks front porch, Sunghoon reached for you, his fingers slightly curling around your bare wrist to catch your attention.

You glanced up at him, watching as patches of sunlight danced over his shoulders, over the striking features of his face. His dark hair almost looked gold beneath the late sunlight. And there was something so humble and awed in the way he stood, something so familiar and known that you only could nod when he asked if you wanted to go to the beach.

Sunghoon led you between the two houses, the air warm and trapped between the walls before it opened up to the beach, and the sunset spilling across the waves in shafts of pinky peach, and tangerine. You couldn’t help but sigh at the view, an appreciation that came from your bare heart. Sunghoon raised his head at the sound of you, but instead of following your gaze, he turned to you.

“Here,” he whispered, extending his hand so he could help you through the small climbdown. The white sand that almost seemed the color of rose quartz beneath the setting sun slipping under your shoes.

Sunghoon gently released your hand as the sand spread flatly, giving you the freedom to decide whether you wanted to accompany him closer to the sea or not.

Guilelessly, you chose to follow him, stopping far enough for the water to not sprint on your shoes.

Two years ago, you both had stood in this exact place, making a promise neither of you knew how to keep. And as you looked back it seemed a lifetime since you both had been there — it seemed like no time at all.

“I missed this place,” he said, his voice coming so low, you barely could hear him through the sound of the sea waves.

“It always has been here,” you reminded him. But Sunghoon didn’t reply — he didn’t even look at you, his eyes remaining on the sea instead.

“It was lonely without you here,” you said then. You could feel the emotions rising in your throat, your doubts threatening to stammer the word away. But perhaps because you were in Uljin, and things were always easier there, perhaps because the night was approaching, and the memory of this felt like it could disappear together with the sunlight, you allowed them to come and slip through.

“I understood you not coming home on the first Christmas because of the extra class, but last summer when you didn’t appear to pick me up at the dorms — I couldn’t really comprehend why you wouldn’t come,”

“When I called you just said you decided to stay, and if it wasn’t for Jongseong offering to drive me here, I don’t know what I would have done,” you admitted. “I waited for you until the last minute, you know? Luggage in hands and everything. But it was the day I realized that maybe we were no longer who we were used to be.”

“It’s just — it always had been you and me against the world, Hoon, but suddenly it was just me,” you said. “I kept waking up in the morning and feeling like I was missing something, I knew that there was something wrong, and then, I remembered, I didn’t have my best friend anymore.”

Sunghoon opened his mouth — his lips parting as if he was about to say something, and you braced yourself for a confession, a reluctant truth, some explanation for the mess you both became throughout the past year and a half. But instead, he only seized a shuddering breath, his own doubts silencing him.

He stayed like this for a moment, maybe two, looking down at his own hands as if he was trying to sort his thoughts and you turned your gaze toward the sea.

“When we moved to Seoul, I couldn’t sleep because of how noisy the city was,” he said. “We can always hear the echoes of the roads through the house, the train line, the baseball team training until late hours.”

You weren’t sure why he chose to tell you about his insomnia problems, especially given it was something you already knew. But there was a tone in the way his words came through that told you it was the confession.

“Then I called you one night,” he continued. “And the moment I heard your voice I felt like I was here — exactly here.”

You smiled, heart softening at his admission. It was exactly how you felt when you heard his voice. The softest hello teeny after a long day at the university, and the I am coming over although he could never pass through your dorm’s door and you could never leave because of the strict rules. But he would come anyway, parking the Jeep just by your window’s sight and talking until it was easy to breathe again.

“I missed you terribly,” Sunghoon continued. “I know I am the one who fucked up when I started drifting away and canceling our plans. I know I was the one who pulled us apart last summer and I am so sorry.”

“I never meant to turn into a stranger, you were still my best friend,” he said, his voice quieted then to something less than a whisper. “You are still my best friend.”

Sunghoon had hurt you, it was an undeniable truth, and perhaps there was a part of you that would never manage to forget it. But he also had been with you for so long that you couldn’t remember if ever there was a you that didn’t know him. He was your history, and it was so hard to throw history away. It was almost as if you were throwing away a part of yourself.

You looked up at him, but his eyes were already on you, as if he had never looked away.

The first time you ever promised to love Sunghoon was a mystery for you. Someday, you only knew that it had happened, and you had passed through years already loving him. And maybe — maybe you could never recreate that moment exactly, go back and discover when your heart first decided it would give a piece of it to Sunghoon, but you felt like this night was a living echo of it.

When he reached out, gently pulling his hand towards you. You felt a tiny epiphany that you were giving a piece of your heart to him again.

His fingers spread as if he was just waiting for you to pull your hand in his and fill the small gaps in between, and so you did. It was a small gesture, something that you both were so used to, but it felt more meaningful than ever.

“I am sorry,” he whispered.

“I am sorry too,” you said, your tone coming as soft as his. You weren’t sure why you were whispering to each other. But you liked it, the intimacy of the moment.

He used your connected hands to bring you closer to him and pull you against his chest. He was warm beneath the cotton of his clothes, all his body already loved by the summer sun as he caught you around the waist, lifting you off your feet.

Sunghoon laughed then, only once, but his eyes remained in the shape, unable to conceal his pure and unfiltered happiness as he carried you through the centimeters that separated you from the sea. Just when you thought he wouldn’t drop you, he did, the waves drenching your jeans up to your thighs.

“You are a pig, Park Sunghoon,” you gasped, kicking water on him, but if anything, Sunghoon laughed some more, his dimples appearing as he threw his head back and allowed the sound to catch and spread across the breeze.

His happiness was so contagious that you couldn’t help but laugh too. And when it died from your chest, you felt something else taking the space — something so wonderfully light and warm. You wished you could hold it like a breath, keep it in to whenever you felt like faltering.

┈┈┈┈

As the afternoon shadows grew longer, Sunghoon gestured towards the back deck of your house. And as you followed him, the sound of the sea grew louder and more distinct, the rhythmic crashing of the waves against the shore stealing the sound of your footsteps.

“About Jisung-” Sunghoon suddenly said.

“Jongseong,” you corrected.

“Whatever,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper in the breeze. “I am sorry, I had no idea you had broken up.”

“I think I have told no one aside from Haneul, being honest, and he was wonderful, but-” you stopped, immediately wishing you could swallow the last word.

“But?” he echoed.

“It couldn’t work.”

Sunghoon acknowledged your statement with a slow, deliberate nod, his eyes momentarily unfocused before he moved his attention back to the beach. You didn’t say it wasn’t working, or it didn’t work. It had been the future already pressed into the present, and although he wanted to question it, he didn’t.

“You should get inside,” he said. “The breeze is starting to pick.”

“I guess I will see you around,” you said.

“Yes, of course.”

“Of course,” you echoed, and he wished he could hold time — prevent it from ticking forward as he kept both of you on this afternoon through the sheer force of his will. However, you took the knob, swirling your family’s back door open.

“Night, teeny,” he said as simply as that — two syllables falling from his tongue, but the old nickname tingled through your body, making heat grow into your cheeks.

“Good night, Hoon,” you whispered.

He sighed with the click of the door, an almost imperceptive sound, but it reverberated with him as he made the way back through your stairs, kicking mounts of sand and going back into his house.

Yeji stood in the middle of the kitchen, barefoot and as braced as a fifteen years old girl could look.

“Park Sunghoon,” she started, hands coming to her hips.

“Park Yeji,” he said, mocking her posture by mirroring it.

“You said you weren’t coming this summer.”

“I decided to come last minute,” he admitted

“Last minute as?”

“Yesterday morning?” he said. It had been an affirmation, but the way his voice raised in embarrassment subtly turned the period into a question mark.

“Would it be because of Y/N?” Yeji asked.

“You know what? I think it’s time for you to go to bed, Yeji,” he answered instead.

┈┈┈┈

When you left the shower, the night had already settled outside. The peace and silence only Uljin seemed to have already on its full leverage.

You found your mother sitting at her usual place on the back deck. Her chair facing the sea, and a book balanced on her knees. She wasn’t a keen reader, but she had a habit of trying, and you admired her for it.

“Seems like I lost a lot during those past weeks,” she said as soon as she caught sight of you.

The wind had enmeshed, but the floor was still warm with the memory of the sun beneath your feet as you walked closer and took the seat next to her, allowing yourself a brief second before you replied.

“I only agreed to come with Sunghoon yesterday.”

“It was indeed surprising when you called saying you were in the car with Sunghoon,” your mother said. “Especially after he left you waiting with luggage in hands last summer — but I meant Jongseong. You didn’t tell me you have broken up with him.”

“I kept forgetting.”

“That you have broken up?”

“No — that it’s something important enough to talk about,” you admitted. “I feel terrible admitting it, but I didn’t feel anything when we broke up, so I never remembered to tell it over the phone.”

“Your dummy,” your mother said, the words coming so affectionately that you barely noticed she had just scolded you. The chiding softened by the kindness in her voice. “You have to be in love for a breakup to hurt. I know you cared for Jongseong, but you have never been in love with him although you tried to.”

She did nothing to make her words easier to accept this time and your breath caught audibly with the sudden harshness of it, the salty air heavily setting on your lungs.

“Jongseong said almost the same thing,” you whispered. “He said I was always searching for Sunghoon’s ghost.”

“And were you?” she asked. You looked back at her, lips parted and tongue already rolling into a reply, but the words met an impasse in your mind, and you failed to.

Your mother sighed then, reaching for your hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“I wish Sunghoon knew,” she said.

Although it had been Yeji who had called you on the following day, Sunghoon was the one standing at their deck’s stairs waiting for you, barefoot, and with only a pair of washed jeans and a white t-shirt completing his attire for the day.

You stared at him, more conspicuous for the fact that you tried to be inconspicuous about it. Ever since you both had moved to Seoul, it had been rare to see Sunghoon in anything that wasn’t dress pants, and button-down shirts, and the old familiarity of it pierced you.

It was a bright day, the sky a pale blue painting above the sea, and the hefty sunlight illuminated his features with such a soft glow.

You could swear he had turned younger.

“Yeji is going on a date,” he said as soon as you stepped closer enough. “Did you know about it?”

You stopped, feeling a little lurch at that. The idea of lying seemed to attempt you. It would be so easy to simply say no — so easily to pretend you didn’t know why Yeji had called you. However, you had allowed the question to hang in for too long, and when you noticed, it was already too late to do so.

Sunghoon looked at you — really looked at you, his eyes narrowing as his jaw followed the same tensing motion. At first, you thought he was merely annoyed, but it suddenly occurred to you that he was feeling uneasy. In the middle of your silence, his finger tapped against his thighs. It could have been an insubstantial change to anyone else, but you knew Park Sunghoon all too well.

“Hoon,” you started. Although you didn’t know the words that would follow. Nothing sounded like something Sunghoon would be pleased to hear. And before you could think it through, Yeji appeared at the back door, a mug in her hands, and the most peaceful expression someone had ever moved towards you.

“Don’t worry about him,” she said. “He has been like this the whole morning, just come to my room.”

Yeji vanished almost as fast as she appeared, leaving you no option but to follow her ruling. You could feel Sunghoon trailing closely behind you as you entered the house and climbed up the stairs.

For a moment, Yeji said nothing about her brother’s following you into her room, the rotating fan being the only sound between the three of you, but then, she reached for a pillow and threw it, aiming at Sunghoon’s head.

He caught it in the air before he sat on the floor.

“Go on, girls,” he said. “I won’t bother.”

And he didn’t. Aside from occasional huffs, Sunghoon didn’t say anything. He remained silent throughout the whole time you helped Yeji with her clothes and makeup. And only when she was checking the final result in the mirror, he spoke.

“Where is the mysterious boy taking you?” he asked.

“I am not telling you.”

“I think it’s a valid question, Yeji,” you said. “We should at least know where you are going.”

“The open-air cinema at the southern beach,” she said, dramatically rolling her eyes. The answer had been for you, but her reaction was entirely for her brother.

“Happy?” she asked.

“Not really,” he replied, which meant he was — at least, a little bit.

The house’s bell rang, and Yeji sprinted at the echo of it, her bare feet pounding against the hardwood floor as she raced down the stairs.

You had prepared yourself to hold Sunghoon, but differently from what you expected, he remained still, legs outstretched with a deliberate calmness.

The front door was opened and then closed again, and only then did he move, looking up at you, a bite of a smile spreading on his lips before he finally stood up.

“Let’s go,” Sunghoon said, reaching for the pillow his sister had thrown at him and then one of her folded blankets, shoving both items beneath his arms.

“Where?”

“Suddenly, I feel like watching a movie at the beach.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s go, teeny.”

┈┈┈┈

The southern beach was bustling in a way you had never seen before. Colorful blankets had been spread all over the white sand, and the air was thick with the scent of caramel popcorn, which was such an uncharacteristic scent for the Gyeongsang beaches. Yet the afternoon was slowly reaching the orange hours of sunset, the sky turning into a blend of orange and pink against the clouds. Everything about it being so carelessly beautiful — you knew it was something only the county could do.

You sat down on the just-spread blanket, legs outstretched and drenched in sunlight as you leaned your head back, looking up at Sunghoon. Although he stood quietly on the sand, his fingers tapped absently against his thighs, the gesture somehow disconcerting and otherworldly indicative of the persistence of his uneasiness, and a twinge of concern settled over you.

“Hoon,” you called.

He flinched, his gaze darting towards you, but if anything he took your hand as you extended it to him, palm up and spread in an invitation that required no words. He slowly flung himself down on the blanket with you, his head on your lap and his body sprawled out to the remaining sunlight.

Sunghoon had always been beautiful, a storybook prince, your mother had once conveyed within shared whispers when you were fifteen. And although he was older now, he was still the same. His dark hair swept across his forehead tenderly and you brushed it back, fingertips pressed against his scalp ever so lightly before you tucked it behind his ear. He shivered despite the warmth of the day, his whole body reacting solely to the sensation of your fingers on him.

“Yeji is fifteen,” you managed to say. “It’s time for her to go on dates.”

“We didn’t go on dates when we were fifteen,” he debated.

“Of course, we were so glued to each other that no one wanted to come between us,” you said. “Well, I mean, except for some girls from your fan club — but back to the point, everyone else in our class was going on dates.”

Sunghoon fell quiet at that. The rustling of the other moviegoers being the only furor between both of you. Everywhere voices rose and fell, but the words themselves had been reduced to the echo of the sea waves.

You traced the back of his ear, a single finger following its curve and his eyes fluttered — as defenseless as he could be.

“I miss that time,” he confessed, but the words had left his lips so softly that if you weren’t paying close attention to him, you would believe it was just another wave crashing against the shore.

You leaned over him, casting him in a shadow. Your hair tickled over his cheeks and he went very — very still, a breath stuck into his lungs, but whatever you were going to say was interrupted.

“Is it Park Sunghoon and his teeny?”

You straightened yourself back, searching for the source of the voice, but Sunghoon didn’t immediately do the same. You had allowed the sun to bathe him again. And suddenly, it was too warm there, the summer air pressing firmly against his skin and making him dizzy.

“It is Park Sunghoon and his teeny.”

Although it had already been two years, Daeyeol didn’t seem to have changed from high school time. Your ex-classmate still bleached his hair into the impossible tone of white, and his infamous leather jacket hung above his tank top even though it was one of the warmest months of the year.

Sunghoon met your gaze and held it, a silent conversation happening within the seconds Daeyeol took to approach both of you.

“Daeyeol,” Sunghoon called, sitting back up.

“First of all, tell me, are you guys dating already?” he asked. It took you a heartbeat longer to make sense of what he had said, but when you did, you immediately could feel the heat growing into your cheeks.

“We are just friends,” you said, looking at Sunghoon, waiting for him to confirm your statement, but this time, he didn’t return your gaze. His eyes still focused on Daeyeol as his jaw clenched for a second, barely the length it takes to draw a breath.

“Too bad,” Daeyeol said. “We made a few bets on the graduation party, and I bet you both would be together within a year.”

“But anyway, I didn’t know you both were back in town. I am throwing a party at my new apartment on Saturday,” he continued. “I am inviting the whole class, and of course, it includes you both.”

Daeyeol made a theatrical turn to leave, ankles almost digging in the white sand, but then, he stopped, looking at Sunghoon through his shoulders. Only then did you notice the joint carelessly placed behind his ear.

He really didn’t change.

“Still with the same phone number, Sunghoon?”

“Yeah.”

“Great, I will send you the address.”

“It was-” you started.

“Unexpected?” Sunghoon supplied. “Strange?”

You nodded a little bit too eagerly to the alternatives, which earned a laugh from him. The sound had been so open and effortless — you found a smile rising to your lips as you watched him flange back on the blanket and turn his focus to the sky. The first stars had already begun to appear, tiny flecks softly mingling the sunset and reflecting on his eyes.

“You are right about Yeji,” he said. “She is grown up enough to commit her own mistake, and I will just be here to say, “I told you, men are all wolves”.”

“Sunghoon!”

“Also, should we go to Daeyeol’s party?” he asked, completely ignoring your protest.

“I don’t go to parties anymore.”

“I don’t go to parties anymore,” he mocked, changing his accent so he could clip the end of the words and steal their last syllable exactly like you. “I have seen you on one just three days ago.”

“Because it was Haneul’s last university party,” you retorted.

“Ah, c’mon,” he said. “I miss going to parties with you.”

It was three minutes to seven in the evening when Sunghoon appeared at your front door. His university jersey above a white t-shirt and black dress pants on.

You opened your mouth, tongue already rolling onto the tease he just wanted to brag about having being accepted at a university in Seoul, but before you could do so, you heard the house phone ringing in the kitchen. Your mother gasped as she answered it, something initially incoherent, but then she directed it to you.

“Darling, the phone is for you,” she said.

You turned around, feeling the weight of Sunghoon’s gaze as you stepped further into the house and to the kitchen.

“Who’s that?” you asked, hauling your high heels from one hand to another to accept the headset. You couldn’t remember a soul that had your house’s phone number much less that would call on a Saturday night. But instead of coming up with an answer, your mother only shook her head, her eyes following the path to where Sunghoon stood almost guiltily.

“Hello?”

“Y/N, hi — it’s Jongseong,” he said as if you wouldn’t recognize his voice after months of dating. “Sorry, for calling at your house, but you didn’t pick up your phone.”

“I wasn’t- I wasn’t with my phone throughout the afternoon.”

“Sorry,” he said again.

“It’s alright, something happened?”

“No, it’s just that I am in Gyeongsang, my grandmother lives here too-”

“Pohang. We spent Christmas there, I remember.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice coming a bit stuck as if he had half held his breath. “I am driving back to Seoul on the first week of august, and I was thinking that maybe — maybe we could meet up?”

You looked behind and noticed that Sunghoon was still standing at your door. However, he had turned around, his hands shoved inside the pockets of his jacket as he gazed toward your family’s front garden with an attention too unpretentious to be unpretentious.

Sunghoon was interested in who might be on the phone, he only didn’t want you to know it.

“I-” you tried, turning your gaze away. But the word met an impasse between your mind and your tongue and you couldn’t find the strength to say no.

But being fair, you never found the strength to say no.

“Lunch, or just coffee — anything you feel comfortable with,” Jongseong said, and he sounded like he always did. He was barely twenty, but he had that easy cadence in his voice, the slow precision of someone who knew the weight of his being. He blamed his father, you thought he was just born different, but you had been together for a year and had known each other for another six months, and you came to learn that behind all of this, he was insecure.

You almost could picture him at the other end of the line: his bashful smile, almost like he was apologizing for even considering it, and you were suddenly back at the university campus a year and something ago, sitting in the garden as he asked you on a date for the very first time.

It was spring back then, but winter had been lingering in, turning his cheeks pink and fogging the glasses you didn’t even know he used.

“Alright.”

“I will message you once I settle the day,” he said.

“Alright.”

“Y/N?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you,” he said.

Jongseong hung up so softly, it took another second for you to notice he did and another one to let go of it before you walked back to where Sunghoon stood.

You placed the high heels on the floor, avoiding Sunghoon’s gaze, but before you could do anything he was already kneeling in front of you, filling in your vision as he took one of your ankles in his hands and helped you put on your heels.

“Is everything alright?” he asked.

“Yes,” you said, the word hacking out of you. Sunghoon looked up at you then, and you knew he had heard the uneasiness in your voice too, but if anything he nodded at you, moving to your other ankle at the same time, a breeze picked up, chiming your mother’s wind bell, and filling the settling silence with a tangle of glass notes.

Sunghoon stood up, bottling you in the shadows with his full height. You couldn’t meet his eyes, so you concentrated instead on his shoulders, and how his collar didn’t lay flat against his skin because of his collarbones.

“Ready to have a blast?” he asked.

┈┈┈┈

The ride to Daeyeol’s apartment complex had taken twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. But as you left the car, it felt like you had gone a hundred thousand kilometers away from Uljin.

It wasn’t just that the breezes no longer carried the brine scent of the seashore or that the houses hadn’t been built in the bungalow style you were used to. But, compared to the coastal part of Gyeongsang, everything here seemed new and expensive.

You once had heard that Daeyeol was the heir of a big retail chain, the sheer number of stores under his family ownership being so high that people stopped trying to hold them accountable when it had expanded to America.

And perhaps he was, but you still did not care about knowing.

Sunghoon took your hand, easily sliding his palm against yours and intertwining your fingers as he guided you through the street and closer to the complex.

As you approached the apartment, the sound of music hit you like a wave, the volume so loud and blaring. You wondered how none of his neighbors had filed a complaint yet.

“I bet he intimidated his neighbors to not file a complaint,” Sunghoon said.

You weren’t sure if you had vocalized your wonders or if Sunghoon had the same thought as you, but either way, it had been amusing.

“I bet he bribed them, it is more Daeyeol’s style,” you replied, stealing a laugh from Sunghoon.

“Or he convinced all his neighbors to come.”

“Fine, that’s Daeyeol’s style.”

As Sunghoon looked down at you, the corners of his lips quirked upwards, and his eyes crinkled. The sound of his laughter still lingered in the air, filling the space between you both with a warm and contagious fuel. He seemed so happy nowadays. You couldn’t help but smile in response, feeling a sense of ease wash over you by simply being with him.

“Let’s go,” he said.

There was no point in knocking if no one could listen, so Sunghoon only pulled the front door open and stepped inside. The mossy scent of the woods immediately being overtaken by tequila, and too many damp skins, weed, and the cheap beer from the forgotten cups scattered through the few pieces of furniture he held.

You took in a breath, wishing it would fill you so you wouldn’t need to breathe on the intoxicated air ever again.

“Sunghoon and his teeny!” Daeyeol screamed. But whatever came after had been only for Sunghoon, the furor of the place engulfing his voice before you could clasp it.

Daeyeol pointed at the end of the corridor, and you followed it, catching the makeshift bar before your ex-classmate stepped in front of your view, giving you only a wink and turning his attention entirely on something else.

“Do you want a drink?” Sunghoon asked, shouting in your ear. The vibration of his voice scattered shivers throughout your spine.

You nodded, and he moved through the apartment as people stopped you, greeting both of you with an acknowledgment you couldn’t return. Your mind was always stuck between families’ names and faces you were sure you could recognize if Sunghoon hadn’t pushed further so soon.

He only eased up when he reached the makeshift bar. The options were tequila, beer, soju, and a great variation of flavored vodka.

You thought of asking for the tequila just to see the surprise on his face because you always had gone for the sweet and Sunghoon knew it. Actually, he had been the first one to point this fact out, so instead, your finger immediately followed the patch to the flavored vodkas, and he caught two cups, extending one to you, and taking the other.

Sunghoon emptied the cup with a quick and practiced movement of his wrist before he smashed it on the table.

You laughed then, taken aback at his sudden outburst as you followed suit. The process was repeated enough times for the alcohol to make its effect, and your thoughts began to slur.

The song changed then, almost too loud to be fully understood, but you recognize it, an old pop song which you didn’t truly know the name of, yet it played so many times on the radio and at parties for you to not know at least the idea of the lyrics. Sunghoon recognized it, too.

You weren’t sure if you had been the one to reach for Sunghoon first or if he had been the one to reach for you. But your hand was on his as he pushed back through the apartment, finding the dance floor. And as the song hit the chorus, his hands were on your waist, bringing you closer to him and swinging you to the song.

Sunghoon was being careless in a way that made your whole body tingle, dizzy in alcohol and happiness, tripping all over.

You shouted the lyrics to him, and he shouted the lyrics back to you. And suddenly, both of you were laughing senselessly as if it was the only thing you ever thought about doing — like it could have been just the two of you in the world.

You were close — too close. Sunghoon had to look down to find your gaze, and when he did, you felt his breath against your mouth, the softest gust of warm air against your lips. The seconds seemed to melt together, and you couldn’t tell how long you had been breathing on each other when his fingers spread at the side of your neck, thumb seizing for your cheek as he angled you up to him. You were already warm from the sticky air and dancing, but you could swear you grew even warmer when he closed his eyes and came closer, brushing his nose on yours.

Your every sense was acutely aware of his proximity. You could feel the firmness of his chest pressing against yours, and the steady rhythm of his breath. Sunghoon was all around you, all inside of you, the scent of his citrus perfume and the Uljin breezes laboriously overtaking the intoxicated air. And you trembled with the thought, a little chill settling through your skin despite the warmth of the place.

But then, he clenched his jaw, brows knitted together as if something was suddenly hurting him, and before you could ask what happened, he moved, abruptly and all at once stepping back.

“Let’s go,” he said.

And the moment slipped through — like a dream you wake up to hastily from. By the time his hand reached for you, fingers finding the slots between yours and guiding you through the mess of bodies, you wondered if you truly almost had kissed your best friend.

“Doesn’t this type of place usually have fire escapes for emergencies?” he yelled.

“I think so,” you yelled back. “Are we in an emergency?”

The question seemed to have taken Sunghoon anew because he looked at you, lips parted in a retort that wasn’t coming fast enough.

“Yes,” he exhaled in the end. “The smell of weed is making me sick, and it’s too warm in here.”

Sunghoon reached for a window in the back wall, shoving it open. A cool breeze rushed in and caressed your skin, tingling it as you watched him jump out onto the fire escape. His figure momentarily silhouetted against the backdrop of the street lights.

He held his hand out to you, helping you jump through the window frame. His hands were firm on yours even as you landed on the stairs. The sun had long set, the world settling hazy and dark, lavender clouds high up in the sky, but the breeze was calm that night, and the heat was still lingering, making the air heavy and all summer-made.

You followed Sunghoon through the stairs and away from Daeyeol’s apartment, or rather, he followed you, standing tall behind you, and always within reach. He had an open hand just hovering by your side as if he was ready to catch you if you tripped over because of your poor choice of shoes.

The rooftop was empty. No lawn chair or anything that would be expected for a place like this. If anything, someone had abandoned a beer can there, what had remained of the alcohol used to extinguish a cigarette.

“I am so tired,” you said, lying down on the rooftop. The shingles were warm beneath the thin material of your dress, and you almost sighed with the memory of the afternoon sun against your skin.

Sunghoon took his jacket off, putting it above your legs before he lay down too, coming down beside you. You rolled onto your side to look at him, and he did the same.

“Am I getting old already?” you asked, immediately stealing a laugh from him. It had been a hardly there sound, but you could taste the vodka on his breath, feel the bitter taste on your tongue although you weren’t even sure when you had wandered that close again.

“Definitely, but when was the last time you have been to a party and enjoyed it like this?”

“I think it was during the winter last year,” you said. “With you still.”

“We used to go stupid every night,” he said.

“What a tragedy.”

“And then you started dating Jongsuk-,”

“Jongseong,” you corrected, but he continued as if you had never spoken, rolling onto his back and turning his attention to the sky.

“And stopped going to parties.”

“No!”

“Yes, when you started dating him, you stopped going to parties.”

“Don’t mix up things like that,” you argued. “You started dating the whole university campus, and I had no one to stay with during the parties so obviously I stopped going, but when I started dating him, I went a few times.”

“Fine, you did go, once or twice.”

“Because he disliked those parties, and if I didn’t go with him I would be alone,” you said. “Also there was that time you got so wasted, you started yelling at Jongseong—”

“That he didn’t deserve you,” he said. “Maybe I was too passionate on the way I had said it that night, but I still believe he doesn’t.”

You snorted, your hand bumping into his.

“I am serious,” he said. “The moment you accepted to share the telescope with me and Yeji that night you became my problem, and by my problem, I mean I care about who is with you.”

“So who would deserve me then?”

You looked at him, but he didn’t return your gaze. His eyes were still focused on the night sky, watching the lavender clouds rushing through. Despite the absence of light, you could see how his cheeks were flushed by the combination of summer heat and alcohol.

Sunghoon licked at his lips, and for a moment you thought he had decided to ignore your question, but then, he started, his voice so lowly it almost got lost in the middle of night.

“You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you’re doing, where you are, and if you’re alright. You deserve someone who will treat you with respect, and love every part of you, including your flaws,” he said. “You should be with someone who could make you happy, really happy — and I never felt like you were really happy.”

Sunghoon finally looked at you again, and suddenly, you couldn’t breathe. The humidity air had curled his hair in the same fond way you remembered and when he smiled, his dimples appeared.

Although it had been a novelty to hear Sunghoon speaking like this, it hadn’t been a surprise. Sunghoon was the type of person who laughed easily, and forgave even faster. He gravitated toward the person in most need in the room without even noticing.

And maybe that’s why he came to you.

You needed him — more than you would ever tell.

To move to Uljin at such a young age had been easy, but looking back, you wondered if it would have been the same without him.

If it would have always felt like a home.

“You know,” you said, barely hearing yourself beneath the sound of your pounding heart. “If you ever find this guy, bring him to me, I will marry him in no time.”

He laughed at it, slightly throwing his head back and when he looked at you again, his eyes were soft — the night sky turning his brown eyes even darker as he reached for you. The tip of his fingers ran along your cheek before he cradled the side of your face.

“You are my best friend,” he said.

“And you are mine,” you answered, but your chest ached with each and every word.

You were just looking at each other. There were no hard edges to grab hold of, no different characteristics on this moment’s beginning or end, nothing to separate it from the other millions you had. But you for the first time after so long you caught yourself thinking what if — what if you wanted something more?

And what a terrifying thing it was.

For someone who managed to escape the furor of the parties for almost twelve months, you have been catching yourself quite a lot on it lately.

You didn’t like pool parties — especially if it was Jang Yujin’s pool party.

But late July brought the record of high temperatures to Uljin, the weight of summer pressing and ensuring that the entire county stayed spared between the sea and particular pools.

As Yeji’s friends took the sea behind your houses, Sunghoon felt it would be better for you to go somewhere else. So, despite the fact that you hated Yujin, you found yourself barefoot on the fresh grass of her family house as Sunghoon extended you a cup of cherry vodka.

“Fruity drink to my soft drinker,” he said.

You hardly registered his saying before you caught sight of Daeyeol approaching Sunghoon from behind, a mischievous grin that matched his companion.

“Anything valuable in the pockets?” Daeyeol asked.

“No,” Sunghoon replied, but if it had been to the question or a protest to what was about to come was uncertain. Daeyeol was already lifting Sunghoon by his armpits as your other ex-classmate took his ankles. Your drink fell from Sunghoon’s hand and between one breath and another, Sunghoon was launched into the pool.

The effect was instantaneous. As Sunghoon hit the water with a smack, the whole backward turned into a mess. Some people cheered as others decided to get into the water too.

You worried he would be mad, but as he appeared up the surface, scrubbing a hand through his hair, he was smiling.

“Help me out, teeny,” he said.

“Promise me you won’t pull me in,” you said, immediately regretting it. If it hadn’t passed through Sunghoon’s mind, it now was the only thing he could think about.

You stepped back, but he was already leaving the pool, coming in your direction in fast steps. And before you could run away, one of his arms wrapped around your waist as the other found the back of your knees. He held you tight to him, his soaked clothes already cooling your body as he moved and hurled both of you to the edge of the pool.

“I am here,” Sunghoon said. The first thing you ever hear after the dull sound of the underwater.

You didn’t notice how agitated you were until you felt his hands moving through your body, shifting you so you were straddling his waist.

“You should have let me teach you how to swim when we were younger,” he said.

“Why? I always had you to hold me,” you replied, and Sunghoon laughed, an easy and unpretentious burst of sound whistling across the breeze, and your heart lurched at it. You pressed your forehead against his shoulder, fingers blindly curling on the front of his shirt as you closed your eyes. That sound suddenly reminded you of shared cakes on his mother’s coffee table and nights spent on the hardwood floor of your bedroom.

“Yes, you always had me to do everything for you,” he said.

Sunghoon’s grip tightened on you, his fingers deepening into your skin as if his touch itself was a promise he wanted to make. His chest pressed against yours, and you wondered if he could feel your heartbeat — if it was rattling against your ribs as loud as it seemed to be.

All around you, people were still on their own fun, laughing and pushing friends into the water as the sun kept going down, shafts of orange and pink streaming across the water, but you only knew him.

You felt hazed by his closeness, by the way his citrus perfume blended with the scent of chlorine and cedar — by the way he shivered beneath your touch, his breath hitching when you slipped down, mouth accidentally running through his shoulder.

“Teeny?” Sunghoon called, his voice all soft and compelling, “You will always have me.”

He pressed his cheek to the side of your head, and for a while, neither of you moved, lingering in this moment of close silence for what felt like ages.

“I think I will go inside and get something to eat,” you said then, and Sunghoon nodded, carrying you to the edge of the pool and sitting you there, but he didn’t immediately let you go. Sunghoon lingered there, thumbs stroking circles into the soft skin on the inside of your leg, just above your knee as his fingertips hid underneath the hem of your dress.

He tugged at the edge of it, fingers light and playful, and it made the air feel warmer, heavier — like the sun was suddenly warmer above you.

You could feel his eyes on your chest, just above the neckline of your dress, catching the scattering of moles that seemed to be growing each other day beneath the Uljin’s suns.

And then his lips were on your cheek, pressing a kiss wet from the water still.

“Bring me something too?”

┈┈┈┈

Inside the house, the air conditioner was fully working, tingling your skin and making you follow the path to the guest room instead of the kitchen.

Sunghoon’s jacket was still on the pile of clothes and purses above the bed. As you reached for it, you felt a phone ringing in his pocket. At first, you thought it would be his, but as you took it, you noticed it was yours.

Yeji’s name shone for you, and you hadn’t a second thought before picking it up.

“Why aren’t you picking up?” she asked, the words coming stuttering as if she was forcing them through.

Your heart hummed against your ears so loud you couldn’t even think straight. You and Sunghoon had left her safety to enjoy the beach with her friends, and if there was something genuinely dangerous, you couldn’t think of it.

“Yeji, what happened?”

“I was stupid, sis, he doesn’t like me.”

You breathed in, taking a quiet second to calm your pulse.

“Hey, it’s alright,” you whispered. “Where are you? Are you home still?”

“Yes,” she said. “Can you come — can you come here?”

“Of course, wait for me just a bit, alright?”

┈┈┈┈

By the time you stepped out of the house, Sunghoon had already left the pool, a borrowed towel in his hand, and Jang Yujin standing by his side. She touched all over him, her fingers grazing his chest before she curled it on his shirt, leaning closer as she pretended to help him.

It was silly the way you felt your heartstrings being pulled at the view especially because it was no novelty — Yujin acted like this back in high school too, but you couldn’t help it despite the fact that you had bigger problems than someone flirting with your best friend.

“Hoon,” you called. You didn’t intend to make your voice sound frantic, but it came that way. And perhaps it had been because you already had his jacket hurled around you, one hand twisted on the material as the other held your previously abandoned high heels, Sunghoon was already slipping away from Yujin, walking towards you as if there was no one else in his eyesight.

“What happened?” he asked, hands promptly cupping the sides of your neck to angle you up to him.

“Yeji called. She was crying,” you said. “I didn’t — I didn’t understand well, but it’s something with the guy she went out with.”

Sunghoon nodded, his thumb drawing reassuring circles on your skin as he availed the situation.

“Have you gotten the car keys?” he asked. It was your time to nod. “Alright, let’s go.”

┈┈┈┈

It was eight in the night when Sunghoon pulled into his driveway, his house so dark that it was hard to imagine Yeji was still there. Even her room had the lights turned off, and only when you called for her did she move, but it had been only enough to peer through the edges of her sheets.

Although there were six missed calls on your phone, Sunghoon’s phone had been idle throughout the whole party. And if it didn’t make it clear that she wanted to talk to you, the way her eyes traveled between you and Sunghoon a few times in hesitation was.

“Hoon,” you called. “I think the bakery is still open, could you bring us something?”

His gaze encountered yours for a brief second before he sighed, walking toward Yeji, and kissing the top of her head. He said nothing at it. He just quietly slipped into his role as an older brother and left.

You crawled into the bed with her, wrapping your arms around her from behind.

“You are smelling like chlorine and alcohol,” she murmured.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

“Do you want to talk?” you asked.

“Even with you, I feel embarrassed.”

“Why so?”

“I feel stupid, you know?” she said. “He asked me out and I was already head overhill for him, and now I am like this because I found out he just wanted to make his ex jealous.”

You breathed in, perhaps so harshly that it had overtaken all the other sounds in the room.

Yeji chuckled at you.

“It’s alright, I have already gone through all the phases of mourning throughout the afternoon,” she said. “I am not blaming you and Hoon, please, do not take it like this. But I think I rushed to the first nice guy because I have grown up with people talking about how you and Hoon are soulmates.”

“A fate written in the stars, mom always says,” Yeji continued, and although she claimed to have passed through all the mourning already, her voice broke at the end, and although you couldn’t see her, you knew fresh tears had sprung to her eyes. “I wanted to live it too.”

You tightened your arms around her, bringing her so close that when she sobbed, the force of it resonated as if you were the one crying.

“Yeji, what is yours is reserved. And I am not only talking about a great love but anything in life. Sometimes we get so tied up in an idea that we miss out on the amazingness of what we could actually have,” you said. “What’s yours will come at the right time, so do not stress about anything. You will only get hurt.”

“I am hurt,” she said.

“I know, and I am sorry for it.”

“I am sorry too.”

You weren’t sure how long you had been there, but by the time Sunghoon arrived, Yeji had already drifted off to sleep, her breathing so slow and steady. You rose to your feet holding your breath, trying to make as little noise as possible until you were back in the living room, finding Sunghoon laying out the pastries on the coffee table.

He caught sight of you then and rewarded you with his best smile.

“I took a bit longer because I guessed Yeji wanted to talk with you alone,” he said. “How’s she?”

“Better, I think, she fell asleep,” you told. “I didn’t imagine she would.”

Sunghoon nodded at you, moving his attention back to the coffee table. You thought he would offer to walk you home, call it a night, and let you go, but instead, he gestured to the pastries.

“I got your favorite,” he said. “And absolutely nothing has walnuts, I swear.”

It was so natural to fold yourself on Jiyoung’s furry rug, so familiar to help Sunghoon line all the sweets and share. For a moment, you were ten again, doing it for the first time on a winter night. You were fourteen again, doing it after your middle school graduation.

“Is it the moment when I say ‘I told you so, men are all wolves’?” Sunghoon asked, bringing you back to the present moment.

“It is,” you admitted. “But please don’t.”

Maybe it had been because of the way you seemed sad there, the full frown that had taken over your face, but instead of continuing with his scolding, he reached for you across the coffee table, his trained fingers finding the slots between yours and squeezing your hand a little tighter, and it was such a small gesture, but something about it felt so reassuring.

“Yeji will be fine,” he said. “I will make her tell me his name, and I will end him.”

A laugh burst out of you at his words, and that was it — the spell was broken. Sunghoon laughed back at you and you squeezed his hand again, a signal for him to stop it and be quiet, but he did not, and you came to the conclusion you actually didn’t mind it.

His laugh was perhaps your favorite sound in the world.

“Try this one,” he said, extending you one of the pastries. “The baker said it was a new flavor.”

You leaned over the coffee table, taking his wrist with your free hand and guiding the pastry to your mouth so you could taste it. Your lips barely brushed against his fingertips, but his heart raced beneath your touch, and you let him go.

“It was kinda different,” he murmured. “The bakery.”

“The owner had been planning to do a renovation since last summer,” you said. “He told me when I went there with Jongseong.”

It’s a simple answer, a way to keep the conversation going, but when Sunghoon found your gaze, you could feel the heaviness that Jongseong’s name settled in the conversation.

“Jongseong,” he whispered, and you knew it had been an accident — his thoughts coming too loudly because Sunghoon never cared to say Jongseong’s name correctly. “Do you still talk?”

“We weren’t, but — but he called last week,” you confessed. “He is visiting his grandma. She lives in Gyeongsang too so he wanted us to meet.”

“And you agreed?”

“I did.”

“Do you really love him?” Sunghoon asked. The question stunned you unwillingly to silence, heart racing all together with your mind.

“No” would be the most logical answer. You knew you never really fell in love with Jongseong, but you also knew the implications this statement carried being said out loud — that overwhelming confirmation that you had been in love with Sunghoon instead.

“I don’t think so,” you could have said, but you had already allowed the question to hang in for too long, and in the middle of your silence, Sunghoon had created his answer.

“I still think he doesn’t get you, but I want you to be happy,” he said. “And if it’s with him, I will try to support you.”

“Try,” you echoed, earning a smile from him. But despite his fond reaction, he looked distant, halfway here with you and halfway deep inside of himself.

Sunghoon dropped the pastry back into the bowl and spilled himself on the rug. You followed after, being as close as you could without touching.

“Thank you for always taking care of Yeji,” he suddenly said.

“She is my sister too, remember?” you asked, immediately causing him to snort.

Back in the years, it had been a threat, she was your responsibility when her desires were too girly, or when Sunghoon was too tired to follow, but it became something you didn’t mind.

Yeji was as much as your sister as she was Sunghoon’s.

He reached for you, twisting a lock of your hair between his fingertips before he pulled it behind your ear.

“Of course I remember.”

A faint glow came through the windows, painting stripes of light and shadow over the walls, over Sunghoon’s cheek. There was enough light just for you to see his smile. And you wished you told him then, that he smelled like summer and citrus grooves on the sun, that he smelled like childhood and home.

You wished you told him how much you loved him.

“Can you stay the night?” he asked, and almost unconsciously, you held your breath. “Just in case she wakes up, all I will be able to say is ‘I told you’ and I doubt it is what she needs to hear.”

You doubted it would be Sunghoon’s reaction, but you nodded nevertheless.

“I can,” you whispered. “Of course, I can.”

You reached up to his shoulders, and he shifted onto the rug, maneuvering closer to you. One of his hands found your waist as the other reached up to your neck, his fingertips brushing and twisting on the hair at your nape. There was a certain stillness on it — your fingers on each other, your breaths getting tangled in the small space between you.

And despite the fact you could feel your chest aching, you had to admit that you were happy.

Perhaps Yeji was right. People lived their whole lives without getting to experience this type of intimacy, and you were a lucky kind to have found it with Sunghoon.

Perhaps he was your soulmate, and you were in love with him. But you would rather have this tiny sliver of him forever than have all of him for just a moment and know you had to relinquish all of it when you were through.

You could never lose Sunghoon again.

You couldn’t.

It doesn’t matter if your parents were out of town, it was Sunday night, and your seat was reserved on the Park’s dinner table as it always had been.

Sunghoon came to pick you up, showing up at your front door and holding his hand out for you as if it were too dangerous to jump the bunches that separated your families’ properties and walk the path to their front porch on your own.

The Park’s front door hung open that evening, and you could hear Yeji’s selected playlist already resonating through the speakers in the living room, some love song from the 80s reaching for you across the summer breeze altogether with Jiyoung’s faint commands.

“How is Yeji?” you asked, stopping at your troughs.

Sunghoon stopped by your side, peering inside his family’s house before he turned to you. The sun was still hefty despite the fact it was already seven o’clock, patches of sunlight dancing over his shoulders, over the striking features of his face. His hair almost looked gold beneath all of this light and you had to tell yourself to not reach for him — to not trace the soft line of his jaw and comb the hair back from his forehead.

Especially when he smiled down at you, his lips curling almost blearily.

“She says she is alright, but once in a while I catch her staring at the walls with a frown,” he said. “But don’t worry,”

“I will still get his name and end him,” Sunghoon whispered, leaning into your side and you could feel the smile in his voice, the warmth of it scattering and weaving from where his lips met your skin to your whole body.

You knew it was a fake threat, a joke you were supposed to follow, but you couldn’t. Your body was somehow still stuck in his proximity and you let his words hang in. The evening was still warm from the late july sun, but it had become almost unbearable with his proximity. You could barely breathe beneath his attention and you were suddenly thankful when Jiyoung appeared at the front door and caused him to step away.

“Come in, the table is all set,” she said. “I prepared bossam for the night.”

“My favorite,” you said, earning a smile from her.

And for a while, everything was fine again — easy even. But Jiyoung had recently discovered her new favorite wine and by the time the dessert was finished and Air Supply started singing about his secret inner thoughts through the wireless speakers, she was drunk, stumbling to her feet.

“Kwangho!” she exclaimed. “We danced to this on our first date.”

“We know,” Yeji quickly remarked with a scowl.

When Jiyoung got drunk her brain seemed to always reach for the same memories: her first date with Kwangho, a terrible dinner with her parents, and her marriage.

Tonight it seemed to have selected her first date with Kwangho.

“Dance with me,” Jiyoung said, causing a chuckle to escape from your lips as you watched her holding a hand to her husband and standing him up.

They retreated from the table laughing through their drunk state and stumbling until they found the back doors and disappeared, leaving the room suddenly too calm — not quiet, the chords of the love song kept resonating and dispersing through the whole place together with Sunghoon’s parents’ small talk coming from the open doors but it was steady, peaceful, an echo of the approaching late hours.

“I will take the dishes,” Yeji said.

“I will help you,” you offered, reaching for your plate, but Yeji was fast on taking it away.

“Drunk or not. Mom will kill me if she knows I allowed you to do any real chords in this house.”

You looked at Sunghoon in search of some support then, but he only shook his head, his lips already curving into a fond smile.

“I don’t want to get killed too,” he said.

You could feel your mouth opening in another protest as you turned back at Yeji, but Sunghoon brushed his knee against yours and when your gazes encountered, he didn’t wait for you to say what was on your mind, he immediately held his hand in the small space between you.

“Dance with me too,” he whispered.

You blinked at him, body going slack as you tried to find any sign of a joke on him. But Sunghoon remained still, his cheeks flushed by the same alcohol you indulged in and the late summer heat as he stared at you.

“I don’t know how to slow dance,” you finally said.

“Neither do I, but we can figure it out.”

You took his hand, allowing him to stand you up and take you to the side of the room.

It was no novelty to have Sunghoon guiding you, but there was something different about doing it outside the furor of the university parties and cheap clubs, away from the dimmed lights and intoxicated air.

It felt softer.

He placed your hands on his shoulders, but he didn’t let go easily. You felt his fingertips slowly tracing your pulse before his hands molded to your waist, bringing you closer at the same time he leaned in — just enough to rest his cheek against yours, but every contact was like a static shock, a spark of life where his skin met your skin, and your heart picked up.

“It’s such a sad song,” Sunghoon pointed out. “I don’t know why mom gets so happy over it.”

“Since when have you been fluent in English?” you laughed.

“I have been studying, but living with Jiyoung you have to know the lyrics of this song,” he said. “Between the fiftieth time and the fiftieth first you get curious about it.”

“And what do the lyrics say?” you asked, moving back to look at him. Your hands slid to the back of his neck for support, but your palms fitted so well on the slope curve that you couldn’t help but run your palm over it, fingers curling at his hair and making Sunghoon shiver beneath your touch, the soft rustle of his breath hitching against your skin almost imperceptibly.

It took him another moment to reply.

“He likes this girl — no, he is obsessed with her,” he whispered. “And he knows he is lost without her, but he is also afraid of letting her know it.”

“Why?”

“Well — this part is not in the lyrics,” he said, and you laughed at it, softly and ignoring the fact that your heart was slamming inside of your chest. “Was my analysis approved by my linguist student?”

“I don’t know,” you said. “I always thought he simply meant love could be made out of nothing.”

“So plain.”

Sunghoon swirled you, a twist of his body that led you away from him, spinning on the tip of your toes for a quiet second, before he brought you back to him. His hand caught your waist again, slipping through the thin material of your dress until his fingers found the lace on your waistband.

“Nevermind. I think we are doing it wrong,” he said, letting you go suddenly and abruptly before he sunk himself onto his family’s couch.

You followed after, less forceful as you took the space at his side. You didn’t touch him, but you could feel the heat radiate from his skin and it was just as dizzying.

“When is your date with the dummy?” Sunghoon asked.

“Jongseong,” you corrected, but now it was a name that carried more emotions than facts. “He will be here on Tuesday, and it’s not a date.”

“Sure.”

“He probably just wants to catch up — we were friends before dating.”

The song changed on the wireless speakers, and the one that came on next was faster, sprightly, and lively. You could hear his parents laughing on the back deck, but when his fingers thumped against his thighs, you knew it was a reaction to his uneasiness rather than him following the rhythm of the song.

“You don’t need to do this, you know?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Please everyone. You started dating Jongseong because you felt sorry to reject him, and I am quoting you on this. You went to that party because Haneul asked you,” he said. “You are everywhere Yeji asks you to be — you are everywhere I ask you to be, and I admit my guilt about it.”

“If you want to go on a date or whatever you want to call it with Jongseong, it’s alright, but if you don’t — please, don’t force yourself to be there.”

“Hoon,” you called, although you weren’t sure what words were supposed to follow, the ideas of your thoughts coming faster than the certitude of it.

“Call me,” he whispered then. “If something happens there.”

“Sure,” you whispered back.

“You are my best friend, teeny.”

“And you are mine.”

August was what your grandma used to call the fickle month. It was the seam between july blue skies and september rains. Just yesterday night, the sky was clean, with not a single cloud to bloat the stars, but as you opened the front door, you not only encountered Park Jongseong but also the promise of rain. The low rumble of thunder that could be heard in the distance, and made the air almost static.

As you glanced past Jongseong’s shoulders, you couldn’t help but notice his showy convertible parked on your family’s driveway — its roof down as you always remembered. Jongseong must have caught your gaze, for his smile turned into something closer to embarrassment.

“Not the best option for the weather,” he said. “But it’s the only one that I got. I can close the roof if you want.”

“People buy a convertible for only one reason,” you said, and Jongseong laughed at that. The sound was so open and easy that you couldn’t help but allow a smile to rise to your lips.

Once, when you both were still dating, you had questioned why he would have bought a convertible when he lived in Seoul, such a rainy city for the majority of the time, but he only smiled and said the exact same thing, a bite of a smile crossing through his lips before he raced through the night and beneath the city lights.

So he drove you with the hood down, the wind trailing and tangling through your hair with the heady smell of rain as the county rolled past you.

Jongseong wasn’t the type to make small talk, so he didn’t attempt to speak under the thrumming engine, nor when he opened the café shop door, holding it still as you stepped past him.

You found it easy to slide into a booth across from him, easy to let your gaze meet his, small smiles playing on both of your mouths. You ordered a smoothie as Jongseong ordered a coffee and a plate of cake for each of you — the same flavor, and you had to bite your tongue to not say it would be a waste because you could share.

But sharing cakes was your thing with Sunghoon.

“How have you been?” Jongseong finally asked.

“Fine, yes, how about you?”

“Fine,” Jongseong said. “Nothing like spending a month at Nana’s house.”

“I can understand, your grandmother is such a lovely person.”

“She asked about you — actually, she asked how I allowed you to escape,” he said, and you laughed at this, cheeks turning a bit warmer and Jongseong’s lip twitched up.

“You have been asked about too,” you said.

“Sunghoon’s mother or yours?”

“How did you-”

“They were the only ones that didn’t seem to genuinely hate me,” he said, head ducking the way he did whenever he was unsettled.

“I am sorry,” you said because you really were — because you didn’t know what else you could say to him.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Actually, that’s the whole point — everyone knows your history with Sunghoon is way deeper than what you both tell. I knew it even before we started dating and it was my option to ask you out,”

“When I told Heeseung I was going to do it he said ‘Y/N? You mean Sunghoon’s Y/N?’.” Jongseong laughed, but you couldn’t do the same. “There was also that night when we just had started to go further into our relationship and you were at my studio. It was three in the morning or something, and Sunghoon called you really wasted,”

“You were so worried about him that I knew there was no one else in the world for you like him. And when we arrived at his place and he started shouting because you were with me late at night, I knew there was no one else in the world for him too.”

A look of disappointment passed over Jongseong’s features, too vivid and too unmistakable to be something buried in the past, and once again, you felt sorry.

“Then you both stopped talking and I know it’s so selfish to say, but I thought something was going to change,” he said. “Yet I only saw you lose the last sparkle in you. I always knew that you loved him, but I feel like I threw it on you when we broke up.”

“You didn’t.”

“I felt like I did,” Jongseong whispered, his gaze holding steadily onto yours, and you could feel he was studying you even before he continued.

“Listen, and please do not take it as your ex-boyfriend saying, but as a friend instead,” he asked. “Heeseung told me that Sunghoon lost it all after you two stopped talking. He would cling to the couch until the parties were over, staring at everything as if he were looking for something that was never coming. ‘Vultures spinning above of what was left of him’ were his words actually,”

“I don’t know what keeps you two from going after each other. If you can’t see it, or if it’s all about doubt and fear, but if he is too scared, you should do it,” Jongseong said. “It’s sad to see you losing what you could actually have.”

You didn’t argue with him. You couldn’t. Your heart was beating too fast, tripping over each heartbeat and making it impossible for you to think straight.

Behind him, the café was still blasting with life. A couple just a table away were sharing the same piece of cake, and when the woman laughed, you felt a longing inside of your heart.

You looked back at Jongseong, but he was already taking the last sip of his coffee.

“Let’s go, I will take you home.”

┈┈┈┈

Jongseong left you on the Park’s driveway, not waiting for you to get to the door to make a turn, his convertible disappearing through the street before you even reached the first stair, and honestly, it was better that way — no eyes watching as you mustered the courage to simply keep moving forward.

You rang the bell once, and then twice, but no answer came. Sunghoon’s Jeep was the only car in the driveway, with no sign of Kwangho’s gray sedan and you took a deep breath before you gathered up the courage to open the door like you normally could.

The door scraped open, and you shuffled in, blinking in the sudden lack of clarity until your vision got adjusted, the only light coming was from the back door. The sun hid behind the storm that never seemed close enough to fall.

You looked up and caught sight of him, leaving his room upstairs and closing the last few buttons of his blue shirt as he reached the first stair.

Sunghoon paused when he found you, looking at you with parted lips because you looked so embarrassed there.

“You didn’t pick up the door,” you mumbled.

“I was on it,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“Not that I mind,” he said, making his way down the stairs. When he stopped in front of you, he bottled you in the shadows with his full height, and it was one of those moments when you realized how much he had grown up.

“Where’s everyone?” you asked. “It’s so silent here.”

“Dad has a conference in Angok, mom always goes with him and Yeji decided to stick around because of the food,” Sunghoon said.

“Smart, I miss my dad’s conferences,” you said, immediately earning a snort from him.

“I thought Jongseong took you out to eat, but you seem as hungry as ever,” he said. “C’mon, I think there’s something in the kitchen.”

None of you bothered to turn the lights on. The path from the stairs to the kitchen was so familiar that you could have done it with your eyes closed. You knew where to step, and where to move so you didn’t hit any of Jiyoung’s furniture. So you both leaned on the kitchen island with the dim light of the end of the afternoon and mixed leftover pastries with Yeji’s experimental cupcakes.

“So,” Sunghoon said, subtly clearing his throat. His fingers thumped against the island’s surface and you felt your chest aching. “Are you two back together?”

“No.”

He stopped at your answer, all at once, and for an instant, something flashed across his face. But it had been too brief, too fleeting — stolen by surprise when thunder hit the shore and his gaze fled to the back doors.

“Why?” he whispered, and it had been so low that if you weren’t paying close attention to him, you doubted you would have noticed it.

“Hoon,” you called, and you hated how you sounded desperate then. The verge of your tears coming in before your thoughts.

You didn’t remember making the decision to move toward Sunghoon, but suddenly, you were there, standing so close that the air felt snuffed. His hands promptly found the sides of your neck, holding you up to him. And when his gaze encountered yours, his eyes were surprisingly bright beneath the dim light.

“Because I couldn’t — no, because I can’t love someone as much as I love you.”

Sunghoon stopped at your words, and the silence that followed was almost mocking. You had lived a good part of your life in Uljin, but you couldn’t remember a day when the waves had been this silent. Your mother’s wind bell had gone idle, and the breeze carried nothing but the promise of the rain — even the thunder had ceased.

“Teeny,” he whispered, and perhaps it had been the way his voice broke at it — perhaps it had been the way his hands fell away from your skin, but your heart wavered in your chest.

You could take a rejection from everyone but him.

You could lose anyone but Sunghoon.

In your mind, you saw Haneul, perhaps the first person who ever had put into words what everyone only spoke as half thoughts. You heard Yeji telling you about Jiyoung and soulmates, and you thought of Jongseong, just a few hours ago saying how there was no way Sunghoon didn’t love you back.

How could they all be so wrong?

“Teeny,” he repeated.

The kitchen was too warm, too sweet, pastries and cupcakes sugary all together with the scent of his perfume and suddenly you felt like you couldn’t breathe.

“You really know how to drive one’s mad,” he said. “I didn’t know the difference between loving you and being in love with you. You’ve been in my life for as long as I can remember,”

“And then you kissed me at that New Year’s party.”

You lurched at his words, an incredulous gasp fleeing through your lips before you could even control it. You couldn’t remember doing it. New Year’s party or anywhere else, you couldn’t remember ever kissing Sunghoon.

“After we opened the second bottle of flavored vodka or something. It was close to midnight already — we were pretty drunk, and you—” he stopped. One of his dark brows lifted, but there was no amusement in his face as he considered you. “You really don’t remember it, do you?”

You only could shake your head.

“We kissed — actually, we made out in the middle of the living room and I swear, if you didn’t tell me you were starting to feel dizzy when I carried you to my room, I would—” Sunghoon stopped once again, and you could feel his words stuttering and stammering. “I held your hair as you threw up — I held you throughout the whole night as you were sick, but when you woke up in the morning, you said we should forget about everything because it was just too embarrassing for you.”

There was no way the world tripped, but you felt as if the ground had slipped through your feet. Everything was so unstable that you shrugged away, pressing your back against the kitchen island for support.

“I don’t remember,” you whispered. “I mean, I remember getting sick, but before it—”

“Yeah, I — I realized it now, but I thought you were embarrassed about having kissed me and I took it as a rejection, so I started dating random girls, anyone, really. I tried to take my mind off you, tried to forget about your kisses and how you made me feel,” he said. “And it was going half alright, well, until you started dating Jongseong.”

“And I know I had been the worst friend then, and you had the whole right to stop talking to me. But I had this thought for a while that maybe — maybe we could be like the old times again because now I’ve realized that no matter where you are or what you are doing, or who you are with, I will always honestly, truly, completely love you and I would hold this forever — I could be forever your best friend if it meant you were happy where else.”

His words pounded against you with an intensity that only made your chest ache a bit more. You could feel his words seeping into your skin, leaving a lasting impression that was hard to escape from. Outside, the rain had finally started to fall, and the sound of it only added to the overwhelming feeling of being caught in a deluge of emotions.

“When Jake told me he saw you at that party, I thought that was my opportunity,” he said. “That’s why I insisted on you coming with me to Uljin.”

You didn’t notice you were crying until he leaned in, his hands spreading at the island’s top and on each side of you as his lips promptly found your wet cheeks and kissed the heaving tears away.

“Don’t cry, teeny.”

“We broke each other’s hearts just because we were afraid,” you said.

“We did, but what is important is what we are going to do from now on.”

“When did you get so wise, Park Sunghoon?” you asked, and he smiled at you, his dimples flirting at the soft skin of his cheeks.

“Losing you got me really undone.”

“Yeah, I heard something like ‘vultures spinning above of what was left of him’.”

Sunghoon laughed at this, and then, he laughed some more, this time throwing his head back. He felt as if he had experienced all the possible emotions throughout these last minutes.

“Can’t believe Jake’s saying reached you.”

“Was it Jake’s?” you asked. “Because I heard it from Jongseong who heard from—”

“Don’t say his name,” he asked. “Not now.”

“Fine.”

His hands slid to your waist, bringing you impossibly closer and your skin tingled beneath his touch.

“Can I kiss you, teeny?” he whispered, the question coming little more than a whisper over your lips.

It was adorable the way he smiled there, boyish and warm eyes gleaming in the dim light of the approaching evening.

“Of course, you can kiss me, Hoon,” you said.

You placed your hands at the slope curve of his neck, palms fitting as perfectly as they did a few nights previous, and you brought him down to you.

But Sunghoon didn’t kiss you immediately, no — he took his precious time, hovering his lips just a single centimeter from yours as if he was checking if you would regret it and move away, and only when you didn’t, his mouth slide over yours, taking you slowly, softly, and different from how his fingers burrowed into your dress as he lifted you to the kitchen island, and sit you there.

You had no acknowledgment of how your first kiss with Sunghoon had been, but something within you knew, it had been exactly like this. There was no searching or learning, it was all about you already knowing each other. It was natural to push yourself into him — natural to part your knees and curl your legs around his hips, bringing him so close that you couldn’t tell where your heartbeat ended and his began.

His tongue brushed against your lips, a tiny demand that told you how much he had missed the taste of your lips, and when you opened your mouth for him, letting him press his tongue over yours, he groaned, his whole body pushing harder against you, and a gasp glided from your lips with the overwhelmingness of it. You moved back, but Sunghoon was still leaning in, eyes closed, and lips parted as he followed you through the few centimeters you created.

“Sorry,” he whispered, straightening himself. It had been just enough to encounter your gaze, yet his eyes stayed fixed on you as if he couldn’t imagine anything more fascinating than looking at you — as if all the gravity of the world was centered on you.

But then, there’s the sound of the engine on the driveway, the headlights of Kwangho’s sedan hitting the front window, and you barely had time to jump off the kitchen island, patting your dress in the hope there were no wrinkles before the door was opened and the rest of the Parks spilled in like a skimped part of the rain.

A gust of kind smiles and fond expressions.

You wondered if they could see the way you were blushing in the dim light — if they could see the way Sunghoon scrubbed a hand through his hair as he turned around and fought to catch his breath.

When the lights were turned on, Kwangho took a seat on the couch, followed by Yeji as both of them complained about the sudden change of weather.

It had been Jiyoung who approached you, giving both of you a peck on the cheek before she exclaimed how happy she was.

And then you knew that they could and they did.

┈┈┈┈

Sunghoon walked you home with the rain still pouring down, his hand on yours as you both jumped the bunches that separated your family’s property like you always had.

“I will give it five minutes until she calls your mother to tell,” he said.

“I would say they are already on a call,” you replied, reaching for the first stair, but Sunghoon stayed behind, allowing his hair to get soaked beneath the rain, curling at the ends, dripping water down his cheeks, over his lips.

He looked unfairly pretty, but to be honest, he always had.

“Is it crazy?” Sunghoon asked.

“What?”

“That I want to ask you on a date,” he said. “We have run this town from back and forth so many times. We moved to Seoul just to be together and I still want to take you on a date.”

“It’s not,” you whispered.

Sunghoon smiled at you, using your still connected hands to pull you beneath the rain with him — to pull you to him, and when he kissed you, he still tasted like sugar, all pastries and cupcakes sugary and home.

You held onto him, feeling the heat of his skin through his wet shirt, and this time, you were the one to lick into his mouth, pressing your tongues together and stealing a gasp from him.

You couldn’t help the way you surged up — onto your tiptoes, giving all your weight for him to catch and hold until you were both out of breath.

“Tomorrow then? Around this time?” he asked.

“Alright,” you said. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” he answered.

“Can I at least know what I should dress?”

“Formal,” he said, not even blinking and you furrowed your eyebrows at him. “I am serious.”

It had been a long time coming — you and Sunghoon.

It had been spoken within whispers when any of you were nearby, talked when none of you were there.

It had been so waited up, that your parents only fondly smiled as you appeared formally dressed on the following afternoon and said you had a date with Sunghoon.

He waited outside, the engine of his black Jeep already on as he leaned on the hood, watching as you slipped out of your front door and walked towards him, high heels carefully avoiding the stones and pebbles of your family’s driveway.

“You look beautiful,” he said, and you smiled at him, cheeks suddenly growing warm because he had slid his hands to your neck, thumbs pressing gently into your skin as he tipped your head back, and angled you so you had to look at him, taking in his gleaming eyes. You could tell Sunghoon was no longer making any effort to hold it back, his pure affection towards you taking all over his face.

The weather had gotten better since yesterday, twilight light settling over the county and lighting him in a tangerine glow that when you pulled yourself closer to him, you could feel the warmth of it beneath his suit.

“You don’t look bad yourself,” you said, and he laughed at it, a burst of sound whistling across the breeze as his dimples found their way to flirt into the soft skin of his cheeks.

Sunghoon didn’t tell you where he was taking you still, but there was a picnic basket on the back seat and he took the road out of town, driving through the same emerald mountains and greenish fields you passed on your way back to the town weeks and weeks before.

You reached for him as he passed the county’s welcoming sign, palm resting above the back of his hand on the gear stick, and he shifted beneath your touch, turning his palm to you and slowly interlacing your fingers.

And God — you were really doing it.

He dropped down a few gears just several minutes after, parking on a clifftop somewhere, a pretty little spot where you could take off your high heels and sink on a blanket on the warm grass as you watched the sun come down on the sea in shafts of pinky peach and tangerine.

“It’s so beautiful,” you whispered, but if anything he only smiled at you. He had unpacked the picnic basket content, spreading neatly prepared sandwiches and perfectly sliced fruits on the blanket. Even a mini champagne had been included and you smiled when Sunghoon spared it in two flutes, the bubbles sparkling in its glasses in the softest tone of rosé because you always preferred it sweet.

“Have you prepared all of this?” you asked.

“Aside from this,” he said, extending you one of the flutes. “Mom and Yeji prepared everything — when I told them I was taking you out on a date, they got genuinely committed to help.”

“I can imagine how,” you laughed, and he moved closer to you, his free hand reaching for your hair, tucking a stray lock behind your ear.

“I was a bit scared of your father, you know?” Sunghoon said. “That’s why I waited outside.”

“Why? He loves you.”

“I don’t know, he hated Jongseong.”

“I don’t think my father — or anyone there hated Jongseong as a person,” you said. “They hated what he represented.”

“They hated that he was not you, you know?” you explained. “They made that same welcoming lunch last summer, and you should have seen their faces when it was Jongseong passing through your front door holding my hand.”

“Everyone expected that it was me and you in the end, didn’t they?” he asked.

“They still do.”

“Good thing it is me and you in the end.”

“Is it?” you asked, but his lips were already reaching to yours. His hand spread on your cheek, fingers brushing and tangling through your hair as he brought you closer as if he believed his existence lay in the acknowledgment of you — on how your heartbeats resonated together, how naturally your hands fit on the slope curve of his neck, and the sensations your bare fingertips are capable of drawing on him as you slipped it beneath the shoulders of his suit and pushed it away. The piece fell with a soft thud on the grass, and it was the last thing you were aware of before his tongue slid against your bottom lip, softly yet demanding, and you obliged immediately, letting him press his tongue on yours in a way that made your whole body solely focused on him.

You couldn’t help but pull him closer, fingers burying on the thin material of his shirt as his arms came around you, lifting you over and on top of him. Sunghoon was already hardening beneath you, the solid length of himself pressing between your thighs, and the sensation alone was so pleasurable that a whine escaped through your throat before you couldn’t even notice it.

But he did, stopping at the sound of you, hands coming up to your waist, and pinching you just to make sure you were looking at him, but you were — you always had been. The sun had disappeared completely beyond the sea, and when he tilted his head back to encounter your gaze, the remaining luminosity turned his eyes lighter, a blend of honey and whisky as his lashes cast shadows over his flushed cheeks.

And God — he was so beautiful.

“Is it really ok?” he asked, and you suddenly felt like joking about it, saying that it was as fine as having your first time together on an open field could be.

It’s not that you were awkward about having sex. Actually, you have been more straightforward about it than many of your friends, but there’s something about having it with Sunghoon — something that made your chest ache with a feeling deeper than bare desire.

The moment seemed to take forever, it seemed to take no time at all. In the middle of your silence, Sunghoon licked at his mouth, his tongue brushing against his already swollen lips as if he was suddenly afraid that he had gone too far — too fast, but if there was something you were sure of was that you and Sunghoon had never gone too fast.

“Yes, of course it’s fine,” you said.

You weren’t sure if it was you or him who ended the gasp between your mouths. You knew you had put a small pressure on his shoulders and he was already on you again, nose pressed to your cheek, lips sliding easily over yours, and already too well practiced in the art of making you sigh.

It was dizzying to be kissed like this. Fast, open-mouthed, and noises swallowed by one another, but Sunghoon didn’t move his lips away from yours, not unless it was to press his mouth to your neck instead, his tongue swirling against your skin, sucking and kissing little bruises that said everything he suppressed throughout all those years.

You were his — you were his just as much he always had been yours.

“I missed your smell,” he blurted out, the words tickled against your body, and when you shivered you weren’t sure if it had been it or the way his hands slipped beneath the hem of your dress. “It took weeks for it to fade from all my bed cushions, months to fade from all my jackets — and still, there were days I caught myself searching for it.”

His palms followed the curve of your thighs, finding where the skirts of your dress had gathered in the crease of your hips, working through your skin, and peeling the piece up to your waist — to your shoulders, taking it off completely.

He barely gave it a moment before he reached for the clasps of your laced bra, opening it and releasing a tight exhale at the whole view of you.

“You made me go crazy every day throughout this past year, teeny, every day,” he confessed. “You still do.”

And it hadn’t been hard for you to believe it. Sunghoon was looking at you as if he wasn’t all that sure if it was real — if you were real, if you weren’t a dream, if you weren’t a mirage that would vanish at any moment and he would wake up for you ringing the bell of his family’s house again, but this time saying you were back with Jongseong instead.

His breath quicked at the thought, and you rubbed your nose against his, lingering so close that he could feel your next words.

“I am here,” you whispered, hands finding that one spot on his neck, and drawing him down to the blanket — to you, urging him to settle between your legs before your fingers moved through his clothes, finding and curling around the buttons of his shirt almost carelessly as you opened it. “I am here.”

Sunghoon’s muscles tensed as you grazed through his low abdomen, nails scratching his skin ever so slightly but when you hurled around the waist of his pants, he reached for you, carefully moving your hands away.

“Let me take care of you first,” he whispered. “You have no idea how much I waited for it, so I want to take my time with you.”

You looked at him, drawing out a retort despite the fluttering in your chest. But Sunghoon was already cutting you off with a kiss, his lips lazy against yours, and being a perfect match to the way his hand trailed through your body, the tip of his fingers blindly flirting with the edge of your panties, tracing along the laced trim before he moved further.

A gasp glided out of you as he swiped over your folds. It was a barely there touch, lazy brushes that didn’t even part you beneath the cotton of your panties, but it was enough to make you falter, your whole body shifting into him, and he smiled against your mouth, a way too proud grin because you were where he wanted you to be.

You were exactly where he wanted you to be.

“You are so pretty,” he said, pressing a little harder and feeling the cotton growing damp beneath the tip of his fingers. The fabric clung to you with his every move, and it was dirty in a way that would have made you burn in embarrassment if it had been with anyone else but Sunghoon.

But it was Sunghoon, and you were sure you could come just by the slip and slide of his finger over you, the soft circles he did on your clit, but you wanted more — you wanted Sunghoon all and whole.

It might have been that strange string between both of you, but at your thought, Sunghoon pulled your panties aside, pushing two fingers inside of you with no previous note. You immediately clenched down around him, back arching and making Sunghoon tilt his hips against your thigh, a curse escaping his lips.

You couldn’t comprehend how he knew you so well — how he knew exactly how to move, how to make his name escape from your lips a little bit more frantic, and how to make you grip on his shoulders for some relief. Yet he knew, and it was almost maddening. The knot in your stomach got tighter with no ado, each curl of his fingers drawing you closer to the loss instead, to the burning on your spine, but before you could reach it, Sunghoon stopped, slipping out of you all at once.

You whined when he moved to kneel between your legs, finishing to pull his shirt off with two practical moves.

“Lift your hips for me, teeny,” he said, and you were way beyond rational thoughts to retort, doing whatever he said and allowing his fingers to curl at the laced trim of your panties, hands almost adoring as he dragged your last clothing down over your legs.

“Hoon,” you whined. “Please, I need you.”

It might have been the words, the small plead that took Sunghoon anew because he would never refuse anything you asked him, or perhaps it was the way you said them, a bit choked up because you couldn’t control it anymore, but either way, he gave in, unbuckling his belt, and shoving his pants down just enough to free himself.

“So impatient,” he said, snorting, but you couldn’t mind the tease on it. He was already lifting your legs to his hips and pushing into you, his breath hitching as he whispered your name, pronouncing it with a deliberate slowness that you couldn’t help but moan at.

It was one of those perfect august evenings when the air buzzed with the sea scent and there was not even a single cloud in the sky — the ghost of the stars falling on his hair as he hovered back above you.

Sunghoon hissed, looking down between your bodies, eyes glazed as he watched how you fit together. And you sobbed when he clutched at the blankets, knuckles turning white as if he was struggling to not be impatience himself because you did understand. This was more than you had ever felt with anyone — no, this was more than you had ever felt about anything.

Your fingers spread at his cheeks, angling his forehead against yours, pressing kisses to his lips, cheeks, and jaw, mumbling how it was alright if he grew impatient, it was alright if it didn’t last tonight.

It was not like it would be the only time.

But he was careful with you still, sweet nothings brushing against your temples even as your body came tight around him, your hands grabbing at his hair, desperately trying to hide the fact you were shaking as he continued to move his hips into you.

Sunghoon came when you did, as defenseless and relinquished as he could be, wrapping his arms around, and holding you until both of you had driven out of your highs.

He collapsed by your side, and you wanted to say something, but as you looked at him, you had the strange comprehension that there was nothing he didn’t already know. He was your best friend, your lover, and half of your soul. He had caught all your secrets through your eyes — tasted them on your lips and body so you only reached for him.

Your hand caught his easily, tiny and softly, and he allowed you to curl your fingers around his, pulling him a little closer and burying your nose on the curve of his shoulder to take him in. Sunghoon smelled like he always did: his citrus perfume blended with the brine scent of the seashore and home — your home.

He lifted your hand, kissing the inside of your wrist, a sweet gesture that gave no hint of how he would brought the tip of your fingers to his mouth a second later, two digits being pressed to his tongue as he sucked it.

You blew out a shaky breath, stuttering out a little laugh that Sunghoon was fast to follow.

“Hoon,” you whispered. “Let’s go back to Uljin.”

“Alright.”

“I meant after the graduation,” you said. “I know the main goal shouldn’t be to go back to our parent’s house after graduation, but there are a lot of nice places in Uljin,”

“Daeyeol’s apartment complex seemed a bit expensive, but maybe we-”

“Is this your way of saying you want to stay with me, teeny?” Sunghoon asked, almost earning a gasp from you. But his laugh quickly made you stop, swallowing the sound of your surprise together with your embarrassment.

His grip tightened around you, bringing you so close — you didn’t only hear the next words, but you felt them rushing through your skin.

“Alright,” he repeated. “Let’s go back, Uljin is our place anyway. And being honest, I have been thinking about it for quite a while. People in the city are always so stressed. There is traffic everywhere, and everything smells like smoke and street food. I prefer it here — with you.”

Park Sunghoon was tapping against your window. A hastened and insistent gait that only ceased when you lifted your head off your pillows, eyes all soft and glazed because the clock on your desk was still marking three in the morning.

And was he on your roof?

You leaped off your bed, moving as quietly as you could to the window and shoving the glass open.

“What are you doing?” you asked. But he didn’t reply. Sunghoon seemed comfortable sitting there, an easy smile playing on his lips as he spread his palms through the roof titles and averted his gaze from you to the sky, observing it for a few moments before he lifted his right hand to it, grazing through the air as if his fingertips could reach for the stars.

“Can you come outside?” Sunghoon asked, and there was no way time had changed, but you felt like the seconds were turning into something more. You were twelve again, sneaking out for the first time on a night in july with him. You were eighteen again, barefoot on the cold sand of august and promising you would stay together endlessness.

“I don’t know,” you whispered. “Can I?”

“Please, I had to climb your rafters,” Sunghoon said, lowering his hand.

“You weren’t picking up your phone,” he explained. “And to call the fixed line at three am didn’t seem a nice step, although your parents love me.”

You had to control your will to roll your eyes at his words. It had been weeks since you had confessed to each other in his family’s kitchen, weeks since you officially launched it to your parents on the typical Sunday dinner, and it had been weeks since your father started calling him son.

“Please, I will catch you,” he said.

“Catch me?” you echoed, but he was already slipping through the roof titles, and jumping into your family’s back deck.

You breathe in, not giving yourself time to think before you carefully swing over your bedroom window and edged your way onto the roof. Outside, the night sky was colored in shades of lavender and mauve — a typical summer night in Uljin, but the breeze rushed with the wet scent of rain and warned autumn was slowly coming in.

“Can’t I use the back door like a normal person?”

“C’mon,” he said. “I will catch you.”

“Hoon,” you whined, quickly stealing a laugh from him.

“If you are too scared, you can use the back door,” he said, his voice laced in fondness. “But I promise you, it isn’t that high.”

“Will you catch me?”

“Didn’t I tell you so?” he said, extending his arms at you.

You jumped, and he caught your waist as you landed, pulling you against him. And all of sudden you could scent him — his citrus perfume blended with the brine scent of the seashore, and home.

“Caught you,” he whispered, voice winding into your hair. His breath was warm against your exposed skin and you knew it was supposed to be just a statement, but his words tingled through your body.

He stepped back, holding his hand out for you, fingers spread so you could fill the small gaps in between as he guided you toward the sea. Sunghoon stopped just before the water could reach your feet, but still, the breeze caught the cold sprinkles, brushing them against the exposed skin of your cheeks as you watched him take a box out of his pocket with his free hand and extend it to you.

“I thought we should renew our promise before going back to Seoul tomorrow,” he said.

You took the box suspiciously. It was far too small to be anything but a jewelry or mittens. But the confirmation only came when you had peeled the ribbon, and opened the box, allowing the moonlight to glitter above the necklace.

“Merry Christmas,” Sunghoon whispered.

“Hoon, it’s beautiful,” you replied. “But it’s not even September and we never exchanged gifts.”

“I know, but I got it for you back in December,” he said. “I came here on Christmas solely to give it to you, but you weren’t here and when I went back to the antique store to return it, the witch-looking grandma had disappeared together with the whole store.”

“Are you telling me you bought a cursed necklace as a present?” you asked and there it was. Sunghoon couldn’t control his smile from growing wider, too happy with how you always knew how to come up with his jokes.

“How did you know it was exactly what she called it?”

“You are so annoying.”

“Let me help you,” he said. You turned your back on him, allowing Sunghoon to brush your hair away. It was a brisk, soft, barely-there touch, but his fingertips created shivers through your skin and you shivered as he tied the necklace.

“What was the curse?” you asked, but he didn’t reply. He allowed your words to be carried together with the breeze long enough for you to decide to turn back to him. And when you did, Sunghoon brought his hands to your cheeks, holding you so you had no other option than to encounter his gaze.

His eyes were bright then, reflections of the stars and his appreciation towards you.

“You are stuck with me for eternity,” he said, and you laughed at him, the sound of it whistling through the air and brushing through his lips as he leaned in, resting his forehead against yours.

“It’s surely a curse,” you said. Your tone was merry, teasingly, but Park Sunghoon knew you like no one else in this world.

“I love you too,” he whispered.

There had been a time when Sunghoon thought that you and he were meant to be forever.

And to be fair — his assumption used to make sense. For years, you had been best friends, halves of a whole, and the downfall of your friendship certainty was something no one could have predicted.

But that’s the thing about life — one moment people think they know exactly where they are headed, and the next, everything changes. The wind drifts the other way, and they have to follow through.

Yet best friends always find their way back to each other — soulmates always end up together, and Park Sunghoon surely was it: your best friend and your soulmate.

#enhypen #enhypen imagines #enhypen scenarios #enhypen angst #enhypen fluff #enhypen smut #enhypen x reader #sunghoon smut #sunghoon fluff #enha #enha x reader #park sunghoon #sunghoon x reader #yumi’s bibliotheca!

1K notes · View notes

bensolosbluesaber · 1 year

Text

Nowhere to Run: Part 1 (Miguel O’Hara (Spider-Man 2099) x Spider-Woman!f!reader)

Pairings: Miguel O’Hara (Spider-Man 2099) x Spider-Woman!f!reader

Warnings: Hints of suicidal ideation on reader’s part, Fang stuff (Miguel uses fangs on reader), Chasing, Miguel is maybe ooc (I only saw the movie once and was mostly trying to keep from audibly moaning every time he was on-screen), Miguel and reader fight - he does some damage, Poison, Wounds, Not edited (but I will come back for some minor edits later on), Let me know if I missed anything

Summary: After the collapse of your universe, you resort to jumping around the multiverse to survive. Evolution gave you the powers needed to escape your universe. Technology of your own design stopped the glitches. But you haven’t found a way to escape the man relentlessly hunting you across every universe - Spider-Man 2099. ~2,500 words

Angst, hurt/comfort, eventual happy ending

A/N: This is for all of us who watched the Nueva York chase scene/train sequence and thought ‘when do I get to be Miles?’ This is dedicated to the Miguel O’Hara editors on TikTok - you guys are doing god’s work over there (especially with the captions). There shouldn’t be any spoilers in here beyond what was shown in trailers, but tread as carefully as you feel you need.

EDIT: Part 2

A persistent tingle deep in your mind vibrated madly the closer Spider-Man 2099 was to you. It was your Spidey-sense warning you of danger. For the first few months, you managed to stay several universe’s ahead of the terrifying Spider-Man variant, but after running for months with no one to help you, dodging the Spider-Person in each universe, and growing more exhausted with each portal you opened, 2099 was catching up.

He was catching up quite literally. The man was a few blocks behind you, pursuing you through the streets of a Queens in a universe you had never seen before. Buildings were built into trees. The entire city was a perfect symbiosis between nature and technology. It was beautiful, but there was no time to appreciate it. The time on your wrist ticked down. Seventy-six seconds. Seventy-five.

You shot out another web. It caught a window, and you took a sharp corner then another trying to lose the hunter.

Seventy seconds until you could safely open another portal. Well safe was a relative measure. Ideally you would allow a full day between jumps, but if you only had twelve hours, well then odds of survival rose to about fifty-fifty. Anything less than twelve hours and implosion was basically guaranteed.

Sixty-eight. You extended your legs for more momentum, rolled in the air, shot out two webs and used them to zip forward. Sixty-two. 2099 was fast, faster than you. You didn’t dare to look back to see if he was still in pursuit.

He protected the multiverse, kept it from collapsing in on itself, and you put the entire web of connection at risk just by being alive outside of your universe. You didn’t begrudge 2099 for what he thought he had to do. Maybe it was true that your presence could cause a universe to collapse, but you were careful not to stay for too long, not to interact with the Spider of that universe, not to fight any super-villains. If he could just understand that you were careful, that you didn’t want a multiversal collapse anymore than he did, maybe he would be reasonable.

Then again, maybe not. He was relentless, and from what little you had heard of Spider-Man 2099, he wasn’t one for talk and negotiation.

Fifty-five. You dived down, shot another web, swung again. You could never go back to your world’s boundless emptiness and not another living soul. That thought kept your exhausted muscles working. Fifty. The void was all that remained of your collapsed universe, a void in which you could not die but where no one else could live.

Forty-eight. Forty seven. This block was all future, half-built apartment buildings.

Thirty. You’d long ago lost your suit. All that remained was the mask that obscured your face. You must look ridiculous swinging around in stolen street-clothes: a baggy sweatshirt, leggings, dirty sneakers.

Twenty-one. Nearly there. Just a few-

A solid mass of muscle stole the breath from your lungs and flattened you into a cement wall. Claws shattered the cement beside your head into a fine gray powder. A hand closed around your throat, and you were crushed between the blue and red clad Spider-Man and the wall.

He was pure muscle. This was the closest you’d ever been to 2099, and his sheer size was terrifying. The red lines on his mask narrowed with his eyes as he studied you.

Eighteen. You pushed at his broad chest, struggling desperately to fight him off, but he was enhanced too and probably well-fed and rested - two things you were not.

“Stop fighting me,” 2099 growled into your ear, his voice a deep rumble that you felt in his chest.

“I won’t go back.” You choked out the words while you planted a knee against him and tried to kick him away. Your efforts were utterly useless. Quite literally, you could feel muscles rippling across his chest and arms as he held you against the wall while you trid to wriggle free.

In the corner of your eye, you watched the red numbers tick down. Six. Five. Was it even possible? It had to be.

2099 brought you forward then slammed you into the wall again. The impact made your head spin. The red lines of his mask doubled and tripled. He was trying to get something around your wrist.

“Hold still!”

Two.

With the last vestige of strength left in your body, you brought a hand to his face and shot a wad of webbing at his eyes. He growled and stopped his attempt to hand-cuff you - or whatever he was doing - to wipe the webbing away. For a second he was distracted. You imagined the glowing golden portal. Closed your eyes. Energy sparked in your body, coursed through your veins and arm. You shot a web at the wall behind you. It shimmered gold, dim gold, but still gold.

There was a moment where you thought it hadn't worked. Then the wall crumbled away and you felt wind whip you backward as a bright gold light filled the space. 2099 reached for you, claws extended. Four knife-like talons dug into your shoulder, ripping through the ratty sweater, digging into your skin, and tearing four long bloody stripes into your flesh as the portal drug you away..

You planted both feet on his stomach and kicked him off. A bright red web shot out from 2099’s hand to tangle in a tree. The last thing you saw was 2099 falling then catching himself before you tumbled away from him and toward a new universe.

It was raining on this new Earth. Actually, ‘raining’ was a bit of an understatement. It was absolutely pouring, and you were soaked before you hit the ground. Hard.

You hadn't been as focused as you needed to be, and the portal had opened in the sky and dropped you ten feet to the roof of a towering building in some universe’s version of New York. You couldn’t tear the mask from your face quick enough as you gasped desperately for air. 2099 was strong, and he’d smashed you half a foot into solid cement.

Your ribs ached. So did your head for that matter. But it was the dull ache spreading across your shoulder, down your arm, and seeping through your muscles like liquid fire that really made you afraid.

The gray of your stolen sweater was soaked in crimson blood. Carefully, you pushed the stained fabric over your shoulder.

Shit. Shit!

Beneath the torn fabric, your skin glowed a sickly, dare you say radioactive red - the same red as 2099’s suit. His talons must have been poisoned, and now that poison was making it’s way through your body, causing unknown damage and immense pain. There had to be a lab on this Earth. Right? If you could only get there, you were smart enough to whip up an antidote.

But as you stood, it was obvious that you wouldn’t be going anywhere. The poison was potent and fast-acting. Insanely, you wondered if it was really poison or if you should be calling it venom. It didn’t matter, because a moment after gaining your feet, your legs failed. You careened forward and nearly smashed your head again, only just catching yourself before slowly laying down in the rainwater.

City lights sparkled in the distance and reflected in the puddle forming around your head. Purple and blues and few bright yellows. Not a bad view if this was how you died. If only the poison weren’t so painful. You wanted to scream, but you lacked the strength.

A familiar tingle shot across your spine a second before the bright gold light of a portal obscured the reflection of the city lights. No! He was so close when you jumped universe’s. He must have tracked you; no wonder he hadn't bothered to chase you through the portal.

You scrambled backwards weakly, your feet struggling for purchase on the slick roof as the broad shouldered man appeared. He was wreathed in gold light. You couldn’t jump again, couldn’t even stand, could barely drag your body through the rain as Spider-Man 2099 strode closer.

“Nowhere to run,” he said. His voice was flat, like he took no pleasure in finally having you trapped.

“I won’t go back!” You tried to sound tough, strong, but your voice cracked over the words. “There’s nothing there. I can’t. I’d rather die than- than go back to nothing. 2099, don’t send me back”

Your fingers felt the ledge of the building and empty air beyond it. Poison. Fall. The clawed Spider-Man. A slow descent into madness trapped in the empty and endless remains of your home universe. A fall seemed fastest. But you didn’t want to. You were scared. You didn’t really want to die. Your shoulder throbbed and head filled with fog. The skin was glowing such a bright red you could see it in the corner of your eye.

In the brief moment you hesitated, he was on you. 2099’s red webs wrapped around your chest, and he yanked you forward and away from the ledge. You crumpled at his feet, and he just stared down at you through that mask. His blue and red mask swam in your vision as you stared up at him. Was it the rain that was so cold? Or was it the poison? No, venom. Poison? Venom?

2099’s face got bigger as he knelt beside you.

“What is this?” He pulled at the torn sweater, his gaze falling on the bright red mottling your skin.

Miguel O’Hara had never seen his claws damage anyone like this. There was no venom in them… unless in whatever universe you had come from something about them was venomous. It was possible. His fangs were venomous, that he did know.

Miguel pulled off his mask, the adrenaline of the chase fading while he watched you struggle for life. He’d meant to stop you, take you back to base, figure out where you’d come from… not kill you. He ran his tongue over one of the fangs protruding from his mouth.

The next thing you knew, 2099 was sitting next to you and pulling you onto his lap. It might have all been a dream, you couldn’t tell. The lights were so beautiful. Your head lolled to one side, your whole body limp as a ragdoll in his muscular arms. His face filled your vision and blocked out the pretty lights.

He had a strong jawline, dark curls, sharp cheekbones, a broad nose, and were those fangs? And were his eyes glowing red? Yes, two orbs as red as the suit and your poisoned skin shone down at you. He was pretty too. This had to be a dream. The monster chasing you couldn’t be so handsome. You blinked, eyes unfocused. Your Spidey-sense was going wild, but you couldn’t bring yourself to fight. 2099 was warm, and you could go to sleep right here.

He shifted your body again so your side was pressed against his chest. “2099,” you whispered weakly, pathetically.

“I’m sorry for this,” he whispered in that low growl. Now it was tinged with what almost sounded like real regret. “It’s the best I can think of.”

He guided your head to rest in the curve of his shoulder, face turned toward his neck. One hand brushed hair away from your neck, the other wrapped around your waist. His fingers were no longer clawed, and his movements were gentle as he held you close, muscles tensing underneath your body. The expression on his face was tender. It seemed impossible that this was the same man who had made you his prey for months.

“Don’t panic now,” he whispered as he lowered his lips to your neck. “Stay still.”

You were barely aware of what was happening. His lips were warm, then four sharp pricks stung the base of your neck just above your collarbone and the deep poisoned wounds. Panic tried to rise in your throat, but you weren’t conscious enough to really process that a man currently had his fangs sunk into your throat. He drew back and spit out bright red poison, then bit into you again. Then again. And again.

Miguel was exceptionally careful with you, holding you perfectly still and being sure to sink his fangs into the same spot each time so as not to mark your skin any more than necessary.

Slowly, the world began coming back into focus. You were exhausted, but the poison was being was successfully being leeched from your system by his fangs. Brown curls were the first thing you became aware of, then the almost unnatural warmth coming from the man beneath you, then the cold pricks on rain on your back, then... then that something was biting you. Before you could wrench your head back, a large hand cradled the back of your head. You desperately tried to struggle as you realized what this vampiric Spider-Man was doing to you. The muscles in his arm flexed as he held your head still.

2099 pulled his fangs from your neck, spit bright red then let go of your head. You sat up quickly. The movement made you dizzy.

“I know you’re scared.” Miguel could see the fear in your eyes. He nodded to your still glowing shoulder. It was dimmer now and hurt less, but it was still obvious poisoned. “But this is working. Let me help you.”

You were looking him right in the eyes, the glowing red eyes, and though you didn’t trust him, you knew instinctively he was right.

“Okay,” you breathed lowly.

You laid your head on his shoulder. Miguel could feel how your whole body trembled, but whether it was from fear or cold or something else entirely he couldn’t tell. When his lips touched your skin you whimpered. That was fear.

Miguel still had one arm around you, but he took your hand in his free one, interlaced your fingers, and squeezed once. Then he sunk his fangs into your neck. It stung a bit but didn’t really hurt. Now that your were conscious, you could feel the poison being drawn toward the spot where his mouth connected to your skin. That didn’t really hurt either. It was like stretching a sore muscle - a satisfying pain that ultimately brought relief.

2099 drew back to spit out his poison. When was the last time you’d touched someone like this? A touch that was more than an accidental brush in the street - or a purposeful one so you could steal someone’s wallet. 2099 was your enemy, your hunter. He was dangerous. But he was saving your life and holding you so tenderly it made your chest ache.

“Once more,” he promised.

His fangs brushed over your skin for the last time. You pulled your hand from his and splayed your fingers across his chest. 2099 brought his now free hand to your poisoned shoulder and pushed the ripped fabric apart.

Miguel watched the last of the poison be pulled from your veins as it filled his mouth. He spit it out then turned back to study how your body was pressed against him.

“Can you stand?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” you answered honestly. Then panic hit and you jerked back, still sitting on his lap but with your face now safely away from his fangs. “You- you’re going to send me back. 2099, please don’t.”

“Why do you keep calling me that? My name is Miguel.”

Miguel. 2099 had a name. Of course he did, but hearing it made him seem so human. And his face was handsome. That was no venom or poison induced hallucination. The man was beautiful.

“And no. Not yet.”

“My universe collapsed. There’s nothing for me to go back to.”

His red eyes softened as they met yours.

“We won’t send you back to an empty universe,” he paused, and one side of his lips twitched up. “You ran because you thought I’d send you back to a void? I see I have quite the reputation.”

Miguel lifted you to your feet easily. He set you on your feet and tapped the watch-like contraption on his wrist. You leaned against his muscled chest for stability. Even without his poison, you were still wounded and tired and malnourished. A portal spiraled out in front of you both.

“You promise not to send me back there?” You looked up at Miguel. He squinted at the portal’s bright light and tugged the mask back over his face.

“Promise.”

To be continued...

Part 2

A/N: Part 2 will be a little time jump, and we’ll actually see Miguel and reader get into a relationship!

My Masterlist

Taglist (Want to be added? Click here.) -

@copingchaos @n1ght5h4d3-24 @paintmekala @chaoticevilbakugo @janebby @chaoticevilbakugo @weirdo125 @roseqzpd @bitchyglitterfox @m0nster-fvcker @romanarose

Won’t Tag: @janebby @marvelescvpe

If you want taken off, just let me know! I took a guess on who might be interested.

4K notes · View notes

mediumgayitalian · 2 months

Text

“Piper?”

“Here.”

“Damien?”

“Here.”

“Clovis?”

No answer. Nico reaches over and pokes him, hard, and the son of Hypnos startles awake long enough to manage a garbled, “Present!” before nodding off again. At Chiron’s nodded permission, Connor procures an airhorn from what appears to be thin air, grins, and blares it right next to Clovis’ face. He shrieks, flailing off the chair, and would have slammed his face in the ground if Nico hadn’t caught him by the back of the shirt.

“Thanks, man,” he says, yawning.

Nico hauls him back upright, patting him on the shoulder. “No problem. I’m gonna let you fall next time.”

Clovis eyes him warily, shifting at Nico’s too-wide, sharklike grin.

“Noted,” he mutters, sitting straight to try and stay awake. “Jerk.”

Nico pats him on the shoulder again. “There, there.”

Chiron continues with the attendance.

“Butch?”

“Here.”

“Miranda?”

“Yep.”

“And…” Chiron sighs, peering through his reading glasses. “Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…” He glances down at his clipboard, slowly tapping his pen on the edge of it. “Where is Will?”

A groan ripples through the gathered campers.

“Just start without him!” someone shouts, sinking into their chair.

“He always takes forever!” another person agrees.

“Almost like he’s busy running the infirmary that keeps us all alive,” Lou Ellen says drily, but her one vote of confidence is drowned out by several dozen other voices, all complaining.

Before Chiron has to deal with too much of a coup d’état, the rec room door creaks open, and Will comes strolling in after it, ignoring the heaps of boos and launched ping-pong balls at his tardiness. The beam of sunlight from the one dusty window seems, suddenly, to become a great deal stronger, highlighting the blonde of Will’s hair and strengthening the gleam of his easy grin.

“Perforated artery,” he explains cheerfully, settling down in the one empty chair. “Rogue Ares cabin mine went off. Had to do emergency surgery.”

No sooner are the words out of his mouth does he kick off his flip-flops, curl up in the rickety wooden chair, place his head on the nearest shoulder — Pollux, this time, who rolls his eyes affectionately and shifts to be more comfortable — and immediately starts snoring.

“Well,” says Chiron after a moment. “Let’s begin.”

“Wait,” Clovis complains, “how come he gets to sleep?”

Instead of answering, because there is no delicate way to say because he’s my favourite and I am a giant hypocrite, the centaur moves on. He gracefully avoids the various mutterings and calls for mutiny, instead running through the usual cabin check-ins at the speed of light to delve into the more interesting — and therefore distracting — things, such as Personal Grievances. This portion of monthly head counsellor meetings is Nico’s favourite, because he gets to sit back, be silent, and watch a bunch of teenagers yell at each other for his own personal amusement. On especially great days, he communicates with Connor through a series of complicated hand gestures to coordinate betting pools. Today, he is up seventy-two dollars. (Did he throw the pool by betting against himself and then inventing a fight with Chiara? Yeah. Did he cut her a deal for halfsies beforehand, making this technically fraud on two counts? Yeah. Can anyone prove it? Absolutely not. Suck on that, Stoll. You wanna be beat at your own game any day of the week? Nico’ll beat you at your own game any day of the week.)

As he’s accepting three dollars from a huffy Nysa (obviously the physical altercation count was going to reach six, c’mon, doesn’t she pay attention to these things), a hoof stamping the ground makes Nico jump.

“Boys,” Chiron says tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose, “that’s quite enough.”

Both campers immediately burst into louder arguments, continuing to flail and smack at each other as their voices get more and more raised and illegible.

“Boys!” Chiron stamps his hoof again. This time, they fall silent, staring at the old centaur with flushed, guilty faces. “Sherman, get Malcom out of that headlock. Malcolm, we are not building a pig pen in the dining pavilion so the Ares cabin can ‘eat in an environment more suited to their mannerisms’.” He pauses, nodding in acknowledgement. “As funny as that was, it was entirely inappropriate to say. Apologise at once.”

“My throat is too bruised to do so,” Malcom grumbles.

“My throat is too bruised to do so,” Sherman repeats, mockingly. “Gods, it’s like you’re asking for me to jump you.” At the immediate catcalls and jeers that follow, he reddens, hastily shouting, “Like mug! Jump like mug him, guys, like beat him up! Shut up! Shut up, or I swear I’ll —”

“Sit down, boys,” Chiron says, banging his hoof again. “For Hera’s sake. It’s like you want to embarrass yourselves further.”

Nico snickers with the rest of the counsellors as Sherman and Malcolm return to their seats. In their desperate attempt to separate from each other to assure their status as Heterosexual, Guys, Please, they manage to bump into each other, losing their balance and collapsing on a heap on the floor, more tangled than before. Predictably, this makes the flailing worse, which is unfortunate for them and their misery but a source of great entertainment for everyone else. Among the hooting and hollering and camera flashes, Chiron sighs, putting his head in his hands and muttering something about teenagers and being too old for this shit. Or something.

“If everyone’s quite done,” he says finally, ignoring Connor’s quip about how he could watch a few more minutes, actually, “I would love for this meeting to end. I have to do something that doesn’t involve teenagers for several hours. All of you exhaust me.”

“Except Will,” Sherman says petulantly, scowling at the still-sleeping medic. Pollux, who by close proximity has become endeared to the human disaster (Nico knows the feeling; he’s still convinced Will has weird powers that mess with one’s oxytocin levels by virtue of smiling as there is no way that someone so annoying can be so simultaneously endearing), glares somewhat protectively.

“Sh,” he hisses, at the same time Chiron says, “If the rest of you spent less time trying to kill each other and more time trying to fix the consequences of said attempted murder, I would be more lenient.”

Lou Ellen speaks up. “Also, Will has that whole cute, can’t-stay-mad-at-me thing.”

Various campers nod and mutter in agreement.

(Nico knew he wasn’t the only one.)

Nyssa clears her throat. “If we’re ready to return back to the actual meeting, I have a point of discussion.”

Chiron nods, gesturing for her to continue.

“The vans are breaking down,” she says bluntly. “Again. Because they’re, you know, older than everyone in the room.” She glances at Nico, frowning. “Well, except for him.”

Nico sniffs haughtily. “Youngin’s, these days,” he says, shaking his head disdainfully. “No respect for their elders.”

Chiron raises a bemused eyebrow. “…Indeed. Nyssa?”

“I need parts again. Preferably from that place in Virginia? They don’t ask questions and price fairly. That would be best. Only I need the van to go get the parts, so. You can see the conundrum I’m in.”

“Easy fix with the chariot,” Chiron decides. “Can someone wake Will?”

“Gladly.”

“Without the airhorn, Connor.”

“Aw. I’m not doing it, then.”

“How tragic. Pollux?”

Gently, the son of Dionysus taps Will’s cheek, shaking him until he blinks awake.

“I was totally paying attention and I think we should go with the second option,” he says, yawning.

“Not asking you to settle a debate, but nice try,” Pollux says.

“Well, shit. That one usually works.” He flicks still-tired eyes around the room, smiling when his gaze rests on Nico. Nico rolls his eyes, willing down the heat to his cheeks. Judging by the teasing edge Will’s grin takes, it does not work. “Whattaya need, then?

“The chariot,” Nyssa says. “Vans are breaking down again. I need a part from a shop in Roanoke.”

Will straightens. “Like, now?”

“In the next day or so, yeah.”

“There’s a strawberry delivery on Saturday,” Miranda pipes up. “So sooner rather than later.”

Will nods. “Yeah, that works. Hell, I can probably be back by —” he checks his watch — “late tonight, honestly. Just gimme the part number and —”

“I kind of meant that I could go,” Nyssa interrupts, looking at him strangely. “I know what the part looks like. I just need to borrow the chariot.”

Will presses his clasped hands to his face, inhaling deeply.

“I would absolutely love to lend you the chariot blessed by my father who has gone totally silent,” he begins, in a tone that makes Nico think that he would not, actually, absolutely love to lend out the chariot blessed by his father who has gone totally silent, “only that the last time I lent someone this super important chariot it came back in pieces.”

“I remember.” Nyssa levels him with a look. “I fixed it.”

“Exactly! So you appreciate how much I would like it to not be broken. In fact —”

“Alright,” Chiron interrupts, holding up a hand. “You’ve made your point, Will, the errand is yours. Choose a buddy to lower the chances of you dying and check in before you leave.”

Predictably, this choice is not well-recieved. Because why would things be easy?

“Totally not fair,” Sherman protests, the loudest of all complainers. “Will’s no less likely to break it just because his cabin thinks they own it —”

“Finish that thought and I will curse you in twelve different ways for the next eight months, Sherman.”

The Ares counsellor snaps his mouth shut, sensing the new, hardened edge in Will’s voice. “Noted.”

“He’s got a point, though,” Damien hedges. At Will’s glare — boy, is that chariot a sensitive topic, Nico is noticing — he holds his hands up, shrugging his shoulders. “We draw straws for small errand-quests, Will, you know that. It’s not fair that you just get to call dibs.”

Will takes a long, slow breath, fingers pressed to his temples. When he looks back up, his expression is flatter than the entirety of the Midwest, jaw set and eyebrow raised. He narrows his eyes, contemplating, then clearly comes to a decision, nodding to himself. Everyone watches with bated breath as he climbs up to stand on his chair, folds his hands together, clears his throat, and says, voice carefully controlled, “Who can guess how many surgeries I’ve done in the last week?”

For a long moment it’s so silent that Nico can hear every rustled shirt as people fidget, every aborted cough and uncomfortable swallow. Will’s eyes are piercing, and he takes the time to stare at every individual counsellor until they meet his eyes, squirming, and look immediately away.

Nico’s impressed. Sometimes he forgets how godsdamn rigid Will’s backbone is.

Finally, someone offers a guess.

“One?”

“Try four,” Will corrects, smile more like a bare of teeth. “I have not had a circadian rhythm since I was thirteen years old. I sleep when I can. And yet, somehow, you clumsy fucks manage to near kill yourself at the exact moment my subconscious even considers approaching REM sleep, every single time, and then I get to spend my next several hours piecing your sorry ass back together by hand, since hymns barely work right now. If I have to see another surgical pin I am going to stab it through someone’s eye. Am I making a point?”

No one answers.

“‘Cause I can make it clearer,” Will drawls.

“No need,” Chiron says hastily. “The quest remains yours, so long as there are no further objections.”

Wisely, no one speaks up.

“Perfect. Nyssa, if you’ll stay behind with me to iron out some details, everyone else — dismissed.”

The tense air immediately evaporates as people practically spring out of their seats, sprinting for the door. Nico is among the last to leave, having to stay and stop several fleeing demigods to collect his wares. On his way out, a heavy arm slings over his shoulders, and he’s suddenly enveloped by the intoxicating scent of lavender body wash and pure sunshine.

“Get off me, Solace,” he complains immediately, coming up to wrap his hand around Will’s forearm in the guise of shoving him off. Will is entirely unfazed, holding him tighter.

“But I have a proposal.”

“Take it elsewhere.” He ducks out of Will’s hold and sweeps his legs out from under him, sending him sprawling with an oof. Unfortunately, he doesn’t look any less sunny and smiley from the ground, somehow making it work for him, actually. He settles against the soft grass, sighing, hair fanning out like a golden halo. He pats the spot next to him, eyes fluttering shut as he basks in the late morning sun, and Nico swallows roughly, joining him.

“You wanna come with me to Roanoke?”

“Yes,” Nico says automatically. Will grins, and he flushes. “I mean, I guess if I have to. Loser.”

“Ever so grateful, Neeks.”

“You should be.”

He keeps his voice prim and superior, attempting to uphold his image, and since he is delusional he convinces himself he’s successful. Will, though, is entirely undeterred, lazy smile still on his face and arms stretched above his head, the picture of unbothered. A sliver of skin shows where the hem of his shirt rises and Nico ignores it. He doesn’t even glance at it, or the glint of Will’s belly-button piercing, at all. Nor is he aware of Will’s shorts riding up, or the curve of his calves as he crosses his legs. All of these things go unnoticed. Obviously.

“I have a proposal for you, if you’re done checking me out.”

Nico shoves his flaming face in his knees. “Did you know that in all the corners of the Earth I have been to, I’ve only encountered three things uglier than you?”

Will’s grin only gets wider. His eyes, even, start to get squinty as the force of his smile squishes his cheeks. Entirely unsubtly, because Will is the least subtle person alive, he reaches out and sends a wave of calming energy into Nico’s body, slowing his rapid heart rate.

“…Right.”

“Three things, Solace.”

“Of course, of course.” He removes his hand, graciously allowing Nico the space to breathe and remind his lungs that their job is not voluntary. “I’ll come pick you up in a half hour? Wear a jacket.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Nico pauses. “Yes.”

“Stellar.”

“God, you say such nerdy things unironically. How do you have friends?”

“I dunno.” He gets to his feet, brushing the dirt and grass from his shorts. “You tell me.” He leans down and presses a smacking kiss to Nico’s hair. Nico presses his fingers into his eyeballs until they hurt, screaming silently into his palms.

He waits until the smacking sounds of Will’s stupid flip-flops retreat before braving the world outside his little ball of misery, squinting at his retreating form.

“I think I should get a lobotomy,” he says out loud to himself, because, realistically, if his braincells are already spilling out of his ears like loose quarters every time Solace so much as smiles at him then there’s not much to lose, is there? and stomps off to his own cabin.

Out of spite, he chooses the New York Giants jacket he got from Percy, just because he knows Will hates it.

That’ll show him who’s bossing who around.

Totally.

———

510 notes · View notes

woahjo · 3 months

Text

The People We Became (Bakugou x Reader)

masterlist | ao3

Pairing: Bakugou x Reader

Summary: Zombie Apocalypse Au.

The world fell apart almost a year ago and you refused to go with it. Left alone and to your own devices in a world full of monsters, where the dead come back to life, you believe that maybe surviving isn't living.

When Katsuki finds you alone in the woods and on the precipice of collapsing from exhaustion, he decides to bring you back to the house his group calls home. Against your better judgement and hesitancy to become attached, you decide to stay. In this world, everyone has lost someone. No soul is spared the violence, and you start sleeping with Bakugou Katsuki to dull the ache. Somehow, peace finds you anyway, but not without sacrifice.

Chapter Content Warnings: fem!reader, gender neutral pronouns, strangers to lovers, violence typical of zombies, blood, gore, romance, slow-ish burn (for the emotional stuff), angst, kissin', questions of identity, loss, grief, graphic depictions of death and/or violence, mentions and descriptions of starvation/exhaustion typical of an apocalypse setting, very slight implications of possible sexual violence typical of an apocalypse setting, derealization, depersonalization, weapons (guns, blades, and traps), loss of identity

All content warnings can be found on ao3 with the rest of the series.

Word Count: 14.4k — 53k total on ao3

A/N: it's finally done... i'm sweating. i screamed. i cried. i bled. you know the drill. i am posting this a little differently than my other fics and series. only the first chapter will be posted here on tumblr (this post), with the rest of it broken up into chapters and posted on ao3.. purely because it was originally meant as a one shot and i don't like posting chapters on tumblr. it's not built for that and im tired. anyway, im nervous this is my new baby and im pretty sure my soul is somewhere in here. if u read this, pls come tell me what you think.. it fuels me. enjoy, cry, sweat, or whatever else you do when you read. as always, thank you and i love you.

Two hundred and seventy six. It’s been two hundred and seventy six days since the world completely went to shit. You don’t really count the initial outbreak. The initial outbreak was relatively contained once people found out about it. You quarantined. You stayed inside. All it really took were a handful of idiots. Someone selfish. Someone who panicked and ran instead of facing the world honorably, and that was it. It only took days to lose almost every semblance of a normal life and a week to lose everything else.

The light of your fire is dim, embers burning low as you sit in a foldable chair beside it. The chair is from a friend, someone you’re not with anymore and who went somewhere you couldn’t follow, and you've got a metal spatula in your hand. You're not sure why you grabbed it when you fled, but panic does weird things to the mind. You absentmindedly wonder why you’ve brought it along with you all this time. There’s no logical reason for you to tote the thing around. A friend had told you how strange it was that you thought to toss it into your bag and continue carrying it. This, along with a few other oddities, are all you managed to take from your house when the world fell to ruin. Everything else are things scavenged along the way or from people you'd met, joined, and lost.

Maybe it’s because the spatula is somewhat normal, like somehow when you cook the game on your makeshift tin over your shitty fire, you can pretend you’re in your kitchen. A smash burger sounds good right now, with grilled onions on a brioche bun like the ones from the place by your apartment.

The night is near silent and trees creak and crack like the hulls of great ships under heavy pressure, but the birds don't sing and nothing in the crowded wood you're taking shelter in makes a sound. Well, except for you and the gentle crackle of your fire.

It’s easy to miss the noise that used to irritate you when the world goes quiet. You used to hate the sounds and lights of passing trucks when they’d cross on the street below your apartment window. Now, you’d do anything for the familiar comfort. The world is so dark and quiet, like it’s holding its breath and waiting for this to be over. The silence is almost too much, so loud that it hurts your ears. You huddle closer to the fire, craving its quiet sound. Focusing on it lessens the anxiety of the other noises. The ones you don’t want to hear.

Your head is on a swivel. It has been for months. Ever since the outbreak, ever since the dead rose and began consuming and infecting the living, you've kept watch. A paranoid, never ending cycle that you suppose—if left on your own—will burn itself out. You swallow thick and return your attention to the fire, watching the tree line just in front of you for any hint of movement or monsters.

A branch cracks just behind you. A swift sound, followed by rapid footsteps. You stand, quickly turning your head, only to see a figure a few feet away from you. They move quickly and the dancing light of the fire obscures their features from view. Their eyes, most importantly. You can always tell if someone is dead or alive based on their eyes and the sounds that their joints make. In this light, should this stranger have that milky white film over them, you wouldn't be able to tell.

You make a small noise, something between a whimper and a shout, as the person comes to a stop in front of you and holds a flashlight directly into your face. You squint, panic in your veins as your eyes adjust as best they can to the sudden assault. It takes you a moment to realize that there is a gun pointed directly at your forehead. The living. This person is alive. You're not sure yet if encountering one of the dead would have been worse.

"Shut up and drop your weapon," he says in a hurried voice. It's aggressive and threatening. It comes from deep in his chest, like somehow fear has gripped and mutilated it into something violent.

You raise your shaky hands to your head quickly at the order, screwing your eyes shut in the beam of the flashlight.

"It's not a weapon!" you shout, voice cracking. "It's a spatula. It's a spatula."

The words are rushed and heavy, fear seizing your chest as you look down the barrel of the gun. The flashlight turns off, sending you back into the dark. Your eyes fight to adjust, catching the firelight that glints off of the barrel, and you begin to makeout the man’s features. He's big, blonde under the grime, you think. A man, not the best thing to encounter alone at night in times like these.

You see him hesitate for a moment, eyes darting between you and the silver kitchen item in your hand. You drop it quickly, hoping to appeal to his humanity.

"Do you have a weapon on you?" he questions, voice a little less urgent.

You shake your head in response and then shakily look beside the chair, choking out the word “ground”. There's a knife there and a pistol with no bullets. You're a poor shot and you had run out of ammo the previous week. He glances at it, the gun still raised at you, and sidesteps to grab the two items. When he does, he cautiously lowers the weapon and you start to lower your trembling hands.

Then, as if struck by some realization, the man stomps towards the fire and you jump as he does.

"The fuck are you doing lighting a fire this late?" he says angrily, opening the clip of your pistol. "And with no fucking bullets. Those things may be dead, but they can still fuckin' see. That's a good way to get yourself killed."

He stomps out the fire as he talks, urgently stamping out what's left of the low-burning logs.

"I didn't think there were many in the area," you justify, furrowing your eyebrows as you step away from him.

"And that's a risk you want to take?" he says indignantly. You wonder briefly what business he has worrying about you.

"What do you want?" you snap, "My food? Weapons? Life? What is it?"

The man scoffs, "Jesus, none of that. I don’t want your shit."

You narrow your eyes and take a step back. One thing this world has done is remove trust from every chance encounter, and that was already hard enough when the place was sane.

"Not all people who camp out in the woods are good," he says. "But I sure as shit didn't expect to find someone like you alone lighting a damn fire. Stupid."

"There were others," you say indignantly, like somehow that makes it better. "Force of habit, I guess."

The man pauses for a moment as understanding passes between the two of you. It's a relatable feeling. Everyone has lost someone now.

"Got a name?" he asks.

You hesitate in giving it to him and the pause causes him to roll his eyes. “You want me to call you Idiot-with-no-bullets instead?”

You give him your name and the man nods as if he likes the sound of it, turning it over in his head before inhaling.

"I'm Katsuki," he furrows his eyebrows. "You're alone?"

You nod, swallowing down the grief that pushes at your throat.

"Wasn't always," you respond, "but yeah. Now, I am."

He nods his understanding.

"Come with me."

"Where?" you say instinctively, a defensive edge to your voice. Katsuki looks at you as if you’re stupid, or maybe it's pity, like you're a wounded animal. Probably both.

"Where the fuck do you think?" he retorts. "We've got a camp a little ways from here. I saw your fire from the watch post we have stationed."

You look at him like he's a little crazy for even thinking to bring you. Kindness, especially the selfless type, is so rare now and you find it difficult to believe that he’s willing to take you there at no cost.

He scoffs and rolls his head over his shoulder. "Look, we've got men and women," then he pauses. "Used to have children. We're not gonna hurt you. World's gone to shit, do you really wanna keep at it alone?"

He's probably right. You've been alone for weeks now, exhausted for longer, and though your common sense tells you not to go off with a strange man in this kind of world, the promise of rest is far too tempting. You nod and glance back to your camp. A measly collection of supplies haphazardly put together. You suppose that it doesn’t look so promising.

"We'll come back for it when it's light," he says. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather not spend longer in these dark ass woods than I have to."

"Okay," you say. The presence of another person both sets you on edge and makes you feel the press of fatigue even more. A gun's barrel on your nose followed by the promise of safety and you're going with him? You must be stupider than a horror movie protagonist. "Do you take in a lot of strays?"

Katsuki looks over his shoulder and you think you see him smile a little at the phrase.

"If that's what you want to call it," he says begrudgingly. Then, with a softer tone of voice, barely noticeable with the quiet whisper you both have been speaking at. "I'm sure the others won't mind one more."

You nod a little and follow him through the wood, stepping over obstacles. Your eyes have adjusted to the dark, but you feel unsteady on your feet. Everything you’ve ever learned about this world tells you that maybe you shouldn’t go with him. What if they’re dangerous? It’s easy to lie about women and children, about a community that doesn’t exist. Or worse, it’s easy to fool yourself that where you are is good, but you don’t know yet if he’s the type to delude himself. He doesn’t seem it.

The two of you walk for what feels like forever, even if it is only a little over half a mile. Your feet have been aching for days and every step you take feels like a blade into the heel. Katsuki seems steady, his gun secured at his hip and a large knife in his dominant hand. He doesn’t have the flashlight out, but he seems sure-footed and takes every step in stride, as if he’s too heavy to be swayed by any missed step.

As you move, you can barely make out his back in the white tank top he wears. You use it as a landmark, following the glowing white as it catches the light from the moon. Like chasing a ghost through the trees.

Then, the wood eases up. The trees grow sparse and the suffocating humidity of the forest eases into a more breathable, open-air breeze. Katsuki steps out into a clearing. It’s relatively small, for how large the world is, but it’s some of the most open space you’ve seen in a while. The feeling of stepping out into the tall grass, where you’re both visible to any wandering thing, sends a rush of fear through you.

By the edge of the clearing, there’s a small house with a short steeple. It almost looks like a Christian church, but you get the sense that it’s likely a barn. That must be the watchtower and you wonder just how good the view of the forest is from up there if Katsuki managed to see the light of your fire. How many other people had seen your fires over the weeks and not made it out to confront you? How close had you come before to safety or annihilation?

"Hey!" a girl's voice calls. "He's back!"

In the near distance, you can see a large and dimly lit house. It looks a little worn down, but soft and hardly noticeable light emanates from it in a way that makes it seem inviting.You can’t make out its exact silhouette and night blurs just how broken-down it is, but you can tell that people live there in the same way you can tell when someone has just left a room.

Someone runs across the field to you both. It looks like a man and a woman, maybe around Katsuki's age. They move quickly through the tall grass and for a moment, the urgency that they move with frightens you. You worry that your presence will ignite some protective sort of panic. You linger back, letting Katsuki grow a little farther from you as they call out to him.

“Yeah, yeah," he half-shouts, no longer seeming to care about keeping quiet. Guess that's what happens when there's a group. "I found the fire I mentioned."

The two come to a stop in front of him, resting their hands on their hips as they catch the breath they lost.

"We started to get a little worried," says the girl. She's pretty, with big eyes and curly hair that looks like it probably used to be dyed. "You've been gone for a while."

"Well, I'm back," he says.

"And you brought a friend," the other man says, sounding shocked. His tone is noticeably kind. The boisterous type of kind and when he smiles, you can see that he has sharp canines. His hair is straight, sticking out in different directions, and tinged with red in this light.

"More like an acquaintance," Katsuki says. “I found them in the woods with a fire and an empty clip. Felt like their blood would be on my hands if I didn’t bring them back.” The red-haired man gives him a telling look and Katsuki scoffs in response and turns to the girl. "Get them settled, Mina, will you?" The girl called Mina nods and Katsuki takes off toward the house without another word.

"You're lucky," she says, pausing when you flinch as she steps closer. "You're gettin' the last solo room in the place. Kirishima, is it set up?"

Kirishima shrugs his shoulders. "You'd have to ask Izuku. He'd know all about that, but I can go check."

Mina shakes her head and turns her attention to you, giving you a quick once over with her eyebrows pulled together.

"You must be tired.”

When you nod, she gives you an empathetic smile and motions for you to come with her. "We'll fix that. You hungry?"

"What do you think?" you manage, saliva pooling in your mouth. "Do you have food?"

"Plenty," she smiles. "not quite enough for leftovers just yet though, don’t tell anyone."

You smile awkwardly. Who on earth would you tell?

"Sounds like a good deal," you say.

You follow Mina up to the house. Around it, there are a few parked cars. They look like they could pull out at any moment, and through the dust covered windows, you can just make out supplies in the back seats as you pass. In the distance, you can see the fuzzy silhouette of the barn you’d assumed was a watchtower in the dark of the field and you figure that maybe it used to be a place to keep livestock.

Mina doesn't say much to you as you pass through the field, and when you walk into the door, the first thing you notice is a large group of people seated at a dining table. They all look up at you when you enter and it's with a bit of shock that you register their faces as healthy. Well, healthier. These people live well. Something stirs in your chest, both anxiety and excitement at the thought of possibly having found somewhere safe. They blink at you for a moment, exchanging looks that all end up landing on Katsuki.

"This is the group. Well, most of us," Mina says pleasantly and with a light huff. "That's Izuku, Denki, Ochako, Sero, and you already know the handsome guy on the end there. Kiri's probably checking to see if the room is half decent.." They all greet you with a glad murmur. "Group, this is..."

She looks at you expectantly. When you tell them your name, you can't help but look at Katsuki who already knows it. He raises his eyebrows unconsciously and turns his attention to the glass in front of him.

There’s an awkward pause as you stand in the doorway, suddenly conscious of just how dirty you must look. Remnants of an older world, you suppose. No one really worries about things like that anymore.

“Uhm…” you search for something to say, but your people skills seem to have left you.

“You’re okay,” Mina says lightly. “Plenty of time to get to know you when you’ve rested and had something to eat.”

Mina sits you down at a chair that she pulls in from the other room. It doesn't match the other ones in the dining room, but you suppose no one is really thinking of the decor in their house anymore. It's only now that you realize the house has electricity.

"You have power?" you say incredulously, looking at the center light in the dining room on its low setting.

"Mhm," Mina hums as she sits down next to you and spoons a helping of vegetables onto your plate. "It's got a generator. We got lucky finding this place. I don't think many of us would be alive if we hadn't."

Those listening in the group nod their affirmation.

"It draws from well water too," she adds. "With the right care, the place practically runs on its own. Hard work but what isn't nowadays?"

“Like you do any of the heavy lifting," Sero scoffs across from her.

"That's not fair," Katsuki adds with a slick smirk, "you know damn well none of our vegetables would be so well socialized if she didn't use them like a damn diary all day."

The group laughs a little and Mina rolls her eyes and sits back in the chair. You avoid looking at anyone, shoveling the food into your mouth. You’re salivating an almost embarrassing amount, struggling to eat at a normal pace. There’s something about food cooked inside, about the way food tastes when you can smell it wafting in from the kitchen.

"Don't worry," she turns to you, as if you’re at all concerned with the implication that she doesn’t do much work, "they know we’d hardly have vegetables at all if it weren't my job to tend them. I used to garden quite a bit before all of this."

Sero tosses her a sideways glance and you get the sense that maybe it isn’t just her doing it.

"Mina does a lot of the garden stuff," Ochako pitches in, her voice hesitant. "We all sort of just do what we can."

You can’t really keep up with the conversation and instead just blink at her for a moment before turning back to your food. Maybe that’s rude, but you don’t have the energy to consider it. There’s food in front of you. Food that doesn’t taste like it’s been poorly slaughtered or rotting in a cabinet for months.

The group at the table with you shifts back into what you feel is their normal conversation and you watch them through your peripheral. You can’t relax yet, maybe you never will. Always on watch with your guard up.

They pass the dishes around the table, plates going from hand to hand over mismatched sets of silverware. The action feels strange to you. Your chest squeezes at the thought. Just a few weeks ago, you’d done this around a fire with the people you loved. You’d passed a too-hot-to-touch pot around a circle of friends, laughing quietly at the little moments of joy you could find. It feels far away now and jealousy rouses beside hope as you sit.

“So, where did you come from?” Izuku at the end of the table asks.

It takes you a moment to realize that he’s talking to you and there’s an edge to his voice that has everyone at the table sitting up with curiosity. You stare at him for a moment, exhausted and defeated and unable to muster the words.

“Leave them be,” Katsuki says, looking up from his plate. “They just got here. They’re probably freaked out.”

The table goes a little quiet, a hush falling over it. You look around as glances are exchanged before Mina stands up quickly and quietly claps her hands together.

“I think,” she says with an awkward laugh, “it may be time for bed.”

Mina turns to you. “I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

You nod, standing up and turning to the group with furrowed eyebrows. You want to thank them, to tell them that you’re grateful for the meal and their kindness, but the words don’t come. Instead, you meet Katsuki’s gaze, grateful for the intervention, but suspicious at such forthcoming kindness. He scoffs a little and turns away.

—

“It’s just up here,” Mina says as she guides you through the house.

You pass rooms with their doors ajar. They are lived in, with unmade beds and glasses of clean water on nightstands. It’s like something out of a life gone by, with a few less amenities. You can imagine a family moving through this house. Girls in school uniforms calling through the halls about a stolen hair clip. Now, you picture these people doing that. Living and not just surviving.

“The bathroom is across the hall,” she says. “You can take a shower if you want. I’ll leave a towel and some clothes in there just in case.”

You nod.

“No worries if you don’t,” Mina adds in a whisper. “When I first met everyone, I didn’t undress to bathe for days so… take your time. We won’t be offended.”

She shuts the door behind her when she leaves and you stumble back onto the bed, shocked by just how soft it feels after spending weeks on the floor. It’s not much, but it’s nicer than anything you’ve experienced in the last nine months, and there's a working shower. You haven’t had a shower since everything fell apart and the layer of grime on your skin is so thick that you can feel it. You haven’t felt safe enough to properly wash since you’d lost the rest of your group, only stopping to rinse your body in streams you pass if the thought occurred to you. The idea of running water and a shower is near euphoric.

You probably shouldn’t. It may not be wise to shower tonight. You still don’t know these people or what they’re capable of, but the temptation of being clean is too great and as soon as you hear Mina close the bathroom door and walk away, you hurry across the hall on the balls of your feet.

The bathroom looks old and the sink is white porcelain, eggshell now with a lack of care. The shower has a bathtub in it and though it’s cloudy, there’s a mirror over the sink where you catch the first clear glimpse you’ve had of yourself in weeks.

You don’t know who you’re looking at. The person in the mirror is nearly unrecognizable. Their eyes are wide and frightened, wild like an animal’s, and their face is covered in a layer of grime that looks like it can never be washed out. Their hair is unruly, sticking out in some areas and matted down with blood in others. This is a person you’ve never seen or met before. Someone you would have avoided only a year ago if you’d ever encountered them.

You reach up to touch your face, running your hand over the dried blood that has made a home on the underside of your jaw. How long has it been there? Have you always looked so unwell? So sick in mind and body? The promise of a shower grows unbearably pleasant.

The knob squeaks when you turn it, screeching as the pipes hum and clang to life. Water spits out in a few bursts before raining down from the faucet and hitting the back of the tub in a steady thrum. It sounds a little bit like music to you, constant and heavy, and it gives the impression of normalcy as you begin undressing.

The fabric of your clothes sticks to your skin, peeling from your body in an unbearable and disgusting way. You don’t look at your body in the mirror. In fact, you avoid it entirely. Not recognizing your face was enough, but your body—a part of yourself you never really recognized—would drive you over the edge.

Then, you pull the shower curtain back and stick your hand under the water, stepping into it fully with a deep sigh. The water is lukewarm. They probably turned off the heater to conserve power and allow the main generator to function for longer. That’s fine. Beggars can’t be choosers and everyone is a beggar nowadays. Besides, it’s warm enough outside that the water isn’t too cold as it is. In the winter, you probably wouldn’t be able to shower and the pipes might freeze entirely until the following spring.

There’s a normalcy that you settle into as you wash your body. You return to muscle memory, running your hands over your skin and scrubbing the grime out. It’s simultaneously like the first shower of your life and as if you’ve been doing it every day. You return to a state of pleasant, familiar humanity as you wash away dirt that has built up for weeks. You feel as it pours off of you, see it run down your body onto the porcelain of the tub and swirl down the drain. It’s dirt and dried blood that has been caked onto your skin. You worry that even after washing, it will leave a permanent mark.

The person in the mirror when you get out of the shower is in stark contrast to the person who went into it. They’re someone that you recognize. You could almost convince yourself that nothing ever changed. Your water-soaked skin is so familiar to you, that you could be getting out of the shower and dressing to go to work. If it weren’t for the look in your eyes, you could have fooled yourself. Something undefinable has changed in you, something that you will carry with you forever. You glance at yourself in the foggy mirror and think that there is no going back.

The house is quiet when you dry yourself and open the bathroom door. You step across the hall on the balls of your feet, careful not to make any noise, and when you push the bedroom door open, you do a visual sweep to make sure that it’s safe out of habit.

Your body is exhausted. You are so thoroughly tired that you think you could collapse at any moment, but when you sit down on the bed in your fresh clothes, you find yourself restless. This place is new to you and you’re unsure if the safe feeling is your mind playing desperate tricks on you or the real thing. The lamp by your bed is on, casting a yellow glow across the bedsheets and the dark wood furniture. Come to think of it, you didn’t get a good look at the house when you came in and the thought starts to bother you as you stare at the closed door to the hallway.

Someone could be behind it. They could be waiting for you to lay down, to sleep, before doing something awful. You almost feel guilty for thinking this way about them. They’ve fed you, given you a shower, given you fresh clothes. Luxuries you weren’t sure even existed anymore, yet you’re sitting here doubting them, wishing you had your pistol or knife.

The bedroom door creaks as you open it. You wince, nervous that you’ve disturbed the quiet peace of the house and that everything will come crashing down as quickly as it seemed to come together. The hallway is dark, save for some light coming from under two doors at the end of the hall. One of them turns out as you creep past it to the stairs, and you hear the distinct sound of box springs squeaking as someone crawls into bed. You let go of the breath you’d been holding, straightening up as you relax into the late-night environment.

The house looks old even from the inside. It gives the impression of having once been dirty and in near disrepair. There are dust stains and dull spots that no amount of scrubbing could get out. You can almost picture how this place may have looked when they found it and it’s entirely possible that it had been abandoned before the actual outbreak. Someone run out of their home for lack of money. What a trivial thing now.

The stairs are sturdy, probably held together so well by the foundation of the house, and they’re made of dark wood. They’re steep too, the kind that a baby or old person might trip over, and you hold the railing to calm the shaking of your legs as you slowly feel your way down. You can see the light on in the kitchen from around the corner, spreading out onto the floor of the old fashioned drawing room. Dishes clink in the kitchen, like someone is washing them, and you jump a little at the noise as you creep around the corner.

Kirishima is standing at the sink with his back to you, whispering something to someone beside him. The expanse of his back is broad, moving every time he goes to run his hand over the dish in front of him. Then, he turns to look at you and you see Mina pop her head around the corner.

“Oh,” Kiri says, “did you need something?”

You shake your head. “Not really, I just couldn’t sleep.”

Kiri nods sympathetically as if he knows the feeling. “Well, you look like you feel a little better at least.”

You pad over to where he’s doing the dishes and Mina offers you a soft smile and a knowing look. It all seems so normal. Doing the dishes, whispering quietly as they do. Something about it screams a kind of humanity you haven’t experienced in a long while, even with your last group.

“Are you sure we can’t get you something?” Mina says, furrowing her brows.

“Why are you all being so nice to me?” You ask. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“Is there some reason why we shouldn’t be nice to you?” Kiri says over his shoulder.

“No,” you shake your head. “I just think it’s reckless, that’s all. I could have been anyone.”

Kirishima and Mina exchange a look. They glance at each other, like they’re debating on saying something, and then Kiri turns and rests his palms on the back of the sink. He looks at Mina.

“We don’t usually decide to do this so quickly,” she admits. “We’re friendly, but nobody’s that friendly anymore.”

Kiri nods his agreement and you listen quietly, trying to determine if they plan to toss you back out into the woods in the morning.

“But, Katsuki doesn’t usually bring people in,” she continues.

“He’s a little more closed off than the rest of us,” Kirishima adds. “He’s a good guy, just takes a while to warm up, is all.”

“Mhm,” Mina says.

“What does that have to do with me?” you ask. “This is nice and all, but I’m sure you get why I’m wary.”

“He’s a good judge of character,” Kiri adds earnestly. “He doesn’t bring people in often, but when he does, he’s usually right.”

You nod, not quite understanding. Sure, you don’t plan to do anything terrible. In fact, you’re content to accept their kindness and stay, if they’d let you. Anything is better than being alone, but their blind trust in one man’s judgment of character makes you uneasy.

“He was alone for a really long time,” Mina adds. “A lot of us were. I got lucky meeting Kirishima early on, but Katsuki’s luck was a little less fortuitous.”

“So you all just… happened upon each other by chance?” You ask.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Mina says. “It was me and Kiri for a long time. Just the two of us. We’d found Izuku and Katsuki together a while later, but they didn’t seem to like each other all that much. We still haven’t really figured that out, especially because they’re so close now. Ochako and Sero ended up cornered together by accident. We found them just before we found this place, and Denki just sort of showed up here one day and promised to fix the generator in exchange for safety. That was months ago. We’ve been like this since.”

“So you’re all strays,” you say and Mina laughs a little and looks at Kiri.

“Sure,” she says. “We’re all strays. There were others too. Shoji. Jirou. She was Denki’s girlfriend.”

“I’m sorry,” you say with a frown. It feels pointless to apologize for the dead, if you get caught up in it, you’d be apologizing forever.

“Don’t be,” Kiri adds. “But best not to bring her up. It was pretty recent and Denki’s only just started to get over it.”

You swallow thick and nod a little.

“Anyway,” Mina says, “we can’t really explain it. We just trust him. We trust Katsuki. That’s all.”

“Hm,” you hum, understanding that to a degree.

You trusted the people in your group. If they believed in someone, you were willing to as well, so you suppose you can understand a little where they’re coming from.

“What are you talking about,” Katsuki rounds the corner, walking into the kitchen and putting his water bottle under the sink.

“Nothing really,” Mina says.

Katsuki furrows his eyebrows and then looks at you. He gives you a once over, taking in your new clothing before scoffing lightly.

“Don’t you look cozy,” he says. “You get settled?”

“When can I go get my stuff?” You ask.

“Someone’s eager,” he says through lightly gritted teeth. “Didn’t I tell ya we could go in the morning? Besides, what’s there really to miss in that lot of junk?”

“Katsuki!” Mina quietly chides.

“I have things I care about there,” you say. “Things I’m not ready to lose.”

Katsuki blinks at you for a second before swearing under his breath. “We’ll leave when you get up in the morning.”

“You don’t have to come with me,” you say, frowning a bit at his sour attitude.

“Like hell,” he scoffs. “What if the dead are waiting back there for you?”

“I made it this far on my own,” you respond.

Katsuki nods for a second. “I’m going. Come find me in the morning.”

He walks off and around the corner. You hear him go up the stairs, followed by the distinct click of a bedroom door shutting.

“Don’t pay too much attention to that,” Mina says. “It’s past his bedtime.”

“You’ll get used to him,” Kiri adds.

“Right,” you say, swallowing down your frustration in favor of trying to be appreciative of the help. You sway on your feet a little and then steady yourself. “I’m going to go to sleep. Thank you for the meal and the bed.”

Mina and Kiri nod, but you don’t stick around to hear a response. Fatigue creeps up on you. It ambushes your senses and you go from feeling dream-like to delusional in a matter of moments. You make your way up the stairs, your body feeling heavy as lead, and wobble your way into the bedroom they’re letting you stay in.

When your head hits the pillow, you’re out. The world around you fades to dark and just before you sleep, you swear that you can hear the sounds of cars passing on the highway. A busy night, Saturday maybe, and people go about their daily lives outside of the window the way that they always have. They live, never the wiser to just how quickly things fall apart and how little it takes for our humanity to leave us.

—

Mornings in this place are boisterous. The sun coming through the lone window in your room wakes you up and you can hear the calls of busy people getting to work outside. There are voices from the porch out front that your window looks over and though you can’t see them, you get the sense that they’re having a pleasant conversation.

As you rouse, you come to the realization of just how exhausted you’d really been. They probably saved your life by bringing you to this place, feeding you, and offering you a bed. In hindsight, it’s easy to see just how little you had left in you. You get the sense now that you’d been running on an empty tank for days, slowly coming to an inglorious, gruesome, sputtering stop.

Things seem a little clearer, like the sunlight is somehow less bleak than it had been the days previous and you feel a little bit like you have a new lease on life. There are no big emotions, no swells of hope or humanity just yet, and you dread the moment you are rested enough to let grief consume you. Right now, you can’t feel it, but there is a fear in you that as you get to know these people who live relatively beautifully in an ugly world, it will weigh you down so much that you’ll never be able to outrun it.

You wonder if they’ll let you stay. They very well may not, even with the way they were talking last night. Strangers are more dangerous than they’ve ever been and if they ask you whether or not you’ve killed someone, you refuse to lie to them. Sitting up on the bed, you mull over the very real possibility that you could be back out there on your own again in a matter of days and you don’t even have that many good acts under your belt to plead your case. You’re just a person and you’ve done what you needed to in order to survive. Now, you’re not sure if that’s enough.

You swallow thick, wandering over to the mirror on the dresser. It’s fogged, though less than the bathroom mirror, and you can make out your features a little better than you could last night. You feel a bit more sane, though you still don’t recognize the frightful and distrustful look in your eyes. Like a wounded animal. Inside your head, you acknowledge that you are completely different from the person you were two hundred and seventy seven days ago.

The voices grow louder as you climb down the stairs, more secure on your feet than you felt last night. You can hear them talking about the generator, as well as a name you don’t recognize.

“He should be back by now,” a woman says. “Shoto’s never gone longer than a day or two, max.”

“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” another woman says with a worried bite in her voice. Mina, maybe? “We’re only a few hours into the day. He probably got holed up somewhere.”

“Someone needs to go look for him,” a man says.

“And what? Risk getting yourself killed?” the first woman says. “No, it doesn’t make sense. We need you here.”

“You’d rather we leave him to die on his own?”

“No one’s fuckin’ dying.”

You recognize Katsuki’s voice.

“He’s perfectly capable of going on a gasoline run,” he continues. “He’s done it before.”

“I should have gone with him,” says the same woman.

“On that leg? You wouldn’t have made it halfway to town, let alone there and back,” his voice raises a little. “Don’t be stupid. He’ll be back.”

You clear your throat and step around the corner. The group turns to face you quickly at the sound, their eyes wide for a moment before relaxing. You can’t sneak up on anyone nowadays.

“Sorry,” you say, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Is everything okay?”

It’s not your business, but you ask anyway, wondering for yourself about the safety of Shoto.

“Fine,” Izuku says, shaking his head. You recognize him to be the one who'd vouched for going after their friend. Katsuki takes a step away from the broad man as he says this. “Nothing for you to worry about. Did you rest?”

Izuku smiles gently at you, his chest inflating a little at the question. The movement broadens his shoulders and you realize that he stands almost a head taller than Katsuki. You look briefly between the two of them before nodding.

“I did,” you say. “Thank you.”

“Nothing wrong with a little hospitality now and then,” he smiles and you can’t help but furrow your eyebrows at the distinct hesitance in his voice.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” the woman standing across from Izuku says. “I’m Momo. Sorry I wasn’t there to meet you last night. I’ve been a little under the weather.”

You introduce yourself to her and glance down at her leg. Her ankle is swollen and wrapped in a bandage. Her sneaker laces are untied at the top to make room for the swelling and you can see that she’s guarding that side of her leg.

“Is it…?” you grimace, taking an instinctive step away from her. You almost feel bad for it, but sometimes good people make bad decisions when loved ones get bit.

“No,” she says quickly, “no, it isn’t. Caught an edge in an old chain link fence on the property a couple days back.”

Momo smiles slightly at you as if to reassure you. She’s really beautiful, with thick dark hair pulled back into a somewhat messy ponytail. Her eyes are bright, like she’s engaged in lively conversation, and you find yourself feeling a little sad for her. She’ll need medicine soon, if they can get it. Infections set in easily these days and you get the sense that even she knows that she may not have long without it. Maybe that’s something else their friend Shoto set out to find.

“I assume you’ll be wanting to go get your supplies?” Katsuki says, cutting the conversation short. Maybe he could sense the sour turn of thoughts.

“Ready when you are,” you respond with a nod.

Katsuki glances at Izuku, who gives him a slightly disapproving look.

“Someone get them something to eat,” Katsuki says. “...I’ll get my shit ready.”

“Fig jam…” Mina mumbles as she motions for you to follow her to the kitchen.

You oblige her, not exactly jumping to turn down a meal. She walks you into the kitchen and opens up a cabinet, where she pulls out a jar filled with a dark and seed filled paste. It’s a jam, sealed in a jar that looks older than what’s inside of it. The seal breaks open with a pleasant pop.

“This stuff is so good,” she says to you over her shoulder, pulling out a package of crackers that have likely gone stale. “You won’t believe it.”

She spreads the jam on a few crackers and sets it in front of you on a plate, pushing it across the counter towards you.

“It’s fig jam,” she says with a smile. “Homemade.”

You look down at the plate, your mouth watering at the prospect of something sweet like this. It’s been so long since you've had fresh jam. It could be as long as 10 years. You don’t think you’ve had it since you were a kid, when jam came easily and you preferred the processed brands at the supermarket to the ones your mom used to make sometimes.

You raise the cracker to your mouth and stuff it in with little grace. The sweetness spreads across your tongue as soon as you bite into the stale cracker. It fizzes and pops almost, the sugar melting across your tongue as the seeds crack softly between your teeth. The smile that hits your face is completely involuntary and though you know that nine months ago, this jam wouldn’t have been much, today it is something extraordinary.

Mina nods a kind of girlish agreement, like the way people used to when they had their friend try something at their favorite restaurant.

“We got here in the fall. I want to say late October or early November?” she offers. “We were starving and there wasn’t enough food to feed all of us. By that time there were like… nine of us.”

You listen as you eat your crackers.

“This place was in such an awful state,” she laughs. “I mean, really terrible. But, it was big and there was a fig tree in the back. A little thing, probably only a few years old and it had fruit on it. We ate so many of them that if the world were normal, we’d have sworn off of them forever. When we realized that the house actually had some old food in it,” she interrupts herself “-nothing good, canned stuff mostly- we decided to jar up the rest of the figs so that they didn’t rot.”

She smiles at you like it’s a pleasant memory, but you can only think about how hungry they must have been. Your stomach growls as you eat.

“I know it doesn’t sound like much,” she says, “but for some reason it’s a really nice memory. Honestly, we’re lucky we didn’t die.”

Mina laughs a little.

“I mean,” she continues, “we didn’t even clear the area before we started pulling at the figs and throwing them into our mouths.”

You tilt your head at her and furrow your eyebrows with a small smile.

“You’re really forthcoming with information.”

“You just seem a little hesitant, is all,” she answers.

“Can you blame me?”

Mina shrugs her shoulders but doesn’t really offer an answer. You assume it’s because she can’t, because Mina has the same doubts everyone carries with them in this world. All of the what ifs people would think about before they slept have become more prevalent than anyone would have ever liked.

“The jam is good,” you say, trying to be friendly in the same way she is. “Even if it is months old.”

“Things keep well in jars,” Mina defends softly, smiling a little as she gets another out of you.

This place feels like a little slice of paradise. A blessing from whoever lived here before and kept a garden stocked with vegetables. From someone who lived in an old house with stables and well-water, who kept canned food past its expiration date. It feels almost too good to be true, like these people live in a bubble bound to pop.

“You ready?” Katsuki thuds into the kitchen with an empty backpack slung over his shoulder.

You turn, startled by his sudden appearance and nod as you quickly finish chewing the last cracker. Katsuki furrows his eyebrows as he watches the way you scarf it down.

When you stand from the table, Katsuki turns on his heel to make for the front door and you follow with a light step. Mina says something about staying safe, but you don’t respond, glancing once over your shoulder at the girl.

It’s strange, the world has made you wishy-washy and uncommitted. You never used to be like that, never so distrusting as to second guess someone’s kindness the moment your back is turned to them, and you’re certainly not the type to be friendly one moment and closed off the next. Now though, you find that doubt creeps in easily through cracks and any foundation that didn’t exist before, seems to be swallowed before you can finish building it.

Katsuki leads you back across the small clearing you’d come through the night before. It looks different in the day, almost romantic, and it lacks any of the ominous feeling it had the previous evening. He steps over mounds in the dirt from moles and gophers that have made lawns their new home and you try to mimic his steps, sinking occasionally into a particularly soft patch of dirt. Every now and then, Katsuki glances behind him to check that you’re still there and you offer him a forced smile that he never returns.

You catch up to him when you hit the trees, sticking close at his side like something will come and take you away if you’re not. It’s unintentional, but you don’t have a weapon on you. Your knife is back at your makeshift camp, along with the unloaded pistol and your trusty spatula.

“How do you know where we’re going?” You ask in a whisper.

Katsuki tosses a look at you over his shoulder. “I’m good with directions.”

His tone is clipped, like he’s pissed about something, and your expression sours at it. Sure, you get it but it irritates you to some small degree. You hadn’t asked him to come along. In fact, you’d have been fine getting back here to collect your stuff on your own. You’d have asked for a knife and set out without a second thought, if only because being alone in the woods with some guy was less preferable than doing it by yourself. Of course, some guy also probably saved your life, but you’re not quite ready to relinquish your trust completely.

“Thanks for coming,” you decide. A peace offering.

Katsuki doesn’t answer and you furrow your brows a little bit. You wonder if he’s always been like this or if the end of the world brought on the loss of his manners.

Then, he stops, taking you by the arm and pulling you down beside a bush. You gasp and he puts his hand over your mouth to silence you. There’s the urge to bite him, to catch the fleshy bit connecting his thumb and pointer finger between your teeth and bite down till he bleeds, but you stop when you catch what he’s looking at.

Two of the living dead crouch by a tree, clicking their tongues as they eat something just out of sight. You furrow your eyebrows, eyes widening at the horror of it. For some reason, seeing them always brings about a round of momentary shock. You’ve yet to let go of the hounding thought that they used to be people and sometimes have to reorient yourself to the world you’re in now.

You catch Katsuki’s eye behind you, his calloused hand still clasped over your mouth, and nod your head. It’s a silent communication that you’ve seen what he has and he removes his palm from your face to grab a knife tucked into his belt, passing it to you quickly.

The two infected haven’t noticed the two of you yet, but they will soon, if only by the smell of your flesh which has yet to rot. You hear Katsuki let out a breath, as if to calm his heart, and do the same. There’s time to look at them like this and you’re struck by how human you can pretend they are in your head. Well, you suppose they were human once, now they’re a disease using someone’s skin as a mask.

Infected people aren’t quick, that’s one thing to be grateful for. Back when the outbreak first started, the CDC had released information on what to look out for in those who might have contracted the virus. The first was obviously a bite wound from another infected person, but you can tell from other symptoms. Early symptoms are average. Body aches, fever, lethargy, and delirium. All things you might see with a nasty flu. Then, infection of the wound site, twitching, foggy eyes—like low-grade cataracts—that develop within a matter of hours or days, severe disorientation, aversion to food, insomnia, with the final symptom being a coma that no one ever wakes up as themselves from.

These are the symptoms that people are conscious for. The ones they feel. The sickness that people tried to nurse others back from. There is no coming back though, not alive at the very least. The virus attacks the nerves throughout the brain and body, that’s what causes the twitching and convulsions. It’s what ultimately kills us, and it's what they think causes the bodies to come back.

Most infected will crack when they move. It’s the cartilage breaking down as the bones grind together and crack as they’re weakened from the marrow out. They twitch like rabid animals, unable to keep masterful control of their bodies because they are run like puppets from the brain stem. You don’t know if they think. If somehow the people they used to be are still in there, unable to stop themselves from consuming and spreading the virus to others. All you really know is that they twitch and click, functions of the brain that still remain. Tiny impulses sent through the synapses. You imagine it to be like the way you twitch when you sleep, an arm here or a leg there, the way someone might call out with their voice to a room with no one in it.

Maybe the infected think they’re dreaming. A nightmare that they never wake up from, like those of us who have to put them down. You could see it as a mercy from that perspective. You have an easier time rationalizing putting a knife in someone’s skull if you convince yourself that they’re silently begging for it.

Katsuki shifts his weight and looks at you. He mouths the words no guns and you nod, briefly wondering where the fuck he thinks you could have gotten a gun from.

Then, you kick off and run with Katsuki towards the infected. They don’t really have time to begin moving towards you both. You’re faster than them, but you hear the crack of their legs as they stand from their crouched positions, pulled in at the idea of their next meal.

Katsuki takes the farther one, sinking the knife into the soft spot of its temple with relative ease. You switch yourself off and take the one closest only a few moments later, sending your blade through the top of its skull. That happens to you when you have to do this. You turn yourself off for a bit, just so that you don’t have to remember the way it feels to hit the soft part of someone’s brain. You didn’t used to do that, only starting when you realized that there’s no going through this world anymore without it.

Katsuki wipes the blood on his pants. It’s brown, no longer oxygenated, and the area around you begins to reek. You notice, but for some reason the smell of decomposition doesn’t register in your brain and you continue on behind him.

There are a few beats of silence, save for twigs breaking under your feet, before Katsuki speaks up.

“You okay?” It’s barely above a whisper and you wouldn’t have caught it were you not listening for the distinctive crack of human bones.

“Yeah,” you say, continuing forward.

The campsite rounds into view and in this light, with your full night’s sleep under your belt, you can see just how pitiful it looks. A tent that you’d hastily put up before nightfall, the remains of your stamped out fire, the folding chair which has since been knocked over, and your weapons on the floor covered by a few leaves disturbed by the wind.

You snatch them up and move to grab your backpack out of the tent. The inside is shitty too and your torn sleeping bag hadn’t even been rolled out yet. You pick up the bag, returning to the folding chair as Katsuki begins to take down the tent. The polyester and nylon blend zips together as he makes quick work of folding it. Then, he kicks some dry brush over the remains of the fire, like he’s covering your tracks.

“The next person that comes through here might not be alone,” he says plainly. “And they may have more bullets than you did.”

“Right,” you respond. Your voice sounds a little far off and you settle your backpack on your shoulder in one quick motion.

“Got everything?”

You nod, following him as he heads out in the direction you both came from. The two of you pass the bodies of the infected you’d killed. The smell has permeated the air, lingering like how it does in cities, only less pungent. Their fogged eyes stare blankly at nothing, expressions plain and unreadable. You pass and try not to think much about it.

Katsuki is a few feet ahead of you and he doesn’t glance back to make sure you’re following. You could leave now and never get attached to these people. You could head off in another direction and never have to think twice about it. No more worrying about who you could lose, about who’s next to become one of the sick masses. Just you by yourself. Then, when you finally kick the can, someone else can put you down the way you did to those strangers.

Is there really a point to it anymore? To community or living in general. No one is as they once were. Does that make it fantasy to live in their beautiful bubble? Could you even find it in yourself to pretend again, to make nice and play house in that place? They saved your life, sure. They fed you, clothed you, bathed you, but for what point? Tomorrow, you could end up back in the woods, lighting fires with twigs you found in the brush, paranoid that someone would find you or the fire would spread.

You watch Katsuki’s back as he moves, shoulders shifting with each step. His shirt is stained, white turned eggshell from the wear and tear of time. It seems so off to you that he looks relatively clean, like he lives well.

Fear strikes you as you realize that your rambling thoughts have merit. Anything you fear now has become real and loss is so tangible to you that you can squeeze it in your hand. They could turn you out. Tomorrow night you could begin the starve and step all over again, moving from place to place, talking to yourself, filling your hours with paranoid thoughts like these that plague you when you’re alone. Is that worse than loss? If you’re alone long enough, you’d probably forget what you’re missing. Losing anyone else could make the wound fresh. For now, the hunger wins out.

Katsuki jogs ahead of you to get to the house. Momo is on the porch waving him in and he hurries up the steps and bursts through the front door. As you approach, you can hear voices, some of which are relieved, others hurried. When you enter the room, you find a man standing there whom you’ve never seen before, Shoto maybe.

“A plus one,” the man looks up, tilting his head at you in an odd way.

“Katsuki’s,” Kiri says with a low smirk.

Shoto’s eyes widen as he peers at his friend, clutching what looks like an injured shoulder. Katsuki just huffs his irritation.

“Well, that’s rare,” Shoto says.

“What’s rare?” Katsuki spits. “They were in the woods with a fire. What was I supposed to do? Let ‘em die?”

“Maybe,” Shoto says, a light smile creeping onto his features. Then, he turns to you. “What’s your name?”

You give it to him and he nods his head, tilting it at you again.

“How long are you staying?”

You’re not sure how to answer that question. In fact, no one is, and it feels like more of a test than it does a genuine inquiry. Kiri and Mina exchange a glance and Katsuki tosses a somewhat dirty look towards Shoto. Ochako gives Shoto a knowing glance and Sero and Denki shift uncomfortably on their feet. Then, Momo clears her throat, spurring Izuku to say something.

“Shoto,” he says. “You’re probably hungry, you should eat something and lay down. Ochako? Could you take a look at his shoulder?”

“Sure,” the girl says softly, giving a closed mouth smile to Shoto as she takes him by the arm.

She glances at you as she passes, almost like she’s too embarrassed to look at you fully in the face. You suppose this is what happens when people are forced to think about whether or not they will potentially leave someone else to die. It’s like the trolley cart question and though in this case there is always the possibility of a better outcome, it’s not likely in this world.

“Just until I’m rested,” you add with a small tilt of your head. “A few days.”

Shoto looks at you over his shoulder and gives you a small smile. It’s funny, you can see kindness there. His actions aren’t kind, but you can feel that he has kindness in him, though his rudeness stems from something different than Katsuki’s, you think. Like he’s strange in some way.

“I’ll start on dinner,” Sero says. “Kiri, give me a hand.”

The group disperses and you head upstairs without speaking to anyone else. A few days to rest and then cut the first people you’ve spoken to in weeks loose. What sort of idiot gives up something like this to avoid a little awkwardness? Not that you necessarily had your mind made up. You wonder briefly if you’ve just sealed your own tomb.

—

After dinner, you go upstairs to sleep after eating as much as they would offer you. Your stomach has ceased its constant growling and the shakiness that comes with hunger has receded almost entirely into the background. The bed is soft, with a slight dent in it from whoever slept in here before. The thought unsettles you that they’re probably dead now, but you try to push it from your mind as you steel yourself for what comes within the next few days.

You had volunteered yourself to leave. To what? Save yourself the embarrassment of pleading? Did you even want to plead? Why are you regretting not asking to stay? These people don’t know you, what trust can you have built with them in only a few days? Your skin crawls at the expanse of possibilities in front of you after so many weeks without any.

You think that if you let yourself walk away, you’ll probably die. You’re out of bullets and don’t know where to find any food except by luck. You can try to catch prey, but prey hides whenever infected are around, and they’re everywhere nowadays. It’s spring, water wouldn’t be a problem, but running water has its clear comforts. Then, there’s the possibility of loss. You’d come to care for these people if you stayed, you know it.

You furrow your eyebrows and look at the ceiling. There’s really no choice to be made. You’ll let them make it for you, even if you don’t know them. It’s their house and you won’t walk in uninvited or try to take it. You’re not about to become a monster just because the world is full of them now.

The darkness grows and your eyes drift to the dim light wandering in under the crack of the door. Hushed voices whisper in the living room, you can hear them. It’s a heated discussion, lively, but deliberately quiet. It’s been hours since everyone went to bed, yet you get the impression that many people are chiming in. You’re too nosey to leave it be.

You open the bedroom door silently, turning the cool knob with a wince as it clicks out of place. When you peer into the hallway, every upstairs bedroom door is open with the room empty. The light is coming from down stairs and around the corner, and you can see shadows move as you inch closer to the source.

You pause at the top of the stairs, knowing that they creak, and crouch by the bannister to listen. You’re out of sight. The only way they’d know you’re listening is if you made a sound, but you won’t. You’re good at being quiet.

“We don’t even know them,” someone says in a rushed whisper. “We don’t know what they’ve done before.”

“Everyone’s done things they’re not proud of now, Shoto,” a woman adds. It’s Mina. She’s spoken enough to you that you recognize her voice.

“I agree with Shoto,” says another woman, her voice higher pitched. She sounds guilty and her voice is tight as she speaks “We have no clue who they are. They could be dangerous.”

“You mean like me, Ochako?” A man adds. “I could have been dangerous.”

The group grows quiet for a moment.

“No,” Momo says. You recognize the cadence of her voice. “Shoto might be right, Denki. It’s been nearly six months since you got here and the world has changed a lot. We don’t- we can’t know for sure.”

“Can we really know anything for sure?” Another man adds, Kiri.

“What about you guys?” Shoto says, presumably to the rest of the group.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m hesitant, but I don’t know either.”

“Jesus,” another man with a baritone voice, harsher than the rest. That’s Katsuki, the first voice you’d heard of the group. “You guys make me a little sick.”

“That’s not fair,” Ochako says.

“No,” he interrupts. “It is fair. You guys want to… what? Send them back out there to die?”

“It’s not like that,” Shoto says.

“It is like that,” he says, raising his voice and then lowering it back to a whisper. “You didn’t see them when they got here, Shoto. They- they didn’t look… shit. The rest of you, you saw them. You really want to send them back out there to fuckin’ waste away? I don’t know about you all, but I won’t do that to a person.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

“Katsuki’s right,” Izuku says with a bit of conviction, like he’s finally made up his mind. “Sending someone out there alone is a death sentence. How does doing that make us any better than the people we’re trying to protect ourselves from?”

“What if there are more of them?” Ochako says quietly. “What if they’re not alone?”

“Trust me,” Katsuki says, “They were alone.”

“But what if they’re not?” She insists at a whisper, a bit of shame creeping into her voice. “What if people come for us?”

“See?” Shoto says gently. “There are so many what-ifs.”

“That works the other way too,” Mina adds.

You don’t listen to hear the rest of their conversation. They’re going to run themselves in circles debating about you. They’ll go around and around and land on whichever argument ends with the most votes. They’ll convince each other of one thing and it will happen totally out of your control.

The bedroom door shuts with a low click that makes you wince again. You think about the people who went to bat for you and the people who didn’t. You don’t blame those who opposed. You’d have probably reacted similarly if your old group were still alive and you understand very clearly why they do it. One person’s stupid reaction can be catastrophic and they don’t know enough about you to be certain that you’re not one of those stupid people. It’s how the world went to shit in the first place and though nine months ago you’d have surely condemned someone for making the same decision, you know that fear has warped humanity beyond comprehension. You didn’t get it until you lived it.

Still, Katsuki’s humanity feels intact somehow, more so than yours at least. His response is something you probably never would have said under the same conditions and you can’t help but feel some sort of fondness bloom in you for him. Call it connection, gratefulness for his willingness to stick his neck out for you, a trauma response. You still feel it. Mina and Kiri had said that Katsuki was a good judge of character and that’s why they were willing to back him. You wonder briefly if maybe Katsuki sees something in you that you don’t recognize in yourself anymore, or maybe something you don’t expect other people to recognize. What is it that he wants so badly to protect?

Someone stomps down the hallway, heavy boots against the old creaky floors. You hear the steps recede down the hallway, maybe a door or two down, before it shuts quickly. The sound makes you wince and you listen as the house grows quiet and then hums quietly with the sound of others coming upstairs a few moments later. Someone pads to the end of the hall, pushing the door open.

You hear a woman’s voice, so muffled that you can’t make out what she’s saying. Then, you hear the sound of a man’s affirmation before the bedroom door shuts and the visitor moves back down the hall to a separate bedroom. Information passing through the house.

Someone is moving around in a room below you and you figure that there are probably bedrooms downstairs as well. From the outside, you’d never guess that the place could house ten people. Inside though, the bedrooms are small. That’s probably why so many can fit. You’d guess that the place used to have multiple generations living in it, or maybe even rented out rooms to people for a few months. It sort of has a boarding house feel to it, like many people have come and gone even before people stopped staying in one place.

That’s a good thing to call it, the boarding house. It certainly has that sort of feel to it, many of its spaces undeniably communal.

You turn over in the bed, facing the bedroom door. The lights have gone out completely now and the house is quiet save for the occasional creak or thud from someone preparing to sleep. It’s been a long while since the sounds of living have been so prevalent near you. You’re eased by the sounds of the house settling, a familiar reminder of what living used to be. Your group had been on the road long before you lost them and the comforts of an interior are almost overwhelmingly nostalgic. You’re better rested to notice it now and shutting your eyes, you savor the feeling.

—

“Need some help?” You say.

Denki turns around, grease smeared across his nose where he likely wiped it with his dirty hands. He’s holding a wrench in a glove so tattered that it hardly counts as a glove anymore. He looks startled, amber eyes widening before he uses his forearm to brush stray hairs out of his face. The rest of it is pulled up into a messy ponytail, revealing the moist back of his neck.

“Oh, sure,” he says, a bit surprised. “Do you know how generators work?”

He crouches back over the machine and you step up behind him.

The machine is rusted near the bottom and between the exposed winding pipes. Its paint has chipped away, leaving the weather-damaged metal open for you to see. On the side, a fan-like piece spins slowly in circles and the machine whirs and sputters softly as it… generates power, probably.

“Not quite, but an extra pair of hands is always helpful,” you say softly, passing him a tool he’d been reaching for. “Did it break?”

“No,” Denki says, “but it’s probably on its last legs. The thing’s almost as old as we are, probably older, so it’s good to tune it up a bunch.”

You hum your agreement, tilting your head as you stand and watch him work.

You’re not necessarily comfortable with Denki, but he feels like a safe person for some reason. Maybe it’s because he’s got a sort of ditzy, non-threatening vibe to him. You can almost distinctly picture him tripping over his own feet and something about that makes you feel considerably safer than someone who wouldn’t. That and he was the first person you’ve come across this morning who you don’t think distrusts you too badly.

“Are you dodging something?” Denki smirks up at you from his crouch.

“Who on earth would I be dodging?” you snort a bit defensively.

“Shoto,” he says with a light smile. “He put you in a tight spot the other day.”

“Yeah, well,” you say, glancing over your shoulder. “It wasn’t anything he didn’t have a right to ask.”

“Right, but it sure was rude, huh?”

Denki laughs to himself a little and you’re surprised by how easygoing he is. You subconsciously begin to categorize him with Mina and Kiri. The dichotomy of this group baffles you a bit, but you can certainly see all nine of them as a collective. Tightly knit and well acquainted with the habits of others.

“Oh!” He exclaims, “I have something you can do for me.”

You tilt your head.

“There’s a bucket over there,” he says, pointing absentmindedly to a shitty plastic bucket against the side of the house. “We use the water from the creek as coolant. It’s not factory grade, but it does the trick. You wanna go fill it up and bring it back for when I’m done tuning this thing up?”

You furrow your eyebrows, not sure where the creek he’s talking about is.

“The creek is just over there,” he points behind the house to the edge of the treeline. “I know you can’t see it from here, but if you walk in a straight line, you’ll hit it. Katsuki should be down there too, so you can use him as a landmark.”

When you don’t immediately answer, Denki whines a little.

“I mean,” he says, “I’d go myself, but-”

“I’ll do it,” you laugh a little and Denki seems surprised that you do.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” you shrug. “I’d like to pull some weight at least while I’m here. Plus, I offered.”

Denki mumbles his pleasure and you walk to the bucket without another word and set off in the direction Denki pointed. You’re much more willing to go out to the treeline now that you have a knife back at your side.

The walk to the trees is longer than it looks, like how sometimes the horizon looks like something you could reach out and climb up onto. The walk stretches with each step you take and you become a little more understanding of why Denki didn’t want to do it himself. But the walk is actually pleasant, the warmth of mid May collecting evenly on your skin as the humidity grows more intense with the sun.

You wonder what Katsuki would be doing by the creek. Maybe he’s fishing, or crouched over himself sharpening an arsenal of knives that you think he might keep in a roll attached to his belt sometimes. You’re not sure why, but Katsuki sort of has that expression to him. He’s handsome, but the scowl projects something hostile that makes him seem unapproachable.

As you cross through the middle of the clearing, you could almost imagine that this is a normal day. Humidity collects on your skin, making you sweat a little as you dodge gopher holes and soft spots of dirt. It almost feels like summer camp, if it weren’t for the looming idea that you’re contributing to something you may not be a part of. Denki’s attitude though, has you hoping for a more favorable outcome, if you want to call it that.

You’re only a few steps into the line of trees when the earth dips into a sand-lined ravine. The trees leave room for the sun to beat down on warmed rocks, making the area seem brighter with their subtle reflection of the light. The noise of the creek drowns out the sound of your footsteps and you shuffle toward where the earth flattens just before the water starts. A little ways to your right, you can see Katsuki sitting on a rock in the sun, his hands dipped into a large bucket. You narrow your eyes as he pulls what looks like a cloth out of the water, rubbing the fabric together before dipping it in the cool water of the creek.

As you approach, you realize what it is that he’s doing. It’s laundry. On the other side of him, you can see a bin of what look like dirty clothes and water-soaked clean ones. Talk about misjudged character.

“Katsuki,” you say as you approach him, the bucket still empty in your hand.

He squints up at you, shifting his face so that it's in your shadow.

“You’re still here,” he says plainly, returning to his task.

“Clearly,” you respond, watching as he runs his fingers over the next piece of clothing in the bucket.

“Why are you down here? Did Denki pawn the generator water onto you?” He says, like he’s somewhat frustrated. “He does that shit to anyone he can.”

You shrug your shoulders and continue to stare at him.

“Are you just gonna stand there?” He huffs out.

“You’re doing laundry.”

“Yeah?” he furrows his eyebrows and looks at you. “So?”

“Nothing,” you say. “I just didn’t expect that.”

“Yeah well,” he stops for a moment like he’s struggling to find the words. “It needed to be done. Figured I might as well.”

“How progressive of you,” you joke with a straight face.

He looks at you out of the corner of his eyes and sighs, not justifying your comment with a response. You find yourself smiling a little bit.

“If you’re going to linger, sit down and do it,” he says. “You’re creeping me out.”

You oblige him and sit down on a rock next to him, far enough that you’re not touching, but near enough to hear him if you speak in a low voice. For some reason, you feel a sort of kinship with Katsuki. You’d thought longer than you’d like to admit about his willingness to vouch for you and find that you want to live up to his expectation of your goodness, even if it’s not what you believe yourself to be anymore. Maybe it’s because you’ve slept well the past few nights and feel more like yourself, but there’s a certain casualness to conversing with him that you enjoy. He’s not looking at what you could be, but rather what you’re showing him that you are. His lack of doubt in that is something you find relatively attractive.

You watch his arms out of the corner of your eye in between gazing at the treeline and the sky. Your field of vision catches on them, his sleeves cut short to expose his biceps, a bit muddied near the elbows where the mud has begun to stick.

Katsuki doesn’t seem all that bothered by your presence, but now and then you’ll catch the sideways glance he gives you, almost like he’s trying to figure out exactly why you’re lingering.

“How long have you been with them?” You ask, more as a way to fill the silence.

Katsuki’s hands pause as he thinks about answering, then, they continue their steady pace.

“A decent amount of time,” he says. “I met Izuku first, probably in November just before Mina and Kiri. The rest came later.”

You furrow your eyebrows.

“No offense,” you start, “but you don’t really seem like the group type.”

“And you don’t seem like the type who’d be alone,” he retorts, like your statement was stupid.

You press your lips into a tight line, not really knowing how to respond.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head a little.

“Were you?”

“What? Was I sorry?” He furrows his eyebrows at you.

“No,” you shake your head. “Were you alone? Before Izuku.”

He goes silent. You’ll take that as a yes, but you regret asking a little. It had just slipped out. If someone were to ask you something like that, you’d probably react the same way. That’s just as well, you don’t really need to know him like that anyway.

You wonder briefly if anyone does. He seems closed off, but Mina and Kiri spoke about him a few days prior like they knew him well. Well enough at least to allude to a history you’ll likely never be privy to. Then there’s Momo, who whispers little things to him that he answers in kind. Curiosity gets the better of you, if only to tease.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” you ask and Katsuki’s response is to rest his elbows on his knees and let out a dry laugh.

He turns his head and looks at you from the side. “And what the fuck are you asking me that for?”

“Just curious,” you say. “Is it Momo?”

“Momo?” He makes a sour face at you. “Yeah, right.”

“She’s pretty,” you say.

“Sure is,” he responds dryly. “If you’re into the mom type.”

“What? You’re not into moms?” You grin a little and Katsuki furrows his eyebrows at you.

“So you do have a personality,” he scoffs a little.

There’s a pause. You haven’t felt this in a while. The feeling of bonding with someone new, compatibility on the human level that feels nearly instant.

“I’m kinda serious though,” you say, tilting your head down to catch his eye. “Do you?”

You’re leaning a little closer to him now.

“You seen any nice restaurants to take a person out to these days?” he questions, clearly a little frustrated with you in the way someone gets when they’re a bit amused.

“You don’t have to take someone out to a restaurant to fuck them, you know?” You laugh a little.

Katsuki’s lips part and he swallows like his mouth has gone dry.

“Yeah, well,” he starts, looking away from you. “I’m a romantic. Sue me.”

He’s just full of surprises, isn’t he? You find that you’re captivated by this feeling, this humanity, that exists in him. It’s something alive between you both, something left behind from the old world, and you crave it the same way you crave food.

Katsuki continues scrubbing the clothes, rubbing the fabric together and then dunking it in the bucket before plunging it into the freshwater creek. You’re not sure why you do it, but the next time he looks at you, you kiss him.

It’s not as if you like him, but it’s something to feel. Some remnant of the butterflies you used to feel on dates and the kiss makes you feel like you could be close to human again. You pull away almost as soon as you put his lips to yours and you can tell that the expression on your face is one of surprise.

Katsuki blinks for a second, looking at you with his brows knitted together. The expression doesn’t leave him as he places a wet hand on the side of your face to kiss you again. It’s an anxious kiss, confused and slow but—like someone riding a bike for the first time in years—it quickly becomes something familiar. Muscle memory that you both let yourselves sink into.

You can feel his expression as he kisses you, something between confusion and desire, like his own actions are perplexing. You feel the same way, hesitant, but reaching in the dark for the promise of some sort of normalcy. You want to feel like a person again. You haven’t felt it in so long and you push yourself against him as the ache swells in you.

The two of you continue like this for a moment, Katsuki’s fingers pressing lightly into the skin of your neck. You moan softly as his tongue slips into your mouth, taking a sharp inhale at the sensation of skin on skin. The sound of the creek drowns out the clicking of your mouths, but you can feel the way he hums into your mouth. They’re little sounds, involuntary ones driven by the nervous, desirous feelings inside of you both.

Then, Katsuki pulls away, swallowing thick as he takes his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment. You appreciate the way they look. They’re swollen, anxious to continue and keep forgetting where you really are. He drops his hand from your face with a sigh and almost seems like he comes back to himself. You do the same, moving back into an upright position.

“Denki will want that water soon,” he clears his throat and motions to the empty bucket by your feet.

“Oh,” you say, laughing a little. “Right.”

You stand, dusting off the back of your pants and dunking the bucket into the water. It sloshes, the liquid hitting the back of the plastic with a satisfying elastic sound. You begin to walk away without another word, heading down the way you came to climb up the gentler part of the slope.

“Hey,” Katsuki calls softly. “You should stay. We talked it over last night. You can if you want to.”

The last part, he says facing the wash, his hands moving as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You don’t respond, knowing that the obvious answer is already yes.

Dread settles in your stomach. It’s an icky, swirling feeling that threatens to make you double over. You climb up the bank, the water in the bucket sloshing as you move through the trees and enter the clearing. The feeling doesn’t dissipate, growing as you leave the cover of the trees. You probably wouldn’t have kissed him if he’d asked you that earlier.

The boarding house comes into view and you can see Denki sitting beside the generator, conversing with who appears to be Shoto. They turn and Denki waves you down, Shoto turning away and starting around for the front of the house.

Denki jogs to meet you, taking the bucket from your hand. You flex your fingers as the weight is removed, wincing a little at how stiff they feel.

“Jeez, what took you so long?” Denki laughs and with your new information, you understand his willingness to be friendly with you a little better.

“I asked Katsuki for his life story,” you respond dryly, following him back to the generator.

Denki looks over his shoulder and laughs at you. “Did he tell you?”

You pause for a moment, watching as Denki unscrews something and pours the water in.

“Nope,” you say. “Not a thing.”

Click Here to go to the second chapter and find the rest of the series on ao3. The remainder will not be posted on tumlbr, but please feel free to reblog!

#bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #mha x reader #bakugou smut #bakugou x reader smut #mha smut #bakugou fanfiction #mha fanfiction #my hero academia #bakugou katsuki #apocalypse au #tw.violence #tw.blood #tw.loss of identity #tw.derealization #tw.depersonalization #tw.exhaustion #cal.writing #char.bakugou

687 notes · View notes