#first time we did it (since we don’t eat out loads) I was scared we didn’t pay the tip 😭😭

[arc-misadventures]

FMK Nora. Jaune/Ren/Oscar... Good luck

Nora II: FMK

Nora: Hmm… Well this is tricky…

Jaune: Well, I’m worried now…

Ren: You’re worried now?

Jaune: I’ve grown accustomed to, Nora’s antics. So, I don’t get as easily worried as I did before.

Ren: That makes sense. So, what’s so worry about her this time though?

Jaune: She’s thinking… About what I do not know, but that scares me. Nora, usually acts, and doesn’t overly plan out her actions. Sure there is some planning to her madness. But, nonetheless, when she puts her mind to it, she can create great things…

Ren: Or, destroy them with reckless abandon with ease…

Jaune: Precisely…

Oscar: …

Oscar: I-Is it always like this with, Nora…?

Ren: Yes, but you’ll get used to it eventually.

Oscar: Oh… Oh no…

Nora: Okay! I’ve got it!

Jaune: Yay! Now we can all die together!

Oscar: Haha! Very funny, Jaune.

JR: …

Oscar: V-Very funny, Jaune…?

Nora: Okay! First things first; I kill, Ren…

Jaune: What did you do?

Ren: Nothing, I didn’t do anything!

Jaune: Which is precisely what you did wrong!

Ren: There’s no way that’s why she’s so upset!

Nora: That’s exactly why I’m so upset you jerk!

Ren: Oh… Uhhh…?!

Oscar: Is this what you meant by fearing, Nora, Jaune?

Jaune: Oh, you’ll know when to fear, Nora boy. Oh you’ll know…

Oscar: O-Okay…

Nora: Okay… After that, I would fuck cute boy, Oz!

Oscar: W-W-WHAT?!

Nora: I’m gonna fuck him so hard, and rough he’ll be begging for more from his new, Mommy. I’ll ruin him for any other girl! So he’ll only be mine!!!

JR: …

Nora: When he’s legal.

Jaune: Oh, okay.

Ren: Seems reasonable.

Oscar: Are you kidding me?! She’s threatening to break me?!

Jaune: So you’d die death by snu snu. What’s not to like about that?

Oscar: Say what?!

Ren: Tis there not a more nobler way to go~?

Oscar: Are you guys planning my funeral?!

JR: Yes.

Ren: Joking aside, do you think, Nora, would break, Oscar if they did it?

Jaune: You were joking around? I was being serious: Of course she would break him like a twig of twigs!

Ren: Oh…

Oscar: I need an adult…

Ren: So, since, I get killed, for some reason… I guess that means you’re going to marry, Jaune?

Nora: Yes! I get to marry, Jaune, and I finally get to live out my life long dream!

Jaune: I thought her life long dream was dying under a tower of pancakes?

Ren: I thought so too, but this whole thing with, Oscar has thrown a grenade into that.

Oscar: So… Uhhh… what’s this dream y-you were talking about?

Nora: Well, if I marry, Jaune I get a new mom, and that that actually love me! And, I get a whole bunch of sisters in my life as well!

Ren: Oh, so she’s marrying you for your family.

Jaune: If that’s it, then I don’t mind. My family already loves her to bits. Hell if we didn’t go this route my mom would probably adopted her, you too if you want.

Ren: R-Really…?

Nora: Then, we would have loads of sex, and make a really, really big family! One that would rival, no surpass, Mom’s family size! And we would eat loads of pancakes, and live happily ever after!

Oscar: Oh, that sounds… nice?

Ren: I think you better go, and do that.

Jaune: Why: Because that sounds like a lovely idea, or because it would save, Oscar’s pelvis?

Oscar: My what?!

Ren: Mmmm… Both…?

Jaune: …

Jaune: Sure, why not. A moment, Nora?

Nora: Hmm? Need something, Fearless Lea… Whoa?! Hey, why are you picking me up?! Put me down!

Jaune: Nope.

Nora: Grrrr! Where are you taking me?!

Jaune: The bedroom.

Nora: What, why?!

Jaune: To consummate the marriage.

Nora: …

Nora: FUCK YEA!!!

Ren: (Sniff) There goes a real hero…

Oscar: Is it always like this with you guys?!

Ren: Yes, get used to it, or go mad from the insanity of it all.

Oscar: Oh…

Oscar: …

Oscar: Shit…

[marsgod]

hello cecilia!! how have u been!! it’s time for my monthly appearance

can i req kid! jamil somehow getting transported to the current world and is stuck in nrc for a good few days ? since crowley ever so GRACIOUSLY insisted that WE take care of him he just sticks besides us most of the time? jamil finds out too cause drama!!

(also i 100% believe jamil would’ve stuck his tongue out at present jamil after mc picks him up and plays with him. he’s just like that sometimes and jamils reaction would be funny)

Kid! jamil would be a shameless, envious little shit<3333 and he def would, he’d be that kid that sticks his tongue out + flips present jamil off behind mc’s back after being picked up

⇢ Child! Jamil x Gn! Reader

⇢Warnings; Platonic relationships. gn! reader, this is how i’d imagine meeting him would go + his impression of mc

Let’s be honest, you’re going to NRC, which means that you are swamped with many of any various possible work loads (which can be anything at this point). Knowing that now, on top of any and all of that, you have been so graciously volunteered (Not by your own will!) to take care of a child? You’re almost convinced Mr. Crowley is trying to pull excuses out of his ass to make you work..

You don’t know this kid- Or even how to take care of kids, like, in general! Sure, you may or may not’ve had some cousins and siblings that’d come around, but that’s not ‘having’ a child, that’s- That’s having someone that’s within your right to bully, but would absolutely tag team another bully with you. This, though, this is a whole ass child and you are a tired NRC student that just wants to pass classes and make it to the end the semester… Yeah, safe to say, you’re not pleased, even less so when you actually meet the kid for the first time!

When you’re set to pick up the kid from Crowley’s office (with the only info being given that his name was “Jamil”), upon opening the Principles door, you’re met with surprising amount of silence and Crowley sitting on a comfortable looking chair, looking fucking nervous. Sweating buckets, not even joking, you’re quite sure the room would flood, and the kid.. Was nowhere to be seen? Fucking wicked, did he get picked up by fantasy parents and adopted already?

Ah shit, never mind then, nope, not gone. Just, uh- Just sitting besides Crowley’s weirdly oversized desk, with some coloring books. God damn, that kid has pretty creepy eyes, or maybe you’re just starting to get scared from him staring into your everything.

You’re not sure but at this point in time? You’re either too scared or too tired to ask, you just wanna go and eat unhealthy cereal for dinner.

The meeting goes on, Crowley rants about how he would absolutely take care of the kid that popped up in his school, but with how much work he had, he just couldn’t. Which leads to him telling you that it was essential you take him with you, to not let any (major) harm come to Jamil.

Jamil was quiet, though, you would’ve assumed he was shy or nervous but he was intently staring at the both of you.. You wouldn’t describe his expression as nervous or intent, scared or whatnot, but he wouldn’t stop, and Jamil had this strange air of security that you couldn’t dream of having.

Jamil is reserved, much more than a kid would be, he doesn’t seem to be panicking but definitely isn’t comfortable. As much as he’s staring at you throughout you being in the office and discussing food and clothing, Jamil didn’t seem to quite process what was happening.

When the meeting had fortunately come to an end, an unnecessarily dragged out end but nonetheless, an end, Jamil only stood up with a huff, turning his head away from your outstretched hand. He didn't want to be here, he wanted his sister and his Mom, why couldn’t he be sent back? It couldn’t be that hard if he had come here, right?

Jamil felt his eyes burning and his throat hurt, albeit he stayed quiet and settled on hugging himself. It was boring here, and he hadn’t seen anyone else, and he’d have to stay with some stranger! There wasn’t much he could be described as besides ‘annoyed’ and cranky, crocodile tears refusing to stop building up until he was silently sniffling.

[ilovewriting06]

I Love Him- Part 6

It’s been three weeks since Steve and I filed for adoption and about a week ago they verified that we would indeed be her adoptive parents within a year. After we got the call we sat Lilly down and explained to her that if she wanted we would become her mommy and daddy for forever and she would be our daughter. I think Steve and I are still recovering from hearing lose at the scream that she let out before tackling us in a hug telling us how happy she is.

I throw a load of laundry into the washer before peaking into the living room to see Lilly coloring while rocking back and forth to the song playing on Looney Tunes before I slip into the kitchen to make us lunch before we go to get her haircut, something she’s been begging me take her to do ever since I got side bangs the other week.

I look up as I hear pitter patter of little feet followed by, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Look!” I smile and nod signaling her to continue. She handed me a crayon filled paper with three stick figures and a dog quite similar to the one hanging on our fridge, “I drew it for Daddy’s work cause he wanted one for there too!” I smile and smooth back her hair, “I’ll tell you what, after you get your haircut we can go see Daddy so you can give it to him.” She nods enthusiastically causing her pigtails to swing wildly causing me to chuckle, “First we have to eat lunch.”

I watch as the hair stylist gives Lilly a similar haircut to mine so that we can have matching side bangs. I grab my phone and walk a little ways away when it starts ringing, “Hey Danno what’s up?”

I hear him sigh and I tense, “Danny? Is Steve okay?”

I all but see his face when he exclaims, “Yeah yeah he’s fine! Sorry I didn’t mean to scare you it’s just..” he pauses and I feel my heart race at the possibilities, “It’s just what Danny?”

“Catherine is back.” I bite my lip, “Catherine as in his ex Catherine?”

“Yes.” I furrow my eyebrows as worry that Steve has been in touch with her and not told me floods my system, “Did he know she was coming back?”

“No, he was just as surprised as us when she walked in.” Any doubt or fear I had washed away and I sigh lightheartedly, “Okay.” I visualize Danny throwing his hands around as he yells, “Okay! That’s it!? Just okay!? You know you’re allowed to be the girlfriend that freaks out you’re literally pregnant with his children and watching your guys’ daughter freak out or something!” I chuckle, “Danny, relax, I don’t care.”

“Yo-you don’t care? You just gonna let her march right back up in here and steal him? Because that’s what she does Y/N and then she gets another streak of adventure and off she goes leaving a broken and battered Steve behind.” I sigh, “Danny, relax okay I trust Steve. He hasn’t been in touch with her since well before me and him started dating and she’s only been mentioned in passing when he was telling some story about his time in the service and she’s barely mentioned then just that she was on the team or at a meeting or something.”

I hear him take deep breaths as he calms, “Yeah, yeah you’re right, our Steve wouldn’t do that.” I laugh, “Yes Danny our Steve would never do that. Now, can I go back to watching my daughter get her haircut for the first time without you freaking out in my ear?”

When I get off the phone I walk back over to Lilly as the hairdresser finishes the final touches when my phone pings, new text message. I unlock my phone to see a text from Steve and I smile at the fact he told me even though he didn’t have to.

Hubby 💕- Hey babe just wanted to let you know Catherine’s back. I don’t know why yet and I’d call but I don’t want to ruin your mommy daughter day with Lil.

Y/N- Hey baby, yeah I know. My pessimist of a brother already called and ranted about all the worst case scenarios.

Y/N- Oh! And your daughter has something to give you and I told her we would bring it by after she got her haircut. Is that okay?

Hubby 💕- Ahh yes good ol’ Danny. Of course that’s okay, I miss my girls anyways….what is it?

Y/N- See now I can’t tell you that, it’ll ruin the surprise

Hubby 💕- Oh you know how I love surprises 😉

Y/N- Steven, behave

Hubby 💕- Okay fine 😔 I gotta go, see you when you get here tell Lilly daddy love her

Y/N- 🙁

Hubby 💕- What?

Y/N- I don’t get an I love you?

Hubby 💕- Oh baby trust me, you’ll get that tonight 😘

Y/N- I can’t wait 🥰

Y/N- We love you too

I look up as Lilly calls me, “Mommy look! We match!” I look in the mirror and lower my face to be side by side with hers as I smile, “I see.” I place a kiss on her cheek before straightening up, “Ready to go give daddy his gift?”

I follow behind a running Lilly as I walk the halls of 5-0, being four months and some odd weeks pregnant definitely puts a damper on your energy level. Grace and Tani now know the gender of the babies but are remaining tight lipped and have made it clear we have to wait for the party.

I open the door for Lilly and watch her fly into the room, “DADDY! DADDY!”

Catherine POV

I dove at the opportunity to go back to Hawaii, it’s been years since I last saw Steve and if I’m being honest I miss him. I just hope he doesn’t have someone waiting for him at home.

As I’m talking to the team giving them a run down I look up as a girl comes racing in the room yelling daddy. I feel my heart stop and my stomach drop when Steve bends down and picks up the excited girl, “There’s my princess!” I look back up when a woman walks in and feel my body tense at her pregnant belly.

I watch as different emotions swirl around in my stomach as Steve smiles and places a sweet kiss to her lips before the girl holds up a picture, “Look! I drew it for your work.” Steve smiles a smile I’ve never seen on him before as he shifts her to his hip and takes the drawing, “Wow, look at that guys, I’m raising an artist!” He sets it on the table as everyone looks at it and smiles and I see three stick figures and a dog with Daddy, Mommy, Lilly, and Eddie written above the figures. Lilly, that must be her name.

I force a smile as the woman looks at me with a welcoming smile that appears to be genuine, “Hi, I’m Y/N it’s nice to meet you.” She holds out her hand and I hesitate before I take it, “Catherine, but I think you already know that.” I didn’t mean to sound snarky it just came out. Y/N maintains her smile, I have to hand it to her she knows how to handle herself, “Yes, I do know who you are.”

Steve cuts in and wraps an arm around her, “Catherine, this is my girlfriend and Danny’s sister.” He tickles Lilly’s stomach as she wiggles and giggles, “And this is our daughter Lilly.” Daughter, for some reason I can’t digest that the man I once shared a bed with is not only seeing someone and smiles at her in a way he never smiled at me, but also has a daughter and another one on the way.

Steve looks at me again, “And I’m sure you noticed that Y/N has a baby, or in this case babies on board,” with a proud smile he adds, “We’re having twins.” Y/N leans into him with a smile, “Alright Steve stop boasting about your family.” He rolls his eyes playfully, “I can’t help it babe, you’re the most important things and people that have ever been in my life. I’m simply being a natural husband and father.”

Most important people he’s ever had in his life? Now that stings. Y/N laughs, “Sir you have yet to place a ring on my finger when that happens you can call yourself husband until then you have to live with boyfriend.” Steve chuckles and kisses her cheek, “Soon baby, soon.” She chuckles, “I can’t wait, anyways,” she turns to me, “It’s lovely to meet you but I have to go pee, the twins are highly active on the bladder today.”

Everyone laughs as she heads to the bathroom and Lilly pokes Steve’s cheek, “Yes?” She bounces in his arms, “Shoulders.” He laughs as he picks her up until she’s sitting on his shoulders and she hugs his neck with a giggle.

She looks at me with a skeptical face before loudly whispering to Steve, “She looks mean.” I bite the inside of my cheek, am I really letting that much of my emotions show? Come on Cath choke it down.

Steve kindly reprimands her telling her that’s not nice and that she should apologize. She looks at me before apologizing and sulking on Steve’s shoulders. The man I’ve learned is named Junior walks over, “Here kiddo I’ll take you to the vending machine and get you a snickers bar, if it’s alright with your dad.”

Lilly sits up and looks down at Steve, “Pwease Daddy.” He chuckles, “Alright you can go with Junior, and remember to say thank you.”

When Junior and Lilly disappeared I look at Steve and clear my throat, “So, uh, how long have you and Y/N been together?” He hums, “A little more that nine months.” I look at him confused before glancing where Lilly had gone. He must realize because he clarifies the situation, “She’s not ours by blood, Y/N found her at a gas station alone a little more than a month ago and we found out she was being abused by her dad and he was her only family. We took her in and just last week we got the news that the adoption papers are officially being processed and she’ll legally be our daughter in about a year.”

I bite my lip and nod before excusing myself to go to the bathroom not even registering that Y/N was there.

When I get in the bathroom Y/N looks up from the sink surprised, “Umm, hi.” My eyes widen, “I’m sorry I forgot you were in here.” She glances at me and her eyes soften, “It’s okay, I know this can’t be easy.”

I furrow my eyebrows at how nice she’s being, “I don’t get it.” She looks at me confused, “Don’t get what?” I gesture to her, “You, why are you being so nice to me. I know you know there was more to this visit than just another case.” She dries her hands before licking her lips, “Yeah, I do. But that’s not a reason to be a bitch. You’re his ex, so what? Is it awkward? Yeah it is, but I’m not threatened by you. I’m not trying to sound bitchy and possessive but I know Steve, and I know the feelings he had for you were long gone before me and him met. I don’t hate you but I also don’t like you but it’s not because you two used to date. It’s the fact that you left him heartbroken time and time again.”

I look down and she continues, “I will say however, if you so much as flirt with him knowing he has three children and a girlfriend, we will have a problem. And don’t think just because I’m pregnant I can’t get mean, I may not be able to beat you in a hand to hand fight but I sure as hell can rip you a new one if you catch my drift. And don’t think you can try something and I won’t find out because he will tell me I knew you were here before I got here he texted me and told me. That’s not why I’m here though, Lilly was so proud of her drawing that she had to give it to him as soon as she could.”

I nod understanding that she’s marking her territory and making it clear that any intentions I came her with better be left at the front door. She smiles and lays a hand on my shoulder, “That being said, I understand that this hurts and honestly I can’t say I’m sorry because I know how much you hurt him but I also understand that you did love him. You didn’t love him enough to stay but you still loved him. So I really am sorry.” I wipe away a tear and nod, “Don’t be, just promise you won’t hurt him. I’ve done that enough and he didn’t deserve it.”

She nods, “I promise.”

Y/N’s POV

After my little heart to heart with Catherine I go back out to see Lilly scarfing down a snickers no doubt a gift from Uncle Junior or Aunt Tani and Steve laughing at something Lou said. He looks up, “Hey babe you okay?” I nod and hug him, “Yeah I’m good.”

He pulls away, “Are you okay if we help her? If not I understand and I’ll tell her no.” I put my hands on his chest and shake my head, “No, help her, but you and I do need to talk.” His eyes widen as he tenses and I chuckle, “Relax, you aren’t in trouble.” He sighs and relaxes, “Oh thank god.”

Lou laughs, “You have officially reached that stage, scared to death you did something wrong because she said she needs to talk and in reality she just wants your help deciding on what dress to wear.” I laugh and Steve nods. I pat his chest, “Well this is not about dresses, this is about bedrooms.” He looks at me in question. I glance at Lilly to see her in another world before I continue, “I was wondering if I could clean out Mary’s old bedroom and we can fix it up for Lilly, kinda like a birthday gift?”

Lilly’s birthday is actually the day the gender reveal party is scheduled. Lilly knew when her birthday is but she’s never had a party so we decided the gender reveal party would double as a surprise birthday party for her. Steve nods, “Yeah, I was actually thinking about that, it’s going to need some love because it’s been a storage room for god knows how long.”

I nod, “I know but I like painting and decorating so I won’t mind.” He kisses my forehead and nods, “Junior and I will start cleaning it out tonight once Lilly’s in bed.” Junior nods, “I don’t really have a choice but I’m more than willing to help.”

I smile as Lilly curls up on my lap as we watch Shrek, “When will Daddy be home?” I kiss her hair before wrapping my arms around her a little tighter, “I’m not sure sweetheart but I’m sure he’ll be here before you wake up tomorrow.” She snuggles into my chest as best as she can with her siblings being in the way, “Can I go to bed now?”

She is such a daddy’s girl, “Honey it’s only five in the evening, how about this, when the movies over we can go out and look for seashells and play in the water.” She nods her head, “Okay.”

A/N: The next one will be the gender reveal party/Lilly’s birthday party!

Tag List:

@djs8891 @kati-1997

[anonymouse1312437]

American Amongst The Brits (Chapter 2)

Chapter two  

I couldn’t help but toss and turn all night. This was a new place for me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how they said I was going to have to figure it out on my own before I was going to know what they meant. What else could my mother have been that had to be found out by my own self. Why does everyone know what my mother's wand and broom look like? Surely, she could not have been that kind to everyone. Maybe she did something memorable. Also why did she have to hide me? I have so many questions that I don’t think they are going to have answers for. Such as why did they mention she sent us away. My dad did not come with me. I was sent to my aunt's and for some reason and she was in America and not here. None the less the state of Oregon. Who fucking chooses to live there? I mean it's depressing for one thing. I mean it does kind of fit the woman of my nightmares. 

I don’t think anything could truly scare me but, I am unsure.  

“Y/n it’s time to get up darling.” Mrs. Weasley said touching my shoulder. I immediately jumped up and looked at her with terror in my eyes.  

“Oh dear. Are you alright? I didn’t mean to startle you.” She said.  

“I am sorry. Yes, let’s go.” I pointed my new wand at me and refreshed my clothes with a tidy spell. She smiled at me.  

“You truly are a dear. No need to apologize, it was my mistake. Come along now deary.” She said. We walked out close together and she stopped at the table and took the apple from the center of it and handed it to me.  

“Here you need to eat something before you get onto the train.” Mrs. Weasley said watching me as I took a bite. This didn’t sit well in my stomach. It has been a while since I have had anything to eat. I didn’t want to tell her that though. I know she was just trying to be kind. She is a mother after all. I think that is supposed to be in their nature.

I didn’t realize I was on autopilot while in my own thoughts and we were already at the train station.  

“Alright Harry and Ron you make sure she gets through in between the two of you.” She said and waved goodbye to us. She walked away and the boys were pushing their carts of all their stuff. I didn’t have enough for a real suitcase, so I just had a backpack filled with some clothes and my bathroom necessities. I am sure I can do some shopping in town over there if I need something else. Harry had my books in his suitcase. He said he had some spare room, and he didn’t mind helping. It was very kind of him. He seems nice. I hope it stays that way.  

“Alright, you are going to count to three and then run directly into the pillar and that will take us to our platform.” Harry said. Ron just ran so I counted to three and then ran. I didn’t even bother to question what I was doing. I saw all of the Weasley’s cross through so it’s not like I was the first one. Once I made it through, I moved because if I only had to the count of three Harry would surely push me down on accident. I was right because right after I stepped aside Harry came barreling through the wall. He set his stuff down next to the rest of the luggage being loaded on it and escorted me with him onto the train. Right away I felt all the eyes jump to me. I must look like a deer in headlights.  

“Maybe I could give you all some time to talk. I know me coming might have disrupted your group so I will go and find somewhere hopefully private to sit.” I said. Before Harry had a chance to say anything I moved away from him towards the back of the train. I saw two trolleys left, both had someone in them but at least it was one person in either.  

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door to the left side of the train. Whoever was in there motioned for me to enter.  

“Sorry to bother you. I was just hoping to find somewhere away from everyone to sit. Is it okay to join you?” I asked and was met by the intense glare of very blue eyes. They were a bit captivating.  

“I beg your pardon?” He asked.  

“Oh, I am sorry I don’t want to trouble you.” I said.  

“No just you are American, yes? Why are you here if you are American?” He asked.  

“May I sit?” I asked again.  

“Yes, for now.” He said looking me over. “Where is your uniform girl?” He asked.  

“Alright I ended up here by accident and ended up finding out I have godparents. They called the school yesterday and I guess they made room for me to join at the last minute. I no longer have a home in America. I am not sure if I ever really had one there to begin with. Apparently, my mother kind of just made me disappear after I was born. I have no clue where to obtain the uniform so I guess I will have to find out whenever we get to this wizarding school.” I said. It came out a little longer than I expected it to, but he seemed rather amused by my answer.  

“Did you just tell me that you were essentially abandoned by your family?” he said with a wicked grin across his face.  

“Something tells me I should have kept that to myself.” I mumbled and looked down. I sat my bag next to me and tried to settle in, but he continued to stare at me.  

“I am Lucius Malfoy. I am Draco’s father.” He said.  

“Cool never heard of either of you. I am y/n.” I said and he scoffed.  

“You have never heard of us?” He said now appearing annoyed with a wrinkle in between his forehead.  

“If you continue to stare at me like that you will force your body to age and poorly, I might add.” I said. He lightened up and looked slightly amused by what I said.  

“Well, you seem about as friendly as I do.” He said and looked away from me. He was rather entertaining.  

“How old might you be y/n” He asked.  

“I am eighteen. You?” I asked and he again smiled.  

“Don’t worry about my age Darling.” He said laughing a little.  

“What is with everyone calling anybody they want darling here. I can tell you must be at the ripe age of forty with the damn word.” I said  

“Well, well, careful. You have gotten awfully close.” He laughed. “Do you know what house you have been sorted into?” He asked.  

“I just got here yesterday. No I don’t. I am sorry for being short but, I am tired I did not sleep well last night at all.” I said.  

“Sorry, get some rest. Do you want me to wake you when they bring the food cart around?” He asked.  

“Don’t bother. I have nothing to me right at this moment. I am still questioning if any of my cards are going to work here.” I said and leaned against the trolley’s wall.  

“Alright then. Have a nice rest.” He said and went back to reading his book.  

The train was nice and steady so I was able to rest a bit. That was until the temperature dropped intensely. I was shivering and opened my eyes to see Mr. Malfoy cuddled up into his cape and asleep as well. He really doesn’t look that bad. He is rather dreamy. I looked over to the window towards the door of the trolley and everything felt freezing. I saw something floating around and looking at each trolley. Something opened mine and I looked down. I felt something on the side of my face and I looked up at it and it started to feel like it was inhaling my soul. No. I can’t die. I won’t. However, before I managed to grab out my wand Mr. Malfoy had already startled away and yelled out “Expecto Patronum!” It disappeared before my eyes. I looked over at him and he held his arms out and came to my side of the trolley.  

“Darling are you alright?” He asked.  

“What the fuck was that?” I asked.  

“Watch your tongue young lady. That was a dementor. They are probably looking for that Potter kid again. He is nothing but trouble. Stay clear of him if you want to survive Hogwarts dear.” He said now his arms wrapped around me.  

“Please remove yourself from me Mr. Malfoy.” I said. He cleared his throat and backed off of me and put himself back at the opposite side.  

“Very well. You just looked frightened. I just wanted to maybe calm you.” He said.  

“Thank you but, that is unneccesary. Thank you for sending that thing away from me though.” I said. He gave me a weird look and then his lips twitched into a small smile.  

“Father, can you believe Potter is telling people that a dementor came onto the train and tried to take his soul again?” A blonde haired boy came into the trolley. He kind of resembled a darker toe head from america but, snoppy.  

“Who is this father?” He asked.  

“Y/n, this is my son Draco. Draco you will see to it that she gets to the dining hall without getting lost. If she is to need help at all you will assist her.” Mr. Malfoy said while staring at me.  

“That is kind of you but it is unneccessary.” I said.  

“Nonsense. The school is massive. You will get lost surely. Draco can help. He wouldn’t mind would you Draco?” He looked to his son.  

“I suppose not. Nice to meet you y/n.” He said scanning his eye over me. Draco sat next to his father and started to stare at my chest.  

“Would you like a picture Draco? I mean you are staring aweful hard.” I said taunting him. He was not my type but, it wouldn’t be hard to befriend him right? 

“I would love one.” He appeared to get excited. I scoffed and crossed my arms. Pig. His father smiled and tried to hide the laughter creeping out of his throat. Only moments later the train came back to a stop and the two stood up.  

“Do you have any bags dear?” Mr. Malfoy asked.  

“Just the backpack.” I said. He pursed his lips and nodded.  

“Ladies first.” He said and motioned for me to exit the trolley. I stood up and made my way out of the trolley and off the train. I was going to run over to Harry and them but, they were already pretty far away so I slowed down. I at this point felt like I had no choice but to wait for Draco if I was going to get anywhere. Sure enough he walked up to me and in tandem we made our way to the Dining Hall.  

“Draco Malfoy. Please bring y/n up here to us please.” The person in the middle of the table said.  

“This is Dumbledore. He is our headmaster here. Professor McGonagall is next to him and will probably be who you turn to if you need anything.” Draco said as he walked me up and past everyone in the dining hall and they all turned to look at Draco and I. Dumbledore stood up and had a hat in his possession. It looked weird.  

“What is that?” I asked.  

“It’s the sorting hat.” Draco said as we made our final steps up to the table.  

“Hello Ms. y/n y/l/n, it has come to my understanding that you have very different customs over in America so I would like you to put on the hat and let it tell you what house you should be put in.” I looked at him confused but he put the hat over my head and the hat made some grumbling noises.  

“I- I have only seen this one other time in my life. I can’t put you there. You don’t belong in Ravenclaw. No not Gryffindor. Hm, Slytherin? No.” It said still riffling through.  

“I have got it. No where. You do not belong. You are different.” It said and Dumbledore looked at me. His eyes widened a bit.  

“It has to be somewhere.” Professor McGonagall said.  

“Where do you want to be?” It asked me.  

“Anywhere. I want to belong.” I thought to myself.  

“You wont belong anywhere. You will always be different.” It said.  

“Surely, that is not true.” Professor McGonagall said.  

“Green I see so much green, you must be a Slytherin.” The hat said.  

“Very well that is where you shall go then. Slytherin.” The hat made the statement and Dumbledore looked at Professor McGonagall and she nodded to him as if they had their own conversation in their heads.  

“Come now, have a seat at the table. Sit next to Malfoy for now and then I will have someone show you to the room.” She said. I followed her order and went and sat down next to Draco. He tried to talk to me but, I pushed around the food that was on the plate in front of me. It looked good and smelled good but, I don’t think I can eat it. The apple I ate for Mrs. Weasley was still making my stomach hurt.  

“One thing you should know is Snape is the worst.” Draco said.  

“Who?” I asked and then he pointed behind him to the long black haired stoic man at the table of professors. Oh my. He is gorgeous to look at. The crooked nose. The snarl on his face was even handsome. The deepset anger presented on his face appeared permanent. He looked at me and gave me a look that made me turn my head away from him and redirect my attention to the food.  

“He looks like he hates life.” I mumbled.  

“He makes the rest of us feel that way.” Draco said.  

“Your dad is something else Draco. I mean he has kind of a big head.” I said.  

“Yes, that he does.”  

He started to eat his food and every so often would look at me as I pushed the food around the plate.  

“Ms. Y/l/n please follow me. Your sleeping quarters are in the dungeon.” Excuse me. They are where? Draco’s eyes widened and he gripped onto my wrist as I stood up. He pulled me down to where my ear was next to his mouth.  

“Do not wander at night. That place scares the life out of everyone at night.” He said and then released me.  

I stood up and readjusted my shirt and followed him out of the room. The dark haired tall professor made strides towards the stairs.  

“Alright Professor. No offense but, your legs are about as long as my body. I am short and 5’2 that means I do not walk nearly as fast as you. Will you please slow down?” I asked.  

“Learn to walk faster.” He said not turning around. Alright he was indeed an asshole. But, he was a good looking one and he sure looked good walking away from me.  

“I suggest you figure out how to keep the pace or you will get lost and I will not try and find you.” He said and with that I started to run up to him.  

“No running inside.” He said and I mentally picturing throwing a book at his head. Shit my books. Harry has them. I hope I run into him before any classes tomorrow.  

“Move.” I heard Snapes voice become louder as I turned a corner I saw him go down. He stopped in front of the stair case.  

“Fine I will slow down this once. Do not get lost in this area. Most students only come down here for the Dark Arts and potions classes but, that won’t be until the afternoons now.” He said and before I started to descend the stairs he put his arm in front of me.  

“Wait.” He said and then the stairs began to move. Oh hell. This is going to make me sick. I felt dizzy so I sat on the stairs and he peered down at me.  

“Are you alright Ms. Y/l/n?” He asked. It didn’t sound like he genuinely wanted to know.  

“I’m just dizzy. This school is a lot. It is very different from mine. Our stairs, well, they did not move sir.” I said and he looked at me and scoffed.  

“All you american’s are outdated.” He said and drew his eyes forward off of me.   “You all seem to have a pattern here to.” I said.  

“Excuse me?” He said. The stairs came to a halt and he grabbed my arm and helped me off the stairs.  

“You all have no problem expressing your opinions. Whether its over the accent or what you think America is like.” I said and looked down. I wouldn’t be American if my mother hadn’t made me disappear. He walked us to a very dark hallway. Nothing was lighting the hallway and at this point I was nervous.  

“Right this way.” He said ignoring everything i just said. He slowed down significantly but kept his distance from me. He showed me to a room that had my name on it.  

“It appears you have your own room. No one to share with. I-” He said and then peered down and noticed there was a light on in the room.  

“Stand back please.” He said and then guarded himself with his wand as he opened the door to the room and saw a blonde almost silver haired tall man in my room.  

“Lucius Malfoy?” Professor Snape asked a bit stunned.

“Hello Severus. I met ms. Y/l/n on the train ride here. Draco already informed me she was a slytherin so I thought she would need some uniforms. I brought her some as well as the required books. No need for her to fall behind.” He said and peered out into the hallway and made eye contact with me. I smiled at him a little. When did Draco have time to tell his dad that? It just happened only moments ago.  

“Well you should go.” Snape said.  

“Nonsense. I would like to talk to her for a moment before leaving. I will come see you in a minute Severus. I know you are just across the hall.” He said. Now I am a bit intimidated. The dark haired hot professor was across the hall from me. Does he live here? Why would anyone choose to live in a school?  

“Very well, I will see you in a minute Lucius.” He said and walked out of the room and I stepped inside and closed the door.  

“How can I help you Mr. Malfoy?” I asked.  

[batkidsandco]

I'm Counting On You To Be My Wings And My Eyes

Chapter 2

Bruce frowned at the screen as the loading symbol continued to spin. This is taking too long he thought as he lowered himself into the chair. Since they’d brought Tim home Bruce had spent every spare moment looking for Dollmaker. Not that he had as much spare time now a days. Glancing at the clock on the screen he sighed and stood back up. He’d been working all night and now it was morning. Stifling a yawn he made his way out of the Batcave and upstairs to Tim’s room. *** Tim was lying in bed his eyes wide open and his head turned towards the door. He’d heard someone approaching his room and though he couldn’t see he suspected it was day time.

‘Hey Timmy boy ready to get up?’ he heard Bruce’s voice from the doorway. Tim nodded. ‘OK and do you need cleaning up first?’ this time a shake. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful for this choice of wording everyone seemed to have settled on. On one hand he didn’t think he would be comfortable being asked if his diaper needed changing. But on the other hand it felt like everyone was avoiding saying anything that would force them to fully face the reality of their situation.

‘Alright I’m going to pick you up now.’ He felt his bed sheets being pulled back before he was lifted off the bed before being placed back down on top of the covers. Once they’d decided on what Tim was going to wear that day, Bruce would give him two options for his top and pants which Tim would pick by clicking his tongue once or twice, it was time to get him dressed for the day. Carefully maneuvering his arms Bruce pulled his t-shirt off of him then his Pajama pants before pulling his clothes on. Once he was dressed Bruce picked him up again and placed him in his wheelchair before putting his socks on followed by his shoes.

‘Right I’ll just give your hair a tidy and then we can get you some breakfast.’ Tim felt his chair being pushed towards what he knew was his bathroom. There he heard Bruce sit himself down on the chair before hearing the sound of something being run through his hair. Closing his eyes he focused on the sound and the feeling of Bruce’s rough scarred hand on top of his own. Tim knew he wasn’t a touchy person, or a talkative one so he was very grateful that when it was just the two of them he made the effort to talk to him more, or even just hold his hand like this. Tim couldn’t stand it when he couldn’t hear or feel anyone in the room with him. It was funny before he’d loved his own company every now and then. Now it scared him, made him feel even more vulnerable than he already did in a crowded room.

‘I’m going to find Dollmaker.’ He heard Bruce mutter though Tim wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or thinking out loud. ‘I’m going to find him, make him fix this, fix what he’s done. And if he won’t or god forbid can’t… Well I don’t have to kill him to make him sorry.’ Was there any fixing this? Would someone like Dollmaker every be sorry he’d hurt someone, anyone the way he had Tim? Probably not but until they knew for certain he’d let Bruce keep telling him there was. Lifting his head up to where the voice was coming from and gave a small smile. As he did so Bruce lifted Tim’s hand and placed it on his forehead.

‘Now let’s get you something to eat, before Alfred comes looking for the both of us.’

[handelplayssims]

How many days has it been in this household? Five? Well we definitely haven’t finished the aspiration yet so let’s continue onwards with Gunther! And it’s Spring Day!

Spring Day is basically Easter. I was basically trying to think up of major holidays around where I live and it is a culturally Christian one where Easter is a day off of work. Or a bank holiday around that time, at the very least. So Sims get a day off for today, convenient for those who actually work this holiday.

I always feel like I should have four traditions but the only thing I can think of is visiting a Holiday ceremony and I feel awkward because with most Sims I play with, I feel they are not very religious. The only real big thing is that, outside of the religious aspects growing up, was that my extended family had a meet up to eat and have that egg hunt. And I don’t think that’s quite universal. Anyway, in Gunther’s case, this isn’t really a big holiday in his mind. Nothing particularly outstanding and all that business. We could at least make a big breakfast! ...but we don’t really have anyone to share it with.

Not feeling up for a grand breakfast so we’ll go with a normal omlet. Gunther’s whim is to go and cloudgaze with Arun Bheeda, which, eh, sure but it’s rainy here in Windenburg. Let’s go see if it’s any bit sunnier in San Myshuno.

...it’s raining there as well. HA-RUMPH. Time to pull up my location proxmity document for any ideas on hopefully partially sunny weather. Yes I am that big of a stickler on my cloudgazing.

...Evergreen Harbor is windy. Close enough! Anyway, I did some light chatting with Arun about whom he was and what he did for a living before gazing at those clouds. Or rather, glancing up at the clear sky but meh. Anyway, cloudgazing is a passive way to gain friendship with others and a popular one for gaining friendship quick, since you just pop yourself down and gain those friendship points. Though the best way to gain friendship? Challenge someone to chess and let them casually talk. The near cheaty way though, is via just taking pictures together, as each one gives a nice relationship boost. I don’t like using it much, personally.

Anyway, we’re at the maker space in Evergreen Harbor so I figured, hey, why not actually take a look at the local crafting stations and see if any of them appeal to Gunther. We have woodworking, candle-making, a recycler and a fabrication station. Perhaps I would fabricate more but when I think about making your own furniture, I think about woodworking first. ...plus I’m not that big of a fan of the fabricated style.

Juice making does actually feel like it’d be something Gunther would be interested in. So real quick, I have him purchase some apples from the general gifts section and have him have at it! You just load the ingredients and then it’ll take some time for it to finish so I just let Gunther wander off and chat with whomever he wished. Soon he enjoyed the fruits of his labor! Quite literally!

And soon I actually had people swarm Gunther and realize...oh yeah he’s moderately famous. He has fans. I signed an autograph for one. It was also bugging me that Gunther had done nothing whatsoever for the holiday so I sent him egg hunting in the local bushes to fulfil that holiday requirement. And then I sent him out for a jog because...his stomach was getting a bit pudgy. Gotta look lean and trim and not slobbish! And then a chat with the Flower Bunny that was on this lot to fulfil that holiday requirement a little.

A return home to take a bath and to purchase a brand new personal juice fizzer! We’ll see if Gunther continues making his artisanal juice drinks. For now, he wants to write another book! I’m going for more poetry. It’s titled, ‘Fizzy Fizz Fuzz.’ And just as I set down, Guidry pops on up. Welp. Ghosties time!

I see angry specter’s pop up when someone wanted to drop in...and it was the spectres scaring off a vampire! They do that. Prevent those vampires from making housecalls...for YOUR BLOOD. If they actually sucked your blood in the first place, grumble. So while the spectres are scaring off the vampire, might as well have Gunther get to know Guidry some more...and he’s a foodie! Gunther likes making food so hey! Now he’s a lot more interested in this weirdly romantic ghost.

Also I tried giving an apple fizz juice to a spectre, and it still didn’t like it. Welp. We’re going to have to actually do a séance or something at this point. Anyway, I had Gunther get a late-night dinner and he dropped to chat with Guidry so I had him ask for advice on being scared and got recommended the Sacred Candles. They’re a thing you can get either by getting wax from specters or directly from the reward store. And so I decided to pick some up for Gunther’s bedroom and shed where the séance table is. For the mood. Because they will extinguish after awhile!

And with that I finally send Gunther off to bed, after trying to calm down just a little bit.

Neighborhood Watch!

Laurie Watt in the Watt household has died. Laurie thought she could conquer a mountian, but the mountain conquered her.

Frances Kerns in the Kerns household has died. Frances blushed so much she exploded.

Newcrest: The Rios household has moved in.

[mystomachfeelsawful]

I turned 30 this year. My brother (who is literally getting ready to plan out his life as a father lol) told me that 30 was going to change me. That I was going to transform at 30. I scoffed at this. Ridiculous. 

I feel like a real artist. For the first time in, literally forever. 

I gigged so much in 2022. I directed 5 plays and 4 workshops and had an additional 3 where I was a playwright, each on a scale I’d never dreamed of. I finished first drafts of three musical theatre books, a whole complete draft of Woking Phoenix, did my first tour and won a sparkly trophy.  

I’ve never worked this much in my life. At the end of 2019, I was getting ready to direct at a community theatre with a leadership team that frankly, didn’t want me there. I was barely making ends meet financially (though I had convinced myself otherwise) and was working a catering job where my favourite supervisor was quickly becoming a Ben Shapiro “centrist” stan. So yeah, I dunno, success.

But I think somewhere along the way, I realized that I think, for maybe the first time, I needed to work on myself. Beyond me as an artist. On my 30th birthday, my summer roommate Thomas and I decided to have a dumpling party for me. We invited a bunch of people over to make dumplings at my house, friends, students and just have a birthday party. I don’t usually host parties, or really host anything aside from theatre things. I haven’t had a real birthday party for just friends since I was a kid. 

A whole bunch of people showed up. Like, lots of people. And we kept making dumplings, frying them, eating them. Just a bunch of buds, former students, friends. And I just felt really loved. Felt really taken care of.

And I think, I realized that this was a part of my life I was missing - like living a more full life meant more than just making art I believed in. Mind, you, I think me feeling success as a theatre artist was the catalyst for this, as I think I had convinced myself in my twenties that I could not be happy unless I had achieved career success first (which stems back to a lot of other things), but yeah. I think Adam was right. Something did change.

Here’s some things that happened this year.

1 - I taught and directed at two theatre schools - the University of Toronto Missisauga and Toronto Metropolitan University. Both Hookman and Servant were two of the largest projects I’ve ever worked on in terms of scale - a far cry from the fringe shows I’m used to working on. I got white models, a woodshop was working on the project, people would show me samples of fabrics and prints before rehearsals. I had a moment during the tech of Servant where I saw Sarah’s set load in and I got emotional. I wasn’t getting heatstroke in a garage. I was directing a real show with real moving parts in a non-festival setting.

More importantly, I was able to direct on my own terms (more on this in the next point). I always resented the theatre school guest director who flew in from somewhere exotic, spoke down to the students and then flew away - I always resented the guest director that students were scared of. So I really tried to treat the students like they were professionals on my indie productions, with the same level of scrappy tenacity and being really honest when things weren’t working without making them feel shame. 

Teaching also presented some challenges - especially that of balancing pedagogy and directing. How do you nurture students while also giving them a sense of rigor? How do you adapt to folks who aren’t benefitting/don’t work with your process? How do you deal with class dynamics that can exist outside and inside a room? I learned a lot from both experiences and am excited to use what I learned in Winnipeg when I fly out in two months(!). I take teaching really seriously because my first theatre school teachers failed me (in both crushing my sense of belief in myself and feeling like I belonged in this industry). It’s our job as educators to not only give students rigor, but a sense that they can do this if they have strong process. Hungry to get back in the ring.

2 - I put my demons to rest at TMU. I feel every year I end up talking about Ryerson and how hurt I was, etc. Never did I think I’d be directing there so soon in my career, and never did I think I’d be directing a dream show there.

I read Hookman early in pandemic and immediately fell in love with it as a script. It was wild, violent and had a deeply moving core. Also, it seemed like it was an impossible play on the indie scale I usually work at. How do you do a fight in a moving car onstage? How can characters get stabbed and profusely bleed - with actual stage blood. Hookman felt like a project I’d work on when I was well into my “career” and could find a theatre that could fully back in.

Much to my surprise, Hookman happened earlier than I thought. 

Walking outside RTS (rip the old building) has always given me a sense of small dread. It represents a journey I wasn’t able to finish, one I desperately wanted to finish at the time, but was told by the faculty (repeatedly) that I should leave. As immature as this is, I never got to do a fourth year show, I never got to even speak in class (the acting class in the first semester is one where you have to be silent), so the school has always existed as a weird mark of failure for me. I was kind of worried I’d be triggered going back there. 2/3 of the faculty that sat on my panel as I was told to leave (and then told that I could use the yoga I learned to lose weight in my real life) were still teaching there. 

I set up protocols. Those folks weren’t allowed in my rehearsal room. They weren’t allowed to email me, etc. I wanted to make sure that the room was a safe space for me in returning back to a site that’s haunted me for the last 12 years.

I didn’t need those protocols. What I got was a process where I met incredible collaborators and where we all got to put up our best work in the hottest rehearsal space I’ve ever worked in (not sexually. thermally. 370 was a sauna and I have no idea how Desmond fought in what was essentially a full morph suit every rehearsal). A process where the students fought for me as much as I fought for them. A process where, I think, we all left as stronger artists.

As we all sat in the basement of the creative school after our show (and the subsequent quasi-techie dance that followed), and we kind of all cried together and shared stories of how proud of each other we all were, I kind of felt my RTS demons leave me. My closure toward RTS wasn’t destroying the school or cancelling my problematic teachers, it was being the leader I didn’t have when I was there. Someone who pushed, but also encouraged students to be great artists, that even if the run/work wasn’t strong that day, it was still always achievable. Where we could laugh at failure openly and view success as not an end destination, but another thread to rediscover in the run. Where they didn’t have to leave the program with a big chip on their shoulder, but with work everyone was genuinely proud of.

I feel really grateful to have the TMU experience that I did. I feel I can walk past the Creative School with a wonderful sense of closure. I had my fourth year show, but it was on my terms and put the students first. And no letter or probationary status can take that away from me.

Also, if you want me to vouch for any of my students at UTM or TMU, shoot me a line. Wild about them and all of their work. 

3 - Quitting. A big part of this year was also learning to value my own self worth as an artist and a person. Another beautiful part of working so much was the ability to say no to projects at any point. A lot of my own work in pandemic has been recognizing my own self worth and recognizing that I don’t need to make theatre all the time regardless of work conditions - no matter if the project is near and dear to my heart or it isn’t. That sacrificing myself for the greater good or someone else’s needs is not something I ever want to do. I left projects this year because the environment was abusive, the organizational structure was dreadful, or it was simply time to go. It doesn’t matter what the project is, if the vibe feels wrong or something feels off, I can’t do it.

This also applies to people. I ended some friendships this year and cut some people out. I think sometimes you can only try so much before you realize that something isn’t working and that person isn’t worth your energy anymore.

4 - After June 12th and the aforementioned birthday party, I entered the world of online dating. After not dating for 8 years because of an ex who messed me up, I think I reached a point where I was happy with myself enough to see if it was for me again. I had a goal of going at just one date by August 30th.

And man, what a weird ride that was. I met a whole slew of people, from someone who told me that she didn’t believe that she could be happy if she was single, to someone else who tried to get me into bitcoin, to a weirdly quiet date where someone told me her only goal in life was to make a lot of money so she could become a landlord.

I think though, in spite of all of the weirdos (myself included), the normies, the awkward silences and the occasional moments of genuine connection, I felt braver after this summer, like I started to figure out what I wanted in other people, but also when a connection was genuinely forming. I also started viewing myself as genuinely attractive as a human, not just an artist, someone who could desire and be desired. So yeah, pretty rad. 

5 - I feel like if my twenties were about learning about myself as an artist, my thirties could be about learning about myself as a human - about putting myself first always and not compromising my own needs for other people. I feel genuinely like 2022 was the happiest and most secure I’ve been as an artist and a human. I did a lot of things for just me that were private goals - going to the reference library and reading a bunch of plays, walking from Science World to the Cultch, hosting an impromptu taco birthday for someone I barely knew, starting an activity club in the summer, eating terrible food at a theme restaurant, or just having a whole week to myself to play video games. I’m really fucking content and I want to keep doing that and being that. If that means leaving the party early to play God of War, or just taking time to quietly walk through a new neighbourhood, I really like myself these days and all of my weirdness.

PLAYS

1 - Is God Is

2 - Post Democracy

3 - Love You Wrong Time 

4 - Killing Time 

5 - Queen Goneril

THINGS ON SCREENS (not all new releases in 2022!)

1 - Sort Of

2 - The Bear

3 - Shiva Baby 

4 - Causeway

5 - Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 

6 - The Northman

MEMORIES

1 - Standing on the shores of wreck beach with Maddie, talking about where we were going, who we wanted to be and things we were saying no to.

2 - Walking home from every rehearsal as the sun set, or during a winter afternoon and feeling like, holy shit, I’m doing this.

3 - The whole noche buena workshop.

4 - Hookman’s opening. 

5 - That dumpling party.

6 - Going to the reference library over the summer and grabbing more plays than my hands could hold, sifting through them until I found one that I couldn’t put down.

7 - Seeing Servant’s set for the first time. 

8 - Hearing Meat and WOKING PHOENIX for the first time in front of a live audience after endless zoom meetings (4 years combined total for both).

[jayflrt]

hi Alice! how's your day been? it better have been good and you better have had fun 😤😤

omg I'll just put the ao3 recs here first so that I don't forget it lol. most of these fics are ongoing but they are def worth a read. lmk what u think of them haha I need someone to discuss them with LOLL

Guiding Star by LilweenGalatrass (147k, and still ongoing help me)

How to grow roses along a book spine by sourpatchvice

through the tinted glass by submissive_escargot

A Selfish Wish by smallestsenpai

Operation: Adultery by Talik_Sanis (peak comedy, this is the funniest shit ever)

Of Plans and Practices by Rolling waters

Five Times Loid and Yor Almost Kiss, and One Time They Actually Do by Meepy

and yes omg svt are my ults!!! my biases are Vernon, the8 and seungkwan haha but mingyu, Joshua and wonwoo like to pop by and say hello and make me question myself ;-; who are your biases? (unrelated but my best friend is a carat too and we were talking abt the latest gose episode but my friend kept asking me if I saw the latest GOOSE ep and I'm wondering when the fuck she got so invested in nat Geo 💀) omg which other groups do u stan? And who are ur biases?

ALSOOOO I WATCHED THE FIRST TWO EPS OF KAGUYA SAMA AND OH MY GODHSJFNSKSJS IT IS SOSO FUNNY?! like I love the dynamic between the leads and how arrogant they are but it's just so funny and I'm hooked HAHAHA THANK U SM FOR RECOMMENDING IT ALICE!!! - anime :)

(cont.) wait did Tumblr eat up my ask? (lowkey scared to type out everything I said all over again bc I. Um. Typed a lot. ;-;-;-; but anyway!! I hope ur day was good and that u had loads of fun w addy!! :D <3 - anime :)

hihi anime anon !! 🥰💘 my weekend was rlly fun and now it’s back to work HAHAH but i’m having a good day!! hbu? :o i hope you’re taking care of yourself 💗💗 and yes i had a rlly fun time w addy !! it was nice that we didn’t feel awkward at any time or anything since we were meeting for the first time LOL ♡ ALSO YES I DID GET YOUR ASK DW TUMBLR DIDNT EAT IT THANKFULLY 😌

also thank you for the recs omg!!! i’ll be sure to update you once i’ve read them 🥰 i think i’ll start with operation adultery then :o BUT OMG THE FIRST ONE WITH 147K 😵‍💫

omg svt are one of my ult groups as well 🥰🥰 HAHA MY BIAS LINE IS SO MESSY rn i ult jeonghan, mingyu, and shua and bias junhui, minghao, and chan :’)) but vernon and wonwoo creep up there for me too 🤧 i’m going to the be the sun concert with my friend and i’m soooo excited but i heard they’re changing the set list to add _world and cheers and i will cry if they remove boom boom ☹️ LMAOFJFJ NOT NAT GEO but gose supremacy omg 🤩 also i don’t keep up with a lot of groups tbh but my other ults are nct, enhypen, and aespa !! i also bias bts, txt, exo, the boyz, skz, and red velvet !! :’) i cant even get into my nct biases it would take too long HAHAH but my ults in nct are jaemin, renjun, mark, taeyong, hyuck, and yangyang 💘💘 and then my biases/ults from the other groups i listed are jay, sunghoon, jungwon, karina, ningning, jungkook, hoseok, yeonjun, beomgyu, baekhyun, changmin, jacob, minho, and joy 🤍🤍 HAHAH ITS SO MANY hbu tho?? :o

(also i adore doyum from justb because i followed him from under 19 🥰 and nicholas from &audition <33)

AHHH IM GLAD YOU LIKE KAGUYA SAMA 🤩🤩 maybe we could watch party it together on 9anime >;)) but omg i think the first ep was ab the movie tickets right?? :o their dynamic is so cute and funny HAHAH currently i’m rewatching soil eater !! it’s really cute but it’s also a lot of action if you’re into that :o another romance i think you’d enjoy is akagami no shirayukihime !! 🥰💖 it’s a prince x commoner kind of shoujo romance and it’s sooo cute 🥹

[piratesfromspace]

Finance Management (Deckard Shaw/Reader)

Deckard Shaw (Fast & Furious) x Reader

Word count: 1.9k CW: mention of food & alcohol, smut

Female reader

Note: This short fic has been inspired by a friend of mine who created the character of the financial advisor of mister Shaw.  Also there is not enough fics with Deckard Shaw so here we are. 

Read on Ao3

MASTERLIST

“Mister Shaw, it’s me again, I’m so sorry but I really need you to call me back please. It’s important. Thank you.”

You let out a deep sigh as you hang up. Handling the finances of rich people is a lucrative and thrilling job, but damn it sometimes those clients of yours are annoying. Especially Mister Shaw.

First, he’s annoyingly busy and unreachable. Most powerful people are, but he can disappear for weeks on end without so much as sending an email.

Second, he’s also infuriatingly handsome and smart and funny. And he has an impeccable sense of style. He has nothing in common with the other clients of your firm, mainly old and boring men, whose only conversation subject is their money and how they hate their wives.

And finally, the worst thing about him is how good of a lover he is. You found out half a year ago, when you ended up in his bed after what should have been a regular business dinner. It was a mistake of course. One that could have cost you your career because it was a very serious breach of contract to sleep with a client.

You never told a soul, and you promised yourself to never do it again. But it was still hard to forget the feeling of him pressed against you, of his hands holding your waist, of his mouth between your thighs...

You try to focus again on your task and stretch your legs, kicking out your high heels. Feet bare on the soft carpet, you walk to the floor-to-ceiling window of your posh office, taking a second to admire the view, as the final rays of the sun disappear over the lake, and Geneva lights up under you. It’s breath-taking, really. But it also means you’re once again staying way too late at the office. Your assistant has gone home a couple hours ago, and your colleagues are either on vacation or on business trips, making you the only person on the building’s 7th floor. You still have a few things to finish so you plop on your leather chair and get back to work, hoping to make it home before 11pm.

That’s when you hear it: the familiar *ding* of the elevator’s door, at the end of the corridor. You tense immediately. You’re not waiting for anyone, and the security guards always use the stairs when completing their patrol.

Steps are coming down your way, and you grab your phone, ready to dial for the security team. And then you recognize his silhouette through the polished glass wall. There is a knock on your door before it opens to reveal Deckard Shaw himself. He’s wearing an expensive suit and an even more expensive watch, a very light stubble is highlighting his perfect jawbone and his deep grey eyes bear a mischievous glint. Handsome, as always.

“Mister Shaw…” you stammer.

“You know you can call me Deckard.” His stupidly sexy British accent and cocky smile will be the death of you.

He’s been in your office for two seconds and you already want to slap him in the face - or climb him like a tree, you can’t really decide.

“It’s quite late, Mister Shaw, you scared me. Anything I can do for you?” you insist on saying his family name, in a feeble attempt to maintain a professional façade.

“You needed to see me.” it’s more a comment than a question, and you’re suddenly reminded of the dozen of unanswered phone calls you made trying to reach him.

“Yes… yes, that’s right, but honestly you could have called tomorrow morning.”

“I’d rather see you in person.” he answers, looking you straight in the eyes. You can feel yourself blushing under his gaze. “Wanted to make sure you’re alright. You’re working too much you know.” he says with a soft smile, as his eyes drift down to your sore bare feet and then to the discarded heels under your desk.

What a condescending prick, you think. But at the same time, he’s right and his care seems somewhat genuine. It will not make you forget you almost lost your job because of him though.

“How did you know I was still here tonight?” you purposely redirect the attention on him, rather than you.

“Well, let’s say I would not leave the woman in charge of my assets without any... supervision.”

“Is that a polite way to say you’ve been spying on me?” you retort dryly.

“Oh I love when you’re getting all angry and snobbish, your French accent is even cuter.”

You’re gonna murder him. You really really want to tell him to go fuck himself, but he’s the one responsible for a very generous part of your paycheck, so you have to keep quiet.

“I would be more comfortable if we keep our conversation strictly professional, Mister Shaw.”

“Everything you want, dear.”

-----

“Mmph, fu-ck... Deckard, don’t stop”

The professional attitude has been long forgotten, since Deckard has pulled you onto his lap on the velvet couch of his presidential suite at the Four Seasons hotel, where you were supposed to only review the important documents he needed to see. But when the room service had brought a very nice bottle of Scotch, you knew you were screwed. You could not refuse a drink, and the warmth of alcohol combined with the warmth of his hand slightly brushing against your thigh had overcome all your resolve.

You are now sprawled on the king-size bed, moaning his name as Deckard Shaw is destroying your sanity very methodically. One foot on the floor, one leg bent on the edge of the bed, he’s pounding into you, holding your hip with one hand, and circling your clit with the other. His pace is calculated, not too fast so you can feel every inch of him, but not too slow so your nerves don’t have any respite, and it’s driving you crazy. Hands tangled in the dark silk sheets beneath you, you try to catch your breath to no avail.

“I won’t stop darling. Not until I can feel you coming again all over me.” His voice is like heavy honey, dripping all over your senses, drowning you in sweet and sinful promises.

You want to close your eyes to focus on the overwhelming feelings, but the view in front of you is too good to be missed. He looks like some demi-god, bathed in the subdued light of the room, broad and muscular chest, abs perfectly drawn. What is his job again? You vaguely remember him talking about serving a few years in the military when he was younger, but he is still definitely hitting the gym on a regular basis.

His muscles flex when he brings you down on his thick cock a little more sharply than before, and you keen as he hits that perfect spot inside of you. You can feel your orgasm build again, and so can he.

“You’re close, princess, aren’t you?”

You mewl in response and he chuckles darkly, keeping up with his ruthless assault on your most sensitive parts. He angles his fingers just a bit differently on your clit, and keeps thrusting into you, stretching you so perfectly you can’t remember the last time someone fucked you this good - wait , actually you can, it was a few months ago and it was by mister Deckard “annoyingly perfect” Shaw.

“Come on, I know you want to, I’ll keep going until you give me one more anyway princess…”

And that's it. You’re gone. Back arching off the bed, you come hard, harder than the first time, clenching around him. You barely hear him hiss in pleasure as you spasm helplessly on the soft sheets, the silk feeling almost cool against your burning skin.

----

“Good morning darling."

You open an eye, natural light is flooding the room, as is the delicious smell of fresh coffee and tea. At the foot of the bed, you spot a room service trolley loaded with breakfast treats and through the open door of the bathroom, you can see Deckard is looking at you in the mirror reflection while buttoning a crisp white shirt.

"Your tea is ready. Black, no milk, right?”

He's right and it's annoying because is there anything this man messes up?

"What time is it?" You ask, suddenly remembering you have a busy schedule today.

"You have 27 minutes to eat and get ready, so I can drop you off at your office in time for your first call of the day."

He knows about your tea preferences and your professional agenda, of course he does , he was not joking when mentioning the whole "spying-on-you" situation, or "supervision" as he liked to call it. He needs to stop it, but you decide to keep this discussion for another day.

You stretch, and rise to put on the hotel bathrobe, sighing at the thought of having to wear the same clothes as yesterday. Last you saw them, they were scattered on the floor all over the room and your underwear were positively ruined.

"The concierge was very helpful this morning, thanks to him I got you a few clothes delivered for today." Deckard adds as he pours himself a cup of coffee from the cart and gestures to the leather armchair where a couple of bags doning logos of luxury brands are perched.

You make your way to the packages, and open the first one to reveal a sophisticated dress, fitted and sexy, but not too much that it would be inappropriate as office wear. The second bag is a thoughtful selection of high end make-up products. And the last one contains a gorgeous set of lacy lingerie, nothing too raunchy but sexy nonetheless. Of course everything is in the right size.

"Thank you..." you whisper, a little stunned. The assortment must have cost him a couple grands at the very least - not that he can't afford it because you're well placed to be sure he can, but still, he did not have to do this.

You have to suppress a smile, because damn he's being annoyingly perfect once more, but you don't want to give him the satisfaction to reveal he was right when promising you could stay the night instead of going home and still look fresh for your day at work.

"I was thinking, I'm free tonight, so maybe we can finally review those documents, you know the ones you were supposed to show me before you jumped on me on the couch last night?" Deckard states as he bites in an apple in front of the window, casually looking at lake Geneva glinting in the bright morning sun.

You blush unwillingly, struggling to find a reply that would save you from admitting you had failed at enforcing your usual work ethic.

"I'm kidding dear!" He barks in a laugh. "I know enough to trust you on this venture, you have my approval to go on with the investment." He continues more seriously.

You open your mouth to answer but he's quicker.

"I'm not kidding about being free though, so what about dinner and then we can see where this takes us…"

When you don't answer immediately, he turns to look at you. Maybe he's realizing the situation can be awkward and precarious for you since you're technically working for him.

"You can say no, I won't take any offense." He adds without irony.

"Yes..." You finally answer, tip toeing toward him until you can snatch the apple he was eating from him. He protests but you shush him.

"...Yes, I would like this very much..."

As he starts to protest again, you take a big bite from the fruit with a knowing smile.

"...but only for dinner. Nothing more."

"You'll be the death of me." Deckard says, falsely irritated, his voice dropping lower.

"At least the feeling is mutual, mister Shaw ..."

[nightowlfandom]

Possesive! Jeon Jungkook- Only Mine....

HEY GUYS!

SO ANON ASKS

Your new promp list had me 🥵🥵🥵 if it’s ok can I request numbers 1, 3, 34, 79 with jealous best friend JJK snapping after seeing you around boys all the time? You can choose if you want it noncon or dubcon 🥵

OMG I GLAD YOU LIKE IT! OKAY LETS GET RIGHT TO IT! (Also since I don’t do non-con, I’ll make it consensual. Just a heads up)

1- Look at me when I fuck you!

3- I said FUCKING BEG!

34- I feel like the angrier you get at me, the harder I fuck you.

79- Stay the night with me…I don’t care if it will ruin our friendship.

CHECK OUT MY MASTERLIST HERE!

LEGGO!

...

“Kookie!” You ran up to your bestie as he walked out of the airport terminal.

“Y/N!” he practically dropped his duffel bag as he wrapped his arms around your wait. He hoisted you off the ground. He buried his head in the crook of your neck. “My Y/N, I missed you.”

“I missed you more.” you laughed as he tightened his arms around you.

“And I get you all to myself- he began.

“Y/N!” you heard an onslaught of voices. Taehyung, Hoseok, Seokjin and the other guys all crowded around you. You were pulled out of Jungkook’s hug into Namjoon.

“Guys!” you smiled. “I missed you all too!”

“Damn, you should’ve seen Jungkook! He bolted out of the plane!” Hoseok laughed.

“Maybe because I wanted to see my Y/N.” he grumbled in reply. “Give her back!”

“No way!” Yoongi scoffed. “You can have her back after we get dinner.”

Jungkook glared as his friends. How dare they just take you from him?! 

“You guys!” you laughed. “We’re making a scene!” you said as their fans caught sights of you. They all seemed infuriated. “You’re fans are gonna-”

“Our fans aren’t gonna do shit.” Jungkook glared into the crowd. “Let them try.” he seethed. He snatched you back into his embrace. “I’ll protect you, love.”

You nodded shyly as Kookie led you to the front of the airport.

...

“Okay weirdos! Dinner is served!” you held the giant box of takeout. “Noodles for Yoongi, Taehyung! Rice Cakes for Seokjin, Namjoon and Hobi. For Jimin, some Extra Spicy Tofu Stew. and For Jungkook and I, fried rice!” you put the box on the coffee table.

Jungkook smirked, of course he went out of his way to make sure no one ordered the same thing as you. He made sure you had ordered last so he could order the same thing. 

“Shit, they gave me way too much Bulgogi.” Namjoon seethed. “Y/N, wanna split with me? I don’t think I’ll be able to eat all of this.” Namjoon looked at you who had already settled. 

“Oh. Sure!” you smiled. 

Namjoon shot Jungkook a mean spirited smile. “In your face, asshole.” he said with his eyes, even though the words never escaped his lips

DAMNIT! Jungkook felt his fist clench. He rolled his eyes. “Hey! Y/N! Pass me a napkin will ya?”

“Oh. yeah.” you threw a napkin his way before resuming your conversation with Yoongi. 

Jungkook watched as Yoongi traced his fingers on your wrists as he spoke to you.  His face hardened into a glare. Everyone knew he liked you, but until he made his move they wouldn’t care. 

...

To say he was pissed was an understatement. He was practically steaming at the ears.

“Why were you with Hoseok?” he asks as he stormed through his room door, a hand tightly wrapped around your wrist. Surprising but not painful.

“He needed help shopping for an outfit for a photoshoot?” you raised a brow. “Why?”

“Don’t bullshit me! You were on a date!”

“Okay first of all even if I was, what business of yours is that?” you crossed your arms. “You’ve been acting pretty weird these past few days and I don’t like it!”

“I DON’T LIKE YOU PARADING YOURSELF AROUND LIKE A-”

“I dare you to fucking finish that sentence.” you warned. “You can forget you had a friend if you do.” You backed towards the door.

Jungkook grew more and more agitated. “Y/N I’m sorry.” he ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Why are you acting so weird?” you sighed. “Do you not like me anymore?”

“No!!” he looked at you as if you had lost your mind. “Y/N I LOVE YOU!” he blurted out. “I’ve loved you for five fucking years ever since we met!!” he spilled his heart out. “and y-you’re putting me in an uncomfortable position!”

“Huh?” you could barely register what he said before he stormed up and captured your mouth is a kiss. 

‘Kookie!” you were surprised to say the least. “You just- Hmm.” he didn’t give you time to talk as he kissed you again, wrapping his arms tightly around you. He ran his fingers down your spine, holding you close.

You would have been over cloud nine...if you weren’t so angry.

“WAIT A MINUTE.” you forced yourself to step back from him. “FIVE YEARS?” you exploded. “FIVE FUCKING YEARS AND YOU DIDN’T TELL ME! YOU LET ME BELIEVE YOU ONLY SAW ME AS A FRIEND FOR FIVE MISERY FILLED-...”you began pacing back and forth as you lashed out on your friend.

Jungkook just watched as you drug him for filth, calling him every name in the book.

“YOU ASSHOLE! I’VE BEEN TRYING TO HIDE MY FEELINGS AND YOU JUST COME OUT THE WATER AND TELL ME THAT- OH YOU PEICE OF-” Jungkook finally had enough and cornered you against the nearest wall.

“...I feel like... I feel like the angrier you get at me, the harder I fuck you. “ he mused aloud. “You’re in love with me? And you didn’t tell me?” he raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that somethin-”

"I am still mad at you.” you sneered. “After tonight you are dead to me.”

“Am I ?” he cooed. “So you don’t want me to...” he began fumbling with your jeans, unfastening the button with one hand. 

“What are you doing?” your eyes widened. You were now more shocked that angry. “Don’t you dare-...” you felt the pads of his fingers along the line of your clothed slit. 

“What? Was that a moan I just heard?” he smirked. “Come on Y/N I know you can be louder than that. Maybe if you beg enough, I’ll make you cum.” he creeped into the waistband of your panties. “Come on...beg me honey.”

“I refuse.” you looked away. “Y-you can go fu-fuuuhh-” you felt the pads of his fingers. 

“I said fucking beg.” he sneered, pressing his body up against yours. “Stop being so damn stubborn. Let me hear those sounds you think nobody hears when you finger yourself in the bathrooms at midnight.”

“How did you-”

“You stink at being quiet.” he bit his lip. “Come on.” he spoke in a babyish voice, rubbing your clit. “This is how you do it to yourself, right?”

“J-jungkook.” you whimpered. “W-what are you-”you cut yourself off as you felt his fingers slip into your wetness. A loud moan erupted from your lungs. 

“Yeah, that’s it. That’s fucking it.” he growled. “Moan like that some more.” he slowly thrust his fingers in and out of you. “Are you thinking about me when you thrust those pretty fingers into that-”

“Don’t say it! That’s a dirty word!” you warned, while ironically mewling like a little kitty cat.

“Don’t say what? That pussy? That cunt? That soaking wet womanhood you got down there. The same pussy that’s asking me to shove my dick in there?” he smirked as he spoke.

“You d-dick!” you leaned forward, your head falling on his shoulder. “S-such as asshole.”

“  Look at me when I fuck you with my fingers.” he demanded. “Or I’ll stop completely.”

You shyly lifted you head. Jungkook thought you were so adorable and truth be told he wouldn’t have stopped. To know that you obeyed anyways was so relieving. 

“Shit, I needa taste you real quick.” he moved his fingers from you and yanked down your jeans. “Kick those off for me.”

You instantly obeyed, throwing your jeans and panties off to the side. He lowered himself to his knees. “Shit, look at that.” he wasted no time in driving his tongue into you.

“Hey Jungkook!” there was a knock on the door. Jungkook had pushed you against the door, stopping anyone from opening it. You heard Jimin’s voice.

You glared down at Jungkook with warning. You knew what was gonna happen, but you were scared anyways. 

“Hmmm!” he moaned loudly, driving his tongue deeper into your slit. He sucked at your clit, causing a loud cry to escape you. 

“Umm is Y/N in there with you?” he called. “IS SHE HURT?!”

You tried to talk, but Jungkook had hooked your leg over his shoulder. “Come on, answer him.”

“I-I’m okay!” you found it in yourself to talk. “I’m just...a little busy!” you clenched your fist to focus on something, anything else. “Doing things!”

“Like what?”

“LIKE BEING FUCKED BY ME!” Jungkook yelled back as he rose to his feet, pants dropping around his ankles. He hoisted you up, wrapping your legs around his waist. You felt his cock slip into your heat. “COME BACK LATER!”

He didn’t wait for an answer as he carried you to the bed, setting you down along with himself. He slowly thrust himself into your wetness. “Damnit Y/N.” he seethed, sucking in a harsh intake of air. “Shit.” his jaw went slack.

“F-fuck.” you whimpered. “Kookie.” you whimpered. 

“Y/N.” you could see the tears of pleasure forming in his eyes. “You feel so- So fucking good. Look at me, p-please?”

You didn’t tear your eyes away from him. You found it hard to. “Jungkook! I- Uh..” you were now a load, crumbling mess.

“I want to kiss you, come here.” he grabbed either side of your face and gave you a slopped kiss, shoving his tongue into your mouth instantly. “Y/N, I’m gonna cum. But I don’t want to until you cum first. So I’m gonna go faster okay?” His eyes bore into yours, noses touching.

You shyly nodded, feeling his thrusts increase. You were hella sensitive, and in love with it. “Jungkook.” you moaned. “It feels-”

“I know.” he kissed you again. “Fuck, cum for me...cum for me please~” he mewled through thrusts.

He didn’t have to tell you twice. A string of curses he had never heard before along with his name spilled from your lips. Jungkook was next to cum, yanking himself from you. He spilled his cum practically all over the place. He collapsed next to you, leaving you both to stare at the ceiling.

“...I should go.”

“ No...Stay the night with me…I don’t care if it will ruin our friendship.“ he breathed out. “Y/N...I-..I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“You should be.” your breath hitched. “Probably would have gotten this out of the way a lot sooner.”

Your grumpy words made him laugh a little. He lazily threw an arm around you and pulled you towards him. “I love you, for real.”

“Promise?”

“Of course. You’re mine. Only mine...”

...

I STILL GOT IT BITCHESSSS

[itsthe-neo-zone]

[03:18PM] ~ Park Jongseong x Reader, Apocalypse au

You didn’t want to live with the misery of regretting everything.

But that all went out the window as soon as the apocalypse began.

2 weeks, it’s been 13 whole days and 12 nights since the whole world decided to end itself.

The reason? An outbreak, a malicious deadly disease terraforming the earth in its own way. Killing everyone and everything with it. And when you say terraforming you mean turning us all against each other.

You regretted waking up that Wednesday morning, regretted getting out of bed, not hugging your mother in your arms longer and giving your family a proper farewell.

You were in school when it happened your district sounding the sirens, mid-week morning meaning you were in the dinner halls, you heard the sirens and all hell broke loose, the diners small tv monitor picked up an emergency broadcast.

Shaking your head subconsciously you drifted your mind away from what happened. It had been difficult thinking the past few days, even eating was becoming a luxury at times.

Like now, you’ve been wandering empty suburb streets looking for something to sustain yourself, where you were looked to be like a neighbouring district, but you weren’t sure, the sign posts were all ripped down to make any form of defence weapon, supplies were scarce at this point.

The scent on you was horrid but not as putrid as the stench of rotting corpses filing the earth. You stopped turning to look around you. The street was dusted with ruined houses all damaged and crumbled to the grounds.

Maybe you could crash into an abandoned one, maybe there was food and maybe you’d finally be able to use an actual bathroom. Your stomach grumbled with delight at the thought of food.

As you were about to pull the rusting metal rod in your hand towards the nearest property you heard a shrieking ear deafening pop,

The blood hit your brain, adrenaline began quickly building up inside you, like a band slowly stretching about to snap, your heart rattling in your chest. It tightened slightly. You swayed slightly from the shock of adrenaline hitting your numb body.

You swiftly turned to see nothing behind you but a pelleted bullet, someone around you had a weapon, and their target? You.

You began seeing the blurred edges of your sight return a sign to take response. Fight or flight. You chose the latter feeling weaker than expected. Heading outwards past the last few properties your best hope was to lose your hunter out in the wilderness.

Brushing past leaves twigs and the thicket of the edges of the lush greenery you low down once you’re no longer hearing bullets trailing after you. It was quiet

Almost too quiet to be normal. You push yourself up against a tree, straining your breath to regulate faster than it should. You regretted being stupid to do that too as you felt the persisting tickle at the back of your throat.

It let a much needed cough to begin crawling up your oesophagus. Shutting your eyes for a moment you stiffened your lips slightly holding it back. Why now of all times, you’d been surviving fine…

You could hear a slight crunch of foliage under careful feet, slowly creeping up on you.

You’d be done for this time if they did have a weapon. Trembling fingers dug into the metallic rod in your palms, they’d make indents from how hard you were gripping.

Feeling your chest tighten a little. The metal was starting to feel slippery in between clammy fingers but you held it to your face keeping your stance ready.

You were scared, no, terrified even. But that didn’t mean you were going to give up so easily. You wanted to survive, you had to.

Ironic.

A few weeks you were ready to give up on life itself.

As you sighed, you prepared to turn and show yourself but as you made a move you felt something restrict your breath and pull you away from the edge of the tree. You didn’t have your hand on your mouth though.

It was a foreign feeling but it was something you greeted with open arms, it was warm, and you forgot the caress of another on your cold stiff body.

Caress of another? It wasn’t my hands.

Gunshots sounded across the clearing you hid from. Disturbing screeches of birds fleeted from above. A harsh thump fell to the floor. A limp body.

But it wasn’t yours. You still had a chance.

Eyes widening, you registered the figure behind you keeping you hold in a strong grip.

The surging boost of energy you had left pushed you to kick with your feet. Backwards tripping up your attacker. The gunshots stopped but you were sure it was them, not just one but 2, maybe more…

The figure fell back unable to balance themselves but you were pulled back, you pushed yourself out of their hold, they pulled away regained their stance before attacking you from your side,

the male twisted his arm around your head and the other at your waist holding your arms down. He was agile and had strength but you managed to be faster. Quickly thinking, you moved.

Digging your elbow into their side hitting them right beneath their rib cage.

Bingo,

you heard a slight grunt they pushed away from you trying to recover.

You turned grabbing the rod, eyes shaking to survey the sight before you. It was just one, you swing your arms back getting ready to attack.

“Stop!” A strained call out towards your direction, but you faltered, it wasn’t for you? He directed it behind you falling back slightly. You turned to see another male.

Eyes trained like he was about to pounce on his prey. What was more horrifying was the gun now in his hold pointed directly at you.

“Don’t, Jake, she’s harmless.”

His arms stayed firmly ahead of him holding the weapon. “Harmless my ass, you were about to lose your head,” his fingers wavered.

“Just listen to me.” The guy stood up. You noticed the tattered and beaten up clothes they wore, rips and smears all over each article. Dried blood splattered across parts of their body. Judging by the colour it wasn’t from today.  

The combat boots the two wore made you think twice about setting down your weapon as you remained in your stance.

But their eyes and faces showed different,

They were anxious, in pain, alert like you.

“Idiot.” He dropped his arms. Mumbling before walking towards the other who was now slowly guiding himself down by supporting himself on the tree.

His face was etched with strain. And for a second you felt a pang of regret. You shrugged the feeling away watching the two converse.

“Are you survivors?” you swayed slightly, pressing forward kept your feet stable you regrated the shakiness your voice had, first people you spoke to in a while and you sound like you were about to cry.

“Just barely,” one huffed, “As I said he was about to lose his head.” The one named Jake turned from tending to his friend and shot you a dirty glare.

Jakes eyes were intense and focused, he didn’t flit nor shy away. Pressing further. You subconsciously step back, eyes looking past him and towards his friend.

“I had to protect myself.” You pull your arms downwards stepping out of the position and lowering your guard slightly.

“Mhm, sure.” He muttered. He turned back lifting the others shirt. A long tear in the seamless skin ran down the males side. It wasn’t bleeding, it looked like it was an old scar. Just barely healed.

“You’re, fine,”

“She had, shit, every right to do that.” The other caught his breath then spoke.

“Right.” Jake pressed his lips into a thin line. It looked like he wasn’t having any of that, his jaw clenched, he was stopping himself from speaking any further.

Standing up and walking past you. He glanced at you up and down before moving back to the clearing.

“Sorry about that,” the boy sitting at the bottom of the tree pushed himself to try getting to his feet, you stared cautiously your fingers tingling to help him, so now you were starting to get your humanity back? Where was this feeling a few days ago?

The fliting sound of slipping feet against the rough terrain is what brought your focus back as you moved to assist him. He groaned.

His eyes caught yours, cautious and foreign, was this just the way he looked at people him or was he anxious to be around you.  

“I’ll … uh.” Your hand waivered, before holding his free arm. “I’ll help you.”

“Um… Thanks.” He nodded clenching his jaw he pushed himself up with your help.

“I’m jay.” His lips pressed into a thin line the edges pushing upwards slightly as he nodded, he stayed silent for a second. You figured out this was an introduction a few seconds late, sucking in a quick breath you mumbled.

“Ah i- yeah…. I’m _____ .” your face tensed up. Jay flashed you a lopsided smile.

“Sorry about earlier, I had to make sure you didn’t interfere while Jake finished up with—uh…”

“Were you the—” you paused. How were you going to ask him if he was the one that was chasing you. How do you word that without sounding weird. “the… I was—”

“You mean the gunshots?” he mumbled.

You quickly nodded giving yourself a mini headache at the fast movement.

“No, we were… in the distance, yeah, when we heard the sound. Just me and Jake.” He lead you to the clearing.

You were slowly introduced into the new space, you watched Jake push the body dressed in black to the side. There was someone following you his face hidden beneath the mask.

“Found all this.” He kicked at the floor with his foot. “shit thing is he’s probably a trained assassin.” He nodded towards the pile of weaponry. “All in his bag, some on him,”

Jake stood up facing Jay. “We need to fucking leave, where there’s one there’s always more.” He lifted a few small items. Something that looked like a smaller loaded gun, testing its scope he tucked it into his pocket.

“Here, take that.” He threw a shielded knife at jay and grabbed a larger gun and handed it to the male next to you.

“lets go.” He walked past Jay and farther out.

As Jay turned he caught your eyes, he saw the anxious glimmer, the shiver you tried to hid and the fact that your fingers were digging in to your palm.

“Our chances of survival are bigger…” he stated. It cut you out of the worry trail your brain was starting to follow,

“Together than apart.”

You caught his eyes. Jay was trying to be as friendly as he could, you could see a glimmer of hope, something you lost within the first 3 days.

“Are you-, I’m sorry I’m a bit confused right— shit, I’ll just ask… are you asking me to…”

“You should come with us.” You silently thanked him for putting you out of your misery. Shocked he was asking you this. And relieved to have met people you could somewhat trust.

“What?”

“HEY! Hurry up if you want to fucking live dude!” Jake was already way ahead.

“Gimme a second!” he sighed, calling out.  

“I was wondering if you wanted to join us. That is if you’re not with anyone right now.”

You could almost cry from the surge of relief you felt. It was almost draining the life out of you fending for yourself. And night-time was when it got its worst alone. No more going crazy talking to yourself.

“Yeah, that would be great.” You voiced out, he smirked, hearing your voice so relieved.

“Glad to hear.” He nodded towards the direction they were headed. Leading you further ahead.

“Do you know how to wield a gun?”

You shook your head.

“I’ll teach you don’t worry.”

~~~

(thinking of truning this idea into a fic what do you think?)

Seola - It’s the neo zone © All rights reserved.

[yespolkadotkitty]

Open Up

A GFS server drabble. We do these every month!

Words: 700 ~ Pairing: Stephen Holder x fem!reader ~ Content: swears, mentions of marriage breakdowns

---

“Yo, mama. Open up. I know you’re in there.”

You close your eyes at the sound of Stephen’s voice interspersed with pounding on the front door of your studio apartment.

You burrow deeper into your bedding, hoping he’ll give up.

You know it’s been four days. You would normally have swapped over a hundred messages by now, but you can’t face him. Not today and maybe not ever again.

“Yo! I need to see you! Please,” he adds.

It’s the please that finally breaks you. You can’t leave him standing there wondering if you’re dead, wondering if your cat Norman is eating your eyeballs.

(Norman would never. He only eats gourmet cat food).

You pad over to the door, look through the peephole.

Stephen looks like shit. You wonder if he’s even slept. His hair is mussed, looks as if he’s been dragging his fingers through it.

Your heart clenches at the tired, strung-out look on his handsome face, and the wrinkled fabric of his trusty hoodie.

You open the door, catching him with his fist raised, about to knock again.

“Jesus! I thought you were dead or somethin’!” He grabs you, pulling you into a hard hug, and you breathe him in and it’s perfect and oh God you missed him.

“Sorry,” you mumble.

He sighs into your hair and he smells of his last cigarette and cheap minty bodywash. Holder. You need him like you need air. Maybe it’s time you finally admitted that to yourself.

Something buts against your leg and you look down. Stephen does too.

“Oh, hey Norms,” he mutters.

The cat meows and then saunters back into your apartment.

“Come in,” you tell Stephen. “Drink?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

The door swings shut behind you both. Stephen rubs a hand over his face. “You gonna tell me why you ain’t answerin’ your phone?”

“Do I have to?” you ask weakly.

“Yeah. You do have to. You owe me that much. We had that one amazin’ night, baby - blew my fuckin’ mind, and then…. You just ghost me.”

“I’m sorry.” You hug yourself, and then hold out your hand. When Stephen takes it, you lead him to the couch, pull him down next to you.

He glances at you, huffs, then finally begins, “Why are you avoiding me?”

“Because…” You bite your lip. “Because I think I’m falling in love with you, okay?”

His brows shoot up. “And that’s a reason to not see me?”

“Yeah.”

He waits for you to elaborate.

“My parents’ marriage was a mess. They were always in and out of each other’s pockets. They had so many fights. My mother’s subsequent relationships were toxic too. But the whole time she insisted she was in love. So love is bad. I mean, for me, anyway. What if I’m just like her? So I got scared. Of changing us.”

Stephen looks at you for a long time. You start to wonder if it’s over, if you’ve ruined it by opening up.

Then he cups your face, very gently, and kisses you.

“We all got baggage. You know? Fact of it is, I’d rather have you with a shit-load of baggage than not have you at all. That shit makes you who you are. You know?”

His words are so soft and sincere that tears well up. You lean into him, and he cuddles you close.

“Did you mean it, baby girl?” he asks. “Falling in love?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too,” he murmurs, dropping a kiss on your hair. “I think I love you. Maybe I always have. Ever since you told me to shut my mouth that first day in the break room. Don’t make me live without your smart mouth and your sexy smile. Okay?”

“Okay,” you agree.

And then he kisses you and you sink into his embrace, and you have your best friend back, only he’s so much more, now.

----

Thanking my babe @loverhymeswith for the beta!

Holder Tags: @11thstreetvigilante @a-reader-and-a-writer @heresathreebee @skvatnavle @spooky-ghosts @babblydrabbly @nerdysuperchick @reysorigins-archive @greymoonfeelings @fairchildflag @madkovacs @lacontroller1991 @bewitchedignition @marvelousmermaid @klmurr

[clareguilty]

The Naked Thing

Hello! I was dying without air conditioning a few weeks ago and decided to make it Mando Smut Mandalorian/f!reader Rating: Explicit | No Warnings Word Count: ~2900

The Crest falls out of hyperspace too soon, and you go flying. Curling around Grogu in your arms, you twist in midair so that your back hits the console to avoid crushing him. A lever digs into your spine, and you curse loudly. That’s going to bruise. Oh well. What’s another?

“What the kriff, Mando?” you snarl. Grogu seems unbothered, blinking at you and probably learning way too many swear words for a child of his size.

Mando pulls himself off the control grid with a pained groan, helmet swiveling as he takes in the damage.

“The good news,” he begins after a moment, “is that we lost them.”

That is good news, you agree. You were lucky that the army of bounty hunters and ex-imps hadn’t kept track of you. If you had shaken them off your trail, then that would earn you a head start to a safer system.

“The bad news is that they shot out our hyperdrive.”

“Dank Farrik,” you curse again, then glance at Grogu. Maybe you should watch your mouth more?

“...And our temperature regulator and our heat shields.”

You decide that it is an appropriate time for as much foul language as you please.

“What does that mean?” you ask. You hadn’t grown up around ships -- spent the last dozen years on the same dead-end planet until Mando picked you up. The most you were good for was turning a knob or flipping a switch here and there. Usually you just kept an eye on Grogu while Mando did all the piloting and bounty hunting and whatnot.

“We’ll have to travel sublight, but we can’t land planet side because without the heat shields any atmosphere worth a damn would burn us up. Our only option is a New Republic Outpost. We’ll be able to land there, and we’ll be safe while they repair the Crest. I’ll chart us a course and let you know how long it should be.”

“You know,” you snap, “we wouldn’t be in this mess if you weren’t so scared of droids. If we had an astromech on board, then we could get the hyperdrive repaired without having to crawl our asses through deep space in the hopes that whoever picks us up doesn’t want us dead.”

Mando doesn’t say anything. You don’t know if your words meant anything at all to him because you can’t see shit behind his helmet. Huffing, you take Grogu down to the hold. Not long after, the engines fire up again.

It takes a few minutes to set in, but its quick enough to be noticeable. The ship is getting hotter. Like… unbearably warm.

You fill a canteen with water and make sure that you and Grogu are both hydrated. After a little bit of digging, you manage to find a portable air circulator. You and Grogu sit directly in front of the current, doing your best to keep cool.

Mando comes down after a little while, he cocks his helmet when he sees you.

“It’s hot,” you whine.

“The temperature regulator is shot too. We don’t have a way too cool the ship down or shield the heat of the engines.”

You sigh. “How long until we can get repairs?”

“34 hours. Will the kid be okay for that long?”

Grogu hasn’t outwardly complained about the heat, mostly just sitting in front of the circulator with his eyes closed and ears flapping, but you’ve been worried as well. “He’s kind of… amphibious,” you frown. “I’ll get him a basin of water to sit in and put him in the fresher with the circulator. That should keep him cooled off.”

Mando nods. “Thank you. Will you be okay?”

You shrug. There’s not much you can do. As long as you stay hydrated then you should be able to last 34 hours.

“Thank you,” he says again.

“For what?” All you’ve done is curse at him and berate him for not having an astromech droid.

“For looking out for him back there. You saved all of us with that droid popper. And the move with the cannon was impressive.”

You aren’t expecting genuine praise from Mando. It always felt as though you were dead weight to him. Through all the planets you’ve been on -- and been chased off of -- you’ve always felt useless.You can’t fly, you’re not the best shot, you can barely take care of his kid. It means a lot that he doesn’t actually hate you. 

“I’m starting to get the hang of this,” you grin. You had never considered yourself a hero or adventurer, but you had commandeered a cannon and shot down three imperial fighters.

“I’ll be up in the cockpit if you need anything. Just knock.” And he’s gone.

‘Knock’ means that Mando is probably going to take his helmet and armor off, which means you also get a few hours of total privacy. You set Grogu up in the fresher with a basin of water and the circulator -- though it pains you to give up the weak, artificial breeze.

It’s only gotten hotter, and your already filthy clothes are starting to became unbearable. You had gotten splashed with gore and grime and who knows what in your escape, and it wasn’t pairing well with the heat onboard.

Stripping out of your clothes, you sprawl naked on the metal floor. It’s dusty, but slightly cool, and you plaster as much of your skin to the durasteel as you can manage.

Time passes with you systematically rolling across the floor of the hold to try and keep from baking. It’s bearable only because you know there will be an end. As long as the ship keeps chugging along towards the space outpost, then you will be saved.

The hatch to the cockpit opens, and you leap to your feet. Mando clambers down, jumping when he sees you.

“You’re naked,” he raises his hands -- his bare hands -- and backs against the ladder.

“You’re naked.” you point.

“I have a helmet and pants on,” he says. But that’s all he has on. His chest and arms are bare, and it’s more skin than you’ve ever seen before on the man.

“I’ve never seen you out of your armor. That has got to be more scandalous than me being naked.”

You must have made a point, because Mando doesn’t respond. Instead, you both just kind of… stand there. You can’t tear your eyes away from his chest and from the angle his helmet is pointed it seems he’s having a similar issue.

“Did you, uh, need anything?” you finally manage to ask. Your mouth is dry, and you take another uncoordinated drink from the canteen, shivering as some of the water spills down your chest.

Mando coughs. “I just wanted to make sure the kid is okay.”

“Oh,” you turn to open the fresher door just a crack. You had checked on him just a few minutes ago, and he still seems fine. After a moment of pause, Mando comes up behind you and you can feel the heat of his skin against your back.

Grogu is asleep, curled up just in front of the circulator and the basin of water so that the cool air blows over him. The fresher is several degrees cooler than the rest of the ship, and while it feels amazing, you don’t want to let the heat in.

“I’m going to go back up now,” Mando says quickly, and then he’s gone through the hatch once again.

You resume your circuit of laying on the floor, but it feels like the ship is only getting hotter.

That’s when you take to banging on the hatch to the cockpit. “Mando, I’m going to kick your ass! You had better get us to that outpost or find a way too cool this ship down! I spent years on Tatooine, and this is the hottest I have ever been in my entire life!”

“I can cut the engines to stop generating any heat, but then we’ll just be coasting through empty space and we’ll never make it to the outpost.”

You huff. “At this point you should just freeze me in carbonite.”

Mando does not freeze you in carbonite, but you do eventually make it to the New Republic outpost. They give the three of you a small dorm and Mando arranges for the Razor Crest to be repaired. You don’t have any credits between you, so you wonder what he offers in exchange.

You toss your gear into the room and head out to get food for everyone. You always enjoy being in New Republic space. No one is out to murder you or imprison you. The officers are usually nicer. Everyone likes the Skywalkers.

A friendly droid loads you up with several plates of food, and you stop to check out the holonet broadcasts on your way back. Things in this corner of the galaxy are a little hectic -- something you just witnessed firsthand -- but its less gloomy than it used to be.

Mando is sitting on the lower bunk when you get back. He’s back in his full armor, but you can read his posture pretty well. Grogu is playing in the corner, levitating some rocks you had found for him a few planets back. You set the tray down, fully intending to take your portion and eat out in the hall or in one of the communal sitting rooms. Before you can even turn away, Mando has already grabbed a plate of food and tugged his helmet off.

“WOAH,” you raise your hands in front of your face, ducking your head before you can see too much. Curly hair. Tan skin. Moustache. If there is one thing you’ve learned, it’s that Mando doesn’t let anyone see him without his helmet. It’s a cultural thing, and you respect that. “What is with you being naked today?”

Your eyes are open, but very pointedly looking at a wall nowhere near him. He shifts for a moment, and you wait for some kind of explanation.

“Look,” he finally begins, “we’ve been through a lot together at this point. I’ve traveled with you longer than anyone since I was a foundling with the watch. You’ve saved my life as well as Grogu’s many times, and we just survived one hell of a fight. Not to mention, I saw, um, all of you today. I figure it’s only fair.”

You’re touched. It’s an honor that Mando trusts you enough to remove his helmet. For as long as you have been travelling together, you’ve assumed that you care for him far more than he cares for you. “You don’t have to,” you say. “I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“I trust you,” he repeats.

You turn to face him. His eyes are so soft. Tired and kind and the warmest brown. He stares at you, taking you in for the first time with his own eyes and not the visor in his helmet. It’s unreasonably intimate considering he was staring at you naked with the helmet on just 16 hours before.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re kind of cute?” you laugh and look away, smoothing your hands over your pants. There’s food in front of you, and you use that as a welcome distraction.

“I’ve never trusted anyone enough before now to see me.”

How can he just say things like that? You try to drown the rapid beating of your heart behind some kind of bitter vegetable.

Mando begins to eat as well, slowly and unsurely. He picks at a few different dishes before finally speaking again. “You’ve, uh- I mean… you’re beautiful as well.”

You laugh loudly at that. It’s so shy. This man had seen you overheated and completely naked lying on the floor of his ship. You roll your eyes and shoot him a wink. “Something you like in particular?”

Mando chokes, coughing for a minute before chugging down half a glass of green jelly juice. He finally regains his composure, but his voice is rough when he speaks again. “I’d say the best view was from behind.”

It’s the last thing you expect from him. He’s so shy and reserved and has always backed down from your defensive teasing. It’s a moment before you can pull yourself together. Still, you aren’t sure what to say. Instead, you cram some shredded raw crustacean in your mouth and hope you aren’t too flushed.

Mando offers to take the trays back. The dorm bathroom has a shower with running water and you intend to take full advantage. Grogu rolls a rock at your feet as you head into the bathroom, and you lightly kick it back to him. “Are you tired of putting up with us yet? You’ve been a baby longer than I’ve been alive. I bet we seem like idiots to you.”

Grogu, predictably, says nothing. He makes a raspberry noise with his lips and plops down into a sit.

The shower is one of the greatest gifts you’ve ever enjoyed in life. Hot water, high pressure, steam and soap. You take your time washing up and letting the jets work out all of the kinks in your muscles.

When you slide the stall door aside, Mando is standing at the sink. Helmetless. Shirtless.

He jumps slightly, staring at the floor as you step out of the shower. 

“We have got to stop doing this naked thing,” you say. It doesn’t actually bother you. You like that Mando trusts you, and you’ve never been shy about being naked around others, but he’s too attractive and it drives you nuts.

“I rather enjoy it,” he manages to pull his gaze from the floor to shoot you a wink. Your pulse speeds up.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish, Mando,” you step forward. You’re still steaming from the shower and dripping wet. He’s never been this cheeky before, and you kind of enjoy it.

His gaze darkens, eyebrows rasing. He reaches out to grab your waist, pulling you in and pinning you against the sink. You gasp at the feeling of his skin on yours, leaning back as he crowds you against the basin.

“Grogu is napping,” he whispers.

“I think the shower will fit both of us,” you breathe.

He’s already working at the buckle of his pants, toeing out of his boots. You drag him back into the shower with you. The jets hit his back, and he melts a little. You wrap your hand around his cock, and he looks like he may collapse. His eyes flutter shut, one of his hands slamming against the wall by your head.

You lean in to brush your lips over his skin as you stroke his cock. You’d never even seen this man’s face before today, and now you’re kissing your way over his jaw and down his neck. His other hand grabs your ass, kneading the flesh and pulling you closer so your hips brush his.

Your thumb swipes over the tip of his cock, and he shudders. It happens so fast, you didn’t know he had spun you around until your cheek is against the shower wall. His hands are glue to your hips, digging into your ass and pulling you to him so he can grind his cock against your slick skin.

“Please,” you whine. You haven’t had sex with anyone since you began travelling with Mando, and opportunities to get yourself off come few and far between with three of you on the Crest. You’re desperately horny, and you’ve wanted to fuck this man since you found him in that godforsaken desert.

He lines himself up and drives his hips forward, sinking into you with one solid thrust. You bite your forearm to muffle your moans, panting as you try to get used to the sudden stretch.

“You good?” he asks, leaning forward to kiss your cheek. 

“Move,” you say, demanding but desperate.

It takes a moment to find leverage in the tiny -- smaller than you first assumed -- shower stall, but Mando begins to fuck you at a steady pace. You reach down to rub your clit, clenching around him. You’re going to finish quicker than you’re used to -- probably because you’ve been turned on since you saw Mando shirtless on the crest.

From the way Mando’s hips twitch and his rhythm falters, you guess that he’s close to coming as well.

His hands are everywhere. Your hips, your ass, trailing over your stomach and and reaching up to squeeze your breasts. His fingers brush your throat and you nearly come from the touch alone. He feels the way you tighten around his cock and places a hand on your neck, squeezing your jaw between his thumb and forefinger.

You come so hard your knees give out and your vision goes white. Mando keeps you from collapsing in a bruised heap on the shower floor by simply continuing to fuck you until he comes as well.

It’s not a lot of space, so you’re slumped together under the spray of the water. You manage to wipe yourself clean in a few swipes and stagger back out so Mando can actually wash up. He’s much quicker than you were, and he’s out of the shower by the time you’ve finished rubbing scented moisturizer over your skin. The New Republic sure knew how to treat their guests.

“I think we should definitely keep doing the naked thing,” he grins.

[sluttyten]

Fresh Air

Poly Series Chapter Index

summary: the first few months of life with your boyfriends and your newborn daughter bring numerous hardships that none of you were truly prepared for

length: 27.8k

tags/warnings: handjobs, dry humping, fingering, breastfeeding kink, slight daddy kink, cum sharing, smut, polyamory, multiple partners, the usual tags, angst?, some sadness

Having a baby is no easy thing. You knew that. You also knew that being in such a large polyamorous relationship wasn’t an easy thing. Already you’d lost two boyfriends; Lucas was long gone, happy in his own little world with Chaerin, and Ten was gone too, slowly slipping away.

It took the others a few days to realize that Ten was gone from the relationship. You didn’t have the same emotional breakdown as you did when Lucas ended things, so it wasn’t until you went around kissing each of them goodnight halfway through movie night, skipping over Ten, that Taeyong sat up curiously. 

“Excuse me!” He calls as you start to climb the stairs. “What just happened?”

Ten is slouched down between Taeyong and Kun, and he scowls at Taeyong, twisting his hand in the back of his shirt and tugging him back into Ten’s side. Ten mumbles, “We broke up.” 

“What?” Taeyong looks sharply between you and Ten. “When?”

The other eyes in the room slide toward this conversation. 

Ten flicks his gaze toward you, then he switches on his mischievous flirty grin, snuggling up against Taeyong. “When I realized you’re the only one for me, hyung!” 

Taeyong shoves him away with a groan.

WinWin comes down the stairs then, looking sleepy, sporting a little spit-up stain on his shoulder. He looks past you to where Taeyong and Ten are wrestling with each other, nearly falling into Kun’s lap as he groans and tries to keep them away. WinWin’s hand slides over your shoulder, squeezing reassuringly as he asks, “Hey, what’s going on?” 

He just got off from Daddy-duty, which mostly meant giving Mei a bottle and then napping with her. Ever since learning that he was her biological father, he’d been trying to help you out even more—offering to change her, to give her baths, to feed her (even though she was mostly breastfeeding, you were supplementing a little with bottles and formula).

“Me and Ten broke up,” you tell him, plucking at the front of his shirt. “You might want to wash this. Mei spit up on you.”

“Hold on. Are we just skipping over that? What do you mean you and Ten broke up?” WinWin frowns, his lips drooping into a pout.

You look back at everyone else, and a few of them are craning their necks to be able to see you. So you sigh, and you explain the breakup. Ten nods along with you, occasionally adding his own little input.

“I told you all that first day when we learned I was pregnant, if any of you want to leave or feel like you can’t deal with helping raise a baby, I understand. None of you signed up for a baby when we started this relationship.” You glance around the room, your gaze touching Lucas who has his head ducked as he picks at some loose skin around his nail. “Only WinWin’s definitely stuck with me now.”

There’s grumbles and eye-rolling around the room. WinWin touches the small of your back, just a tender touch to reassure you that he’s here, not going anywhere.

“Like I said, I understand when any of you want to leave. I don’t want any of you to be unhappy here.” You turn away and start up toward your bedroom. “Goodnight!”

But the others can’t let it go. It was one thing when just Lucas had left the relationship, but now Ten too? That second loss felt like the start of instability in the relationship, a crack in the formerly solid foundation. You tried hard not to think of it that way, but that was hard especially when a few days later you’re in bed with Kun.

Mei is asleep on the bed between you both.

It was just you and her for a long while, you were reading a novel to pass the time, and because you knew it was important for her to hear speech and intonation (even though at only almost two weeks old, speech was still a while away for her) you were reading aloud to her.

Kun had come inside, and when you paused in your reading he’d smiled and shaken his head. “Keep going. You have a lovely voice.”

So you’d read until Mei was asleep again, until your throat was dry. Kun was alternating between looking at you, looking at Mei, or looking at the backs of his eyelids. But when you sit aside the book and turn onto your side facing him and your daughter, Kun’s eyes open so he can see you.

“How are you?” He asks softly, reaching out to brush a finger at the thin skin under your eyes. “How are you holding up?”

You clasp his hand, pulling it down to your lips so you can kiss his palm. “You mean in general, or like postpartum? Or the breakup with Ten?”

Kun swallows, his eyes searching yours. “All of the above, I guess.” He looks down to your lips as you kiss his hand again. “I mean, you haven’t left the house since you came home from the hospital. That’s got to be taking a toll. And I’ve done some reading online, I know about postpartum depression and stuff. Then on top of the chances of that, there could be a hit of regular depression because of the breakup. I’m just worried, concerned.”

“I’m fine, Kun. Really.”

And you believe that you are. You feel good. Even with the breakup. Ten’s still here; he’s just more like your best friend now than anything else when he comes into your room to make sure you’re getting something to eat, to coo at Mei, or to kidnap Miso from where he’s curled up beneath Mei’s crib.

“Can I ask you something else?” Kun turns onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “If I still hook up with Ten, are you going to be mad? Does it count as cheating on you?”

You laugh. “No. It’s fine. You, Taeyong, Johnny, any of you can keep doing whatever you’ve been doing with Ten. I encourage it. I’m pretty sure one of you is actually the reason he broke up with me, unless you know of someone else that he’s had his eye on?”

Kun shakes his head. “No, just us.”

“I don’t mind sharing with Ten. I still love him. I want him to be happy.” You stroke a gentle finger down Mei’s arm. “I want you to be happy, so if you want to choose Ten, then I wouldn’t blame you for br—“

Kun moves so quickly to shut down what you’re saying that he jostles the bed and that wakes Mei.

“Shit.” Kun immediately starts trying to comfort her, cradling her gently in his arms, speaking to her in soft, soothing tones. And as Mei starts to settle, he looks sharply back up at you. “Don’t say something like that, about me breaking up with you.” His face twists with annoyance. “I’m not going anywhere. I love you.”

“That’s what you all say. Lucas loved me. Ten loved me. They both left.”

“I do fucking love you.” Kun tells you, his voice assertive and hushed as he looks down at Mei again. “If I had Mark’s balls I’d have proposed to you by now too. I’m sure half of us would have as well. I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon, my love. So stop trying to get rid of me.”

You’re not trying to get rid of any of them, but over the next few weeks it becomes clear that all of this—maintaining this relationship—is going to be a lot harder while you’re recovering from birth and while you’re trying to focus on Mei, feeding her and sleeping when you can.

Even with your boyfriends trying to help, it’s not easy.

Jaehyun, WinWin, Kun. They’re always up to help you with anything and everything. Doyoung and Yuta are a little squeamish still of diapers. Taeil, Johnny, Taeyong, Jungwoo, Xiaojun, Mark, and Hendery try, but some of them still seem scared to touch her, to spend time alone with a newborn who is so utterly fragile. And for some of them it seems that they’re just desperately ready for you to be recovered, ready to have sex again.

“It takes some time,” you explain to Johnny one evening when he approaches you. “I’m sorry, I know you’re horny.”

You’re not ready to have sex again, so the most you can offer any of them are handjobs, maybe a blowjob. 

You’re standing in the kitchen, just cleaning up a few dishes. Taeyong and Doyoung are upstairs watching Mei, so it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea when you offer to Johnny, “Do you want me to give you a hand?”

So moments later, you’re sitting on the edge of the counter, Johnny between your knees. You’re kissing him with one hand in his hair, the other down the front of his pants, softly kissing away his moans, giving him a few of your own to edge him closer. 

“Shit, I want to be inside you,” Johnny groans, fucking forward into your grip. 

“Just a few more weeks.” You kiss the corner of his mouth, then sit back. You twist your fingers tight in his hair, tugging lightly. Johnny’s eyes fall shut, a moan slipping free of his lips. “Then we can--”

Distantly, you hear the sound of Mei crying; her howling cries that she seems too tiny to be able to make. Your head jerks toward the doorway of the kitchen. You can see the stairs from here.

Johnny sighs, and his forehead touches against the side of yours. 

“I’m close. Please, babe.” He bucks forward through the ring of your fingers, grinding closer, trying to get himself over the edge. “Just finish me off, then go.”

She howls again, and you wonder what Doyoung and Taeyong are doing up there. Johnny pants desperately, so you turn your attention back to him, dragging his mouth back into a kiss, tugging on his hair, jerking him off just the way you know gets him off quickest.

He cums with a grunt, coating your hand in his load, and as soon as he’s finished, you pull your hand out of his pants, rinse it off in the sink, and then you hurry from the room, up the stairs after the sound of your daughter’s cries.

By the time you reach the room, you can see she’s red-faced, crying while Doyoung tries changing her diaper, and Taeyong’s desperately trying to calm her. 

“Did you pinch her or something?” You ask, wiping your hands on your pants, wrapping them briefly in your shirt to make sure they’re dry. Taeyong looks up at you with panic in his eyes. 

“She just woke up and started screaming,” he says. “Is she hungry? She’s not really all that messy.” Taeyong gestures at her diaper. 

Doyoung’s doing just fine, wiping her clean, changing her while holding his breath. Once he’s got the diaper safely fastened, he wipes his hands clean with a wet wipe, then lifts her up in his arms to rock her. He looks up at you then. “We were doing just fine before that.”

Slowly her cries quiet down, the bright color of frustration draining from her face until she’s back to normal, her little fists gathered around Doyoung’s pinkie finger and his thumb. Her dark eyes are still open wide, gazing up at his face. 

You sit down on your bed, and Taeyong sits with you.

“I feel kinda bad,” you tell him. “I left Johnny down there, but her crying had me worried. I hate that I can’t give you guys the time and attention you deserve.”

Taeyong smiles softly, stroking the back of your head. “She needs you more than we do. And I’m sure Ten would be more than happier to help out. Kun said that you told him it’s okay. Right?” You nod. Taeyong nods too, then lets out a breath before saying, “That’s a relief, honestly. Because I didn’t want to feel guilty about still sleeping with him.”

“It’s fine, Taeyong. What you have with him predates what you have with me anyway.” You squeeze his thigh reassuring. You truly don’t mind sharing any of them with Ten. “I don’t want to be the one to mess with that.”

Taeyong grins and kisses your cheek. “Thanks. Well, now you’re back, and you and Doyoung probably have this handled, I’m heading to the studio.” He stands and stretches his arms over his head, the hem of his shirt lifting up just enough that you can see the red mark of a hickey on his hipbone. “I’m almost finished up with all this recording,” Taeyong says excitedly.

And when he’s gone from the room, you flop back into your bed, staring up at your ceiling. 

Doyoung comes over to the side of the bed a moment later, and when you turn your attention to him, he’s holding Mei to his chest, but he’s only looking at you. He asks, “Can I join you?”

You nod.

The mattress shakes as Doyoung does his best to settle down carefully into the bed beside you. Mei goes comfortably onto her tummy on Doyoung’s chest, her little fist up at her mouth, thumb between her lips. You scoot closer, your face close in front of hers, and you sigh.

Doyoung rests a hand on her back.

“You okay?” He asks. “Feeling good still?”

Just a few days before, an ever-concerned Doyoung had approached you and begun asking you what felt like very pointed questions that you eventually determined was him trying to make sure that you weren’t suffering from postpartum depression. You’d convinced him you were fine and feeling good about everything, which was absolutely the truth. Still is the truth. But while staring here at your daughter’s face you just feel like you never want to leave her side.

Originally, you’d planned to go back to working after about six weeks.

“I’m not so sure I want to go back to work,” you tell Doyoung.

Mei blinks, sucking at her thumb. She’s looking at you, and you wonder if she can really see you right now, if she can distinguish your face, tell you apart from Doyoung or WinWin or Miso.

“So don’t go back.” Doyoung’s words are simple, direct. “If you just want to stay home and take care of Mei, then that’s perfectly fine. She’s the most important job you can have, anyway. We’re here to make sure you and this little princess have a stable future.”

You nod. “Maybe when she’s older I’ll go back to work, but I think while she’s young, before she can go to school, I want to spend time with her, teach her.”

Doyoung smiles. “You’ll make her brave and smart. She’ll go to school and they won’t know what hit them. A tiny little sweet faced girl with a big personality, a big heart, and a brain to match. She’ll be the perfect combination of all her daddies.”

You laugh. You can see it now: a little girl with WinWin’s face in her little uniform and braided pigtails, walking into her first classroom with confidence, jabbering away and making friends, impressing teachers. You want to build Mei into a strong, confident, brave girl who’s intelligent and knows her own worth, who won’t let anyone put her down or make her feel small.

You can’t wait to meet her.

When Mei is one month old, WinWin accompanies you to the checkup appointment with the pediatrician. The appointment goes well, and WinWin makes it clear that he’s eager to be Mei’s dad, asking the doctor all kinds of questions about things that you didn’t even consider. He asks the doctor if she thinks it will confuse Mei if she hears multiple languages on a regular basis.

“Oh, no. Quite the opposite. Children raised in multilingual homes often benefit greatly. They can have improved concentration skills, are better at providing solutions, and generally perform better academically.” She smiles encouragingly. “But, out of curiosity, how many languages are we talking? Two? Three?”

You and WinWin look at each other.  

“Probably three,” you tell her. “Potentially four or five.”

Korean and Chinese and English you figure will primarily be spoken around her, but Japanese and Thai are also possibilities. You don’t even mention that Cantonese might occasionally be spoken around her as well. 

“Oh, well that is impressive.” She scribbles something on her clipboard. “I think little Mei will certainly benefit from that.”

When you’re leaving the doctor’s office, WinWin carries Mei’s little carrier. She’s awake and looking up at him, and he keeps speaking to her in Chinese using a cutesy tone. Though as soon as you’re outside, he looks up at you. “Are you hungry? I was thinking we could go grab something to eat?”

There’s a place right around the corner that WinWin knows, so that’s where you go. It’s been a while since you’ve been out on anything that seems like a date. The last time you really went out somewhere and did things with people was your baby shower, and that was three months ago. Your last date was before that, when Lucas took you out to dinner just days before he broke up with you, which is somewhat upsetting when you think about it. And you’ve gone to a few parks over the last few weeks, taking Mei out for some fresh air and sunlight with your various boyfriends, but none of those really counted as dates, so you’re excited when you get to sit down at a table with WinWin and Mei.

Even by the time you do get home afterwards, you’re still buzzing with happiness from how wonderfully the appointment had gone plus the lunch date afterwards, and how Mei didn’t start getting fussy until right as you were arriving home.

You’re just in a very good mood. While you nurse Mei, Xiaojun sits with you and tells you a dramatic retelling of his day with Hendery and YangYang. Renjun wanders into your room a bit later to hangout and hold Mei. The whole afternoon is just guys coming in and out of your room, and you’re feeling great and happy, and you’re feeling good enough that when Jungwoo and Johnny come in to interrupt you doing yoga (in an attempt to get your body as closely to how it was before the pregnancy), you don’t mind. You let them sit and watch. Johnny even helps you with a few poses, and Jungwoo lies down on the floor with you, but he puts Mei on his chest to give her a little bit of tummy time.

You’re in the midst of laughing with Jungwoo and Johnny when Doyoung steps into your doorway, knocks on the doorframe, and says, “We have a little problem.”

That happy little bubble you’ve been living in all day pops.

Doyoung summons a group meeting, so you and Jungwoo and everyone else who’s home descend to the living room. You bring Mei with you, apologizing to Renjun that you don’t want to leave her alone with him (not his fault, it’s just you being nervous being away from her). Not everyone is home, so Doyoung calls Taeyong, Kun, and Jaehyun who are all working and puts them on speaker so they can listen in.

You sit nervously in the big armchair. Ten squeezes in with you, and he convinces you to pass Mei over into Uncle Ten’s loving arms.

“What’s wrong, Doyoung?” You ask first once everyone’s gathered.

He sighs and holds up his phone, which has Twitter open on it. There’s a long thread of tweets, images and text, and you’re not sure what that’s all about, not until he says, “It’s amazing that it took fans this long to catch on.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jaehyun’s voice is staticky over the phonecall. “Caught on to what?”

“To us.” Doyoung explains. “Apparently, our girlfriend and WinWin and Mei were spotted out together today by a fan, and now the pictures are everywhere.”

WinWin swears under his breath. 

“But it’s not just that. It was at first.” Doyoung scrolls up to the top of the Twitter thread on his phone. “Some fans realized that they’ve seen her before, so there’s this thread and a whole bunch of others just full of photos of us and you, sweetheart. Going back ages. I’ve been reading comments, and people were saying that for a long time they just thought you were one of our managers or a staff member or something, but then others had their photos, had stories of times they’ve spotted us out with you. There was some fan who said she saw you out with Hendery and Jungwoo. 

“So now they’re pretty sure that you’re dating one of us, or secretly married to one of us, but they don’t know who. Until today, seeing you and Mei with WinWin, they think they’ve solved it all.” Doyoung rubs his hand over his face, clearly exasperated. “But others think differently, because you’ve been spotted out carrying Mei on your walks through the park with me, with Taeil, with Mark and Taeyong. Some fans are just generally pissed off about all of this.”

Everyone’s been staring at Doyoung or else looking down at their phones as they also search social media for all of these swirling rumors and gossip.

Taeil’s the first to sit forward, and he looks over at you. “I don’t think you should leave the house for a few days until this dies down. For your safety.”

You know he’s talking about their sasaengs. Somehow they’ve been lucky enough that sasaengs haven’t camped out in front of this house like you know they did at their apartments when you first met them. You’re sure that many of those photos in that thread Doyoung’s talking about were taken by sasaengs.

“What are we going to do?” Kun asks, his voice sounding echoey and very distant over the phone. 

“What can we do?” Yuta responds. “I say we just let it all die down, don’t acknowledge the rumors at all.”

Doyoung sighs heavily. “I don’t think we can really do that, hyung. I’m sure the company is going to want to talk to all of us about it. And we can’t just ignore it and pretend that we don’t know what they’re talking about because there is all of this photo evidence, many stories, there are videos, and apparently when Xiaojun did an Insta live last week, you could hear Mei crying in the background.”

“Just say it was Haechan,” Mark suggests. “Say he was acting like a baby.”

“Or we could just tell the truth,” Jaehyun says over the phone. 

Yuta rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but what part of the truth? That Mei is WinWin’s baby, or that literally the fourteen of us all had the same girlfriend and that for nine months didn’t know which of us was fathering her child? That part of the truth? I feel like our NCTzens would possibly explode. Imagine the chaos. We’d probably be forced to disband.”

“Obviously not that whole truth, dumbass.” Jaehyun retorts. 

Yuta starts to bicker back at him, but Taeyong’s voice speaks up loudly over the phone, cutting them both off. “We’re not our own PR team. This isn’t something that we have to address right now, so maybe we should at least wait until we’re all home and can talk about it together, right?”

Right.

But you decide to go on to bed. It’s late enough that you can go without drawing suspicion, and as you’ve got Mei comfy in her bed, you curl up in your bed and open Twitter on your phone.

Maybe it’s a bad idea to search up what fans are saying, but you can’t help it. Especially now when you see half of your boyfriends’ names trending along with NCT and some other things that you’re sure are related to this drama going on. It is somewhat disturbing to see this evidence that the fans are gathering against you, to see the nasty things that they’re saying--threats against you and you even see a few against your daughter that have you muffling your tears against your pillow--and you’re still looking at all of this in horror when the door of your room opens. 

A shadowy figure slips from the lit hallway outside into the dark of your bedroom. You hear the familiar footfalls, and when he falls into bed, it’s a comfortable and intimately familiar weight and heat as he rolls against your side.

“Are you okay?” Mark asks.

His feet bump against yours, and as his head edges onto your pillow, he sees what you’re looking at and sees the blue light of your screen reflecting off the wetness on your cheeks.

“No, that’s what we’re not going to do, okay?” Mark sits up and plucks your phone from your hand, rolls over to the far side of your bed, and sits your phone on the bedside table before he comes back. His thumbs are gentle when he wipes at your cheeks. His voice only sounds a little frustrated, more concerned than anything else as he questions, “Why were you looking at all that?” 

“I wanted to know what they’ve seen, what they had to say.” You sniffle and press your face into the pillow. “Your fans can be terrible.”

Mark sinks down beside you once more, and he places a soothing hand on your back, rubbing up and down your spine. “Listen, you and Mei are safe. If you think that we’d ever let them do anything to hurt either of you....” Mark’s cheek rests against your shoulder. “We’ll fix this. I know we will.”

You sigh shakily, and turn, wrapping yourself around Mark, squeezing him in a hug as you hide your face against his neck. He hugs you back just as tightly. 

It’s hours later, Mark has fallen asleep beside you, and his arm is still tucked under your head, his fingers on that hand are tangled in your hair as he’d fallen asleep gently massaging your scalp in an attempt to get you to fall asleep (which was unsuccessful). There’s a soft glow from the nightlight in the corner of the room, and by its light you’ve been watching Mark’s face, counting his eyelashes and his freckles and then counting his breaths, but you can’t calm your mind enough to slow down and fall asleep.

So you hear Mei waking up, hear her starting to cry. You know you need to get up, leave the nice comforting warmth of the bed, to go feed her, but all you want to do is just stay right there.

You squeeze your eyes shut even as her cries begin to build.

Mark’s sleeping like a rock, so he doesn’t stir. You press closer, press your face to his chest.

The bedroom door opens, and a sleepy Taeil with messy hair comes inside. You can just barely see him through your eyelashes; can see him looking at you and Mark, then his gaze sweeps across the room to the crib in the corner and Mei’s little pink face scrunched up as she cries.

He crosses quietly to the crib, shuffling barefooted, his sweatpants dragging along the floor like socks.

You can’t see him from this angle but you can hear as he shushes Mei, cooing and making soft noises to soothe her. You can hear the rustling as he picks her up, the creak of wood as he settles down in the rocking chair. She keeps crying though, no matter how desperately Taeil tries to soothe her, and after a few minutes of that, you sit up in bed and look over at him.

He’s rocking in the chair, trying to get her to take the pacifier, but she keeps spitting it back out when it’s not giving her what she really wants.

You sigh and push out of bed. Taeil looks up at you.

“Unless you’ve got tits, Taeil, I don’t think she’s gonna calm down for you.” You stand beside him, push your fingers into his hair.

“I thought you were asleep,” he whispers back to you. He doesn’t look away from Mei, just keeps looking down at her puckered face.

Your fingers slide down from his hair to the back of his neck, resting gently there. “I can’t sleep. I just keep thinking about what your fans are saying.” 

Taeil looks up at you then, a frown drawing his eyebrows tightly together. “You don’t need to look at what they’re saying. Our managers have already said that we’re going to have a big PR meeting probably tomorrow so our company can put out a statement. But you don’t need to worry about anything. You’re safe here.”

Mei lets out another piercingly loud cry from such a small baby, and you reach for her. Taeil hands her up to you easily, then he stands, gesturing for you to sit in the chair. You don’t even think about it as you move your top to bare your breast for Mei to latch onto, but Taeil makes a short noise, and when you look up at him, he’s looking away, rubbing at the back of his head like he’s embarrassed.

You try to hide your smile. “You’re all so funny about this, you know. Half of you get embarrassed to look at my boobs now. You’ve seen them before, Taeil.”

“I know that.” He mumbles, and you swear if there were a bit more light in the room, you’d be able to see that he was blushing. “I just have really been missing you lately, you know? It’s been a while.” 

Taeil tries his best to keep his eyes on your face when he turns to you then, but you watch as his gaze inevitably falls to your breast. But there his gaze seems to soften at the sight of Mei’s dark little head nestled there.

Taeil sinks to his knees. “It’s all different now, you know? She’s here now, and she’s so tiny and perfect. Everything’s just.... centered differently.”

You know exactly what he means. Before Mei there were so many things--things to do, places to go, people to go see and talk to, and meaningless things to fill your time with, boyfriends to go fuck around with--and now there’s Mei and she’s just got you so wrapped up with her, none of those things feel like they matter. It’s just you and her, like your whole little world. 

“I don’t think it really matters that WinWin’s her real dad.” Taeil reaches one finger up and strokes the back of Mei’s tiny hand. “Isn’t there a saying that it takes a village to raise a child? Well, here we are. Your whole village to help raise Mei. Our Mingmei. I know that it’s not going to be easy to be here sometimes, and that there’s no way of telling what the future holds for all of us, but I want to be here. I love you. I adore Mei.” Taeil’s expression is so soft as he says that; his eyes are moist looking at you and your daughter then, and after another moment he sinks back to sit on the floor, and he turns his face away, hiding as he tries to hastily wipe away his tears.

“I don’t want you to go anywhere either, Taeil. I’ve said it before, but if Mei could have all of you as her father, that’s what I would wish.” You smile down at her. “Imagine having a dozen fathers to show up and be there any time she needs support, protection, encouragement.”

Taeil sits up then, resting a hand on your knee reassuringly. “We will be here to protect her. Especially right now.” He shakes his head, his brows set in determination. “After you came up here, Doyoung was showing us some more of what they were saying, and I swear to you, we will not let any of them near you. Ever. But there were some great things people were saying.”

You’d seen a few of those during your deep dive. Fans saying that you seemed lovely--both visually in the pictures, and then also the few fans that had stories about seeing you out with the boys had said that you had sounded sweet--and fans defending you, defending the boys, reporting accounts threatening violence toward you or Mei. There were fans gushing over the boys as fathers, fans going wild thinking about aesthetic baby pics that some of them might post on their Instagrams. 

There were definitely some wonderful things you’d seen, but it was hard to focus on those when there was so much negativity inspiring fear and anxiety and terrible things in you. 

By the time Mei finishes nursing, even you are finally starting to feel tired. Taeil takes her from you as you attempt to pull your shirt back into place, and he paces around the room, singing quietly, patting her back to burp her. You just sit there in the rocking chair, rocking back and forth, your eyes feeling heavier and heavier as you watch Taeil and listen to him.

You don’t even realize that you’ve dipped off, not until there’s fingers on your shoulder and on your cheek, a quiet voice calling your name. 

“Hmm?” You open your eyes.

Taeil, smiling sleepily too. “You should get in bed, my love. Mei’s fine,” he explains when you sit up suddenly and look around. “She fell asleep, so I put her back down. Come on, into bed.” He helps you cross the few feet to the bed, his hand in yours, and once you’ve slid back in between the covers, your head once more on the pillow, Taeil smooths hand over your hair, and leans in to whisper, “Goodnight,” and he places a loving kiss on your forehead. 

You’re asleep before you can remember to mumble a sweet “goodnight” back to him.

Maybe it was a mistake telling your boyfriends that the doctor had approved and even encouraged the use of multiple languages with Mei. Because after you tell them that, then you rarely hear the Chinese members speak in anything other than Chinese to her. Yuta almost exclusively reads and sings and speaks to her in Japanese. Johnny, Mark, and even sometimes Jaehyun and Ten speak English to Mei. You even catch Xiaojun singing in Cantonese to her.

Mei looks up at him, waving her arms and legs, cooing happily as he leans on the side of her crib to sing to her.

“What are you doing?” You ask, sliding up beside him, one arm curling around his waist, your cheek resting on his shoulder. “She’s going to be so confused when she’s older if you speak to her in Mandarin and Cantonese, Jun.” You brush your lips in a light kiss to his exposed shoulder.

“She’s going to be smart,” Xiaojun responds quickly. “Going to speak five languages by the time she’s five, and put all of us to shame with her brain.” You feel him kiss you on the top of your head. “Were you still on for coming with WinWin, Ten, and I later?”

It’s been a few weeks since the rumors first struck. Their PR team put out a statement, claiming that you were just a staff member and close friend of the group who happened to have a baby. A lot of fans had backed off, but you were still a little wary about leaving the house unless it was necessary. You’d only left for appointments, and then to go meet up with your parents once for them to fawn over their granddaughter.

“I don’t know, Xiaojun. Your fans are still watching us.” You step away from him.

Lately there’s been a heightened presence of sasaengs around the boys. You’d even noticed one following you on your way to the last appointment you’d had with your doctor—one where you’d been cleared to return to work (if you wanted that) and to resume sexual activities (though she did advise that you take it easy, so no rough sex, no orgies)—and you’d been lucky to find that an old friend of yours was acting as a courier, and he was in the doctor’s office dropping something off right as you were leaving. He’d walked out with you, and though he was working, he did walk with you and make sure that the sasaeng stopped following.

Xiaojun turns away from the crib to follow you, his fingers catching on your sleeve, sliding down over your hand. “Hey, babe. Look, I know that lately we’ve been under more surveillance than normal. I’ve seen what they’re saying online, people still doubting the story that our team put out, but that doesn’t mean that you need to withdraw from us.” Xiaojun strokes the back of your hand until you turn it over and he laces his fingers through yours. “Come out with us tonight. Let Kun or Jaehyun or one of them watch Mei, and come have fun.”

You glance uncertainly over at Mei’s crib. “I don’t know....”

You haven’t left Mei yet, not for any extended period of time, not for longer than a shower or a quick snack in the kitchen along with a handjob for Johnny. Leaving her for two or three hours, that just doesn’t sound like something you’re ready for yet.

“I’ll think about it.” You tell him.

Xiaojun lets out a happy sound, and then he cups your face between his hands, and pulls you into a quick kiss. “Please say yes. We’re just going to see a movie. And whoever watches her will have to deal with Jaehyun probably hovering protectively right at his shoulder the whole time. She’ll be fine.” He pecks you on the lips again, and this time you twist your fingers in the bottom of his top, lean in on your toes, and kiss him again.

Xiaojun makes a pleasant sound, his fingers slide into your hair, angling your mouth against his. You want to push this a little further, want to feel his bare skin against yours, feel the pleasure that you haven’t felt for weeks and weeks now.

He smiles into the kiss as you push your hands up under his top, moving up his chest. He almost giggles when you feel up his pecs. Xiaojun pulls back just a little, pecking you on the lips playfully amidst his giggles, before pressing back in fully.

You can do this, you tell yourself. Your doctor cleared you for sex again, and you know that Xiaojun will be gentle with you, that he’s a good choice to be your first time again. This will be fine.

When you drop your hands from his chest, slipping your fingertips beneath the waistband of his pants, Xiaojun slows down as if he’s a little confused by you initiating this. And when you touch his dick, he backs off and his eyebrows draw together in confusion. “Are you... Are you sure?”

“Mmmh.” You nod. “My doctor finally cleared me. I’m good as long as we take it a little slow.”

Xiaojun’s smile returns, and he cocks his head to the side a little and looks you up and down. “So I should treat you like a virgin, right? Take it easy and slow?”

You whine. “Don’t tease me, Xiaojun.”

“No, I won’t.” He kisses you sweetly. “But are you sure? You want to do this now? Here?”

Mei’s just right over in the corner, unknowingly looking up at the mobile spinning over her head, unaware of what’s going on here. It does feel a little bit weird, but she won’t know. She won’t have a clue what’s going on.

“I’m sure.” You nod. “Well, I’m sure that I at least want to see how far we can go. I just,” you sigh, “feel like we’ll be interrupted by one thing or another. A baby, a boyfriend, discomfort. Something. But yes.”

 “We’ll figure it out.” Xiaojun bounces a little eagerly and excitedly on his toes. “God, I really want you.”

You kind of love that Xiaojun doesn’t rush you at all even after he says that. He doesn’t push you to hurry into anything, is content with just lying in your bed and making out, letting your hands wander over his bare arms, delving into his hair, slipping through the large cutouts at his sides to scrape your nails lightly over his back or his abs or his chest. He doesn’t try to get you to touch him lower down his body even when you can feel how hard he is against your thigh. Xiaojun lets you take it all at your own pace, lets you pull his hands under your shirt.

You’re feeling more confident with your body now than you were even just a few weeks ago. You’ve looked at mommy forums online, and they say that it’s not uncommon to feel negatively about your body for quite a while after birth, but you’re happier now.

So when Xiaojun touches your belly, as he lifts your shirt up over your chest, you don’t feel embarrassed at all. You feel the heat of lust burning in your belly, your skin flushed with heat even as cool air touches your chest.

“Fuck, so pretty. I’ve missed you like this,” Xiaojun groans, breaking away from your lips to kiss your neck, then skipping down to your chest, the mound of your tits in your bra. His thigh slips between your knees, his lips dance over your chest, and you can’t help the breathy little sounds that spill from your lips.

You clap a hand over your mouth.

“Don’t be shy,” Xiaojun chuckles. “You make such pretty noises, babe. Let me hear them.”

You obediently drop your hand, sliding your fingers into his hair instead as Xiaojun keeps kissing your chest, and his hand finally slips down into your panties.

“Ah!” The little gasped sound escapes your lips when Xiaojun’s finger glides over your clit.

He grinds subtly against your thigh, and moans softly, lifting his head from your chest and kisses you again.

It’s been so long since you were touched like this, that it’s literally seconds before Xiaojun is smirking at just how wet you’ve grown. He sticks with touching your clit, kissing away all the sweet sounds you’re making, until you start moving with him, rocking your hips up and looking for more than just the touches to your clit.

Xiaojun moves down to kiss at your neck, and as he does that, he slips a finger inside you.

You moan loudly, your hand flying down to grip at Xiaojun’s forearm, not to stop him but just to hold on to him as he fingers you. It doesn’t hurt or anything, it’s a bit uncomfortable after everything your vagina went through just a little over a month and a half ago. But it still feels so good.

Your fingernails dig into his skin just as his teeth nip at your throat, his cock rubs against your thigh, and Xiaojun makes a muffled sound against your neck. You let go of his wrist, snaking your hand inside his pants to touch his cock, to help him feel good too.

“Wait,” he mumbles, “I feel like this should be about you.”

“Very chivalrous of you, but I kinda want you to enjoy this too.” You try to keep going, but Xiaojun stops, sits up, and pulls his hand entirely out of your pants, then grabs your wrist and removes your hand from his pants as well. You pout up at him.

He looks away from you, up at the ceiling. “Please don’t give me that look.”

“Then come touch me some more.” You reach for his waistband.

Xiaojun bats your hand away, and moves down the bed. “I’m going to, but, babe, I want the focus to be on you. I don’t care about me right now because I guarantee I had an orgasm more recently than you. So, please, just let me make you feel good first.”

You really can’t argue with that.

“Okay. Fine, do with me what you will.” You spread out your arms and legs, dramatically going limp.

Xiaojun rolls his eyes affectionately. “Can I take your pants off?”

You lift up your hips to help him slide your pants off, then he kneels up over you, pulling the shirt up over your head.

He sinks back down to sit on his heels and drinks in the sight of you before him.

You wonder if he’s thinking of the last time he had you like this, because you know that you are. It’s been months and months since the last time that you and Xiaojun were alone together like this, taking the time to appreciate and take each other apart. It was shortly after you learned you were pregnant, you’d spent the whole morning in bed together, getting each other off; you’d spent at least half an hour kissing his entire body, sucking his cock, praising his body.

“Fuck, I love you,” he sighs, and falls over you again, his body covering yours as he captures you in a kiss once more. Xiaojun slips a hand under your back, and you feel his fingers fumble for a second or two with the clasp on the back of your bra before it releases. You sigh in comfortable relief, and reach up to pull the straps down your arms, freeing yourself of the bra entirely.

You hold your breath as Xiaojun starts to kiss down your body—trailing burning kisses down your throat, between your breasts, down your belly, and at last he reaches the edge of your panties.

His nose nudges against your clit through the material, and when Xiaojun places the gentlest of kisses right over your pussy, your breath catches in your throat before shaking its way free. He lifts his head so he can see your face as he finally removes the last piece of clothing on your body.

The last time you were this naked in front of one of your boyfriends was when you showered with Jaehyun before you found out WinWin was Mei’s father. Almost two months ago.

When you feel his breath on your bare, wet pussy, all you can do is close your eyes, bite your bottom lip, and pray that he’s about to eat you out. You want so badly to really, truly get your pussy eaten the way that hasn’t been done in a long time.

And right as Xiaojun grants your nonverbal wish, his tender lips kissing your clit, a new voice of doubt enters your mind.

What if you look different down there? Or smell or taste different?

You haven’t really taken much time to pay attention to if giving birth altered how your pussy looks. You have no idea if you’re going to taste different. You’re only kinda sure that you don’t smell different. And what if it doesn’t feel right when he eats you out anymore? You’ve read that sex might feel different after the baby, and you’ve always loved Xiaojun eating you out. Him and WinWin are two of your favorites when it comes to oral.

You just start doubting all of this, thinking and worrying, so even as Xiaojun’s doing his best down there, you’re not giving him any reactions. Not until he pulls back and looks up at your face to ask, “Does it not feel good?”

“I’m sorry.” You groan, rubbing a hand over your face. “I think I’m just... thinking too much.”

“Relax.” Xiaojun puts a hand on your thigh, massaging gently. “You don’t need to think about anything, don’t worry or stress.”

He’s probably right. You don’t need to worry about any of that stuff. He’s clearly not turned off by what he’s faced with down there right now, as he’s already diving back in to sweep his tongue against you. You just need to relax, to sink into the pleasure of what he’s doing, and forget everything else but just that.

Easier said than done, honestly, but you do try.

Xiaojun sets to work on fucking you open on his middle finger again, his tongue at your clit. Slowly, it does start to feel really good; you get out of your mind and just relax into the pleasure, your body taking over, moving with Xiaojun. A second finger joins the first, and soon he’s even got a third finger pumping inside you, his lips sucking at your clit.

You twist your head to the side and bite at your upper arm to keep your moans in check as your orgasm quickly rises. Your chest heaves, whines leaking out even though you try to keep quiet, and Xiaojun lifts his head.

“You look so sexy right now. Are you going to cum on my fingers, babe?” Xiaojun moans a little, sitting up on his knees so he can kiss at your belly, then a little higher up your chest. His lips brush against your breasts, and you shudder from the small burst of pleasure that gives you. His hips dip down, hard cock grinding against your leg, and his three fingers push in deep inside you, stretching you so your pussy really feels it in the best way.

“Fuck, Dejun. Deeper.” Your hands fly to his shoulders, fingertips digging in. “I want you to make me....”

He drops back down, face dipping once more between your legs. With his free hand he pushes at your thigh, trying to get you to spread your legs even farther apart. His tongue flicks over your clit, fingers pressing inside you. The knot in your belly grows tighter, the warm tingling of pleasure building higher and higher, and you feel so close, your body growing hotter, orgasm just within reach the air itself feeling like it’s sparkling around you.

Xiaojun sucks your clit between his lips, his fingers press in right against your G-spot, and just like that your orgasm unleashes.

Your toes curl, body arching up, hips rolling against his mouth, and the guttural sighs and moans that leave your mouth are barely muffled as you bite at your lip in an attempt to keep them in. Your chest rises and falls and feels damp, your whole body warm and shaky and you feel like you’re sweating, but it’s different.

Xiaojun licks you through the throes of ecstasy, only backing off and pulling his fingers out when your hips have eased back down against the bed and you’re whining, thighs twitching on either side of his ears.

And it’s then that you open your eyes from where they were squeezed shut.

Xiaojun’s face is the first thing you see, his wondrous gaze locked on your chest. “Is that your milk?” He asks. And for the first time you realize that your chest doesn’t just feel damp, doesn’t just feel sweaty from that mind-blowing orgasm, your breasts have leaked out breastmilk during that orgasm.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry.” You cover your face in embarrassment. “Oh my god, I just, god, didn’t know that would happen.”

Xiaojun just laughs. “It’s fine. It’s kinda hot, honestly.”

“Right, my boobs squirting is very attractive.” You can’t convince yourself to pull your hands away from your face. Not until you feel Xiaojun’s tongue on your skin. “You are not licking up my breast milk, are you?” You lift your head to look down at him.

Xiaojun freezes and makes eye contact with you. His tongue hasn’t yet reached where your breast milk has leaked down to. So he pulls his tongue back inside his mouth. “I wouldn’t be opposed to it. It’s just breastmilk, right? What’s the possible harm?”

It’s not like you’ve never heard of this before. You’d read in forums and stuff about mother’s tasting their own breastmilk, fathers tasting their wife or girlfriend’s breastmilk. You’d even read about someone letting their friends, brothers, and more try it. You think that one’s a bit strange, but you can’t deny that you had tasted a little bit of yours yourself one morning out of curiosity. And while you were pregnant Jungwoo had confessed his interest in it.

You just hadn’t expected Xiaojun to be into this.

“I mean, you can if you want to, I guess.” You drop your head back down onto the bed.

Xiaojun’s tongue touches your skin again, and it feels so nice. And then his mouth is on your tits, gentle lips and tongue lapping at the spilled breastmilk. Your pussy starts to throb again with arousal as Xiaojun’s tongue races right up to the edge of your nipple, and then he stops.

You groan and lift your head to look at him again, and just as your eyes meet, Xiaojun flicks his tongue over your nipple, lapping at the damp peak.

It’s certainly not a whimper that leaves your lips.

Xiaojun laughs, and then he does it all over again; his warm tongue tracing over your chest on the other side, though this time he takes his time with your breast, and upon reaching your nipple, he closes his lips briefly around the nipple to flick his tongue at the hardened bud. It’s weird feeling it like this, so different from before when they would lick and suck at your nipples during sex, but also a lot different too than when Mei does it.

You feel like you should not be deriving sexual pleasure from one of your boyfriends basically nursing from you—breastmilk flowing from your nipple into his mouth—but Xiaojun doesn’t stop. In fact, he also seems to be getting off from it. His hips roll against the bed, grinding down into the mattress. He moans, brings one hand up to the side of your breast, gently massaging as he continues with this.

“Fuck me,” you sigh, a plea and a sound of pleasure. And Xiaojun obeys, pulling away from you just long enough to push his pants down and kick them off the foot of the bed, and then he’s back, hips cradled between your thighs. You knot your fingers in the front of his shirt, “Now.”

Xiaojun is gentle and slow, tenderly stroking your thigh as he enters you. He leaves little kisses on your throat and your chest, and it’s only when he starts shallowly rocking into you that he lowers his mouth to your chest and once again starts laving his attention on your tits.

It’s not terrible, just a little uncomfortable. There’s a dull ache that’s not pleasant at all as he thrusts into you, and even though you can tell Xiaojun’s holding back, just trying to make you feel good. And you can feel it—the pleasure is right there through a thin veil of discomfort, and you know if you can just get past that then this will be great. Sweet love-making with Xiaojun would be perfect.

You slide your hands over his back, dipping your fingers beneath his shirt to scrape lightly over his shoulders, and Xiaojun moans. He loses a little bit of restraint, thrusting deeper and a little harder, and there you find the pleasure.

“More,” you moan.

Xiaojun nuzzles against your breast, his lips closed around your nipple as he moans, tasting you on his tongue, feeling you warm and wet around his cock. You’re not surprised that he might not last long. Not surprised when he moans again and draws his hips back, cock leaving you empty as he cums across your belly, still suckling at your tit.

You cradle a hand against the back of his head, your eyes flutter closed, and you think you could let this sweet pleasure overwhelm you again, take you into another orgasm, to peaceful bliss.

The door opens suddenly (why do they never seem to know how to knock when you’re in the middle of something?) and there, framed in the doorway, stand Jungwoo and WinWin.

Xiaojun lifts his head slowly, his lips releasing your tit as he turns his wide-eyed gaze to his members. There’s a small hint of breastmilk on his bottom lip.

There’s no possible way to deny what just happened.

For one thing, you’re lying fully nude beneath Xiaojun. His face was just buried against your chest. Both of you are fully flushed in the face. He looks dazed, horny, and (as you just noted) there’s breastmilk on his bottom lip.

WinWin and Jungwoo stare at both of you in silence for a long moment that finally breaks when WinWin shakes his head and marches inside, heading straight over to the crib.

Mei’s still happily oblivious to what’s been going on. WinWin scoops her up, cradling her in his arms, and as he turns to face you on the bed, he shields her little face from the sight of you and Xiaojun with his hand. His voice is somewhat amused, somewhat scandalized, as he asks, “In front of our daughter?”

Xiaojun rolls to the edge of the bed and sits upright, tries to cover up with the edge of the duvet cover, and then folds his hands in his lap. But when he notices that Jungwoo’s staring at him—most notably, staring at his mouth—he quickly wipes at his lips and chin, smearing away the last of the evidence of what he’d just been doing.

You sit up as well, dragging a blanket over your lap, folding your arms in front of your breasts. “In my defense, there’s absolutely no way that she knows what just happened.”

WinWin shakes his head, trying to look disapproving, but you can see the corner of his mouth turning up in a smile as he looks back down at Mei. “So does this mean that you’re cleared again?” He asks. “Doctor says you can have sex?”

You nod, looking around at him, at the back of Xiaojun’s head where he’s facing away from you, at Jungwoo still framed in the doorway and gazing in awe at you and Xiaojun. “Yeah, just nothing really intense or rough. So no orgies for a while. Her actual words.”

“Good to know.” WinWin wiggles his fingers in front of Mei’s face, and she knocks around one of her little fists, as if she’s trying to grasp his fingers in front of her. He can’t pull his eyes away from her as he says, “I’m pretty sure I owe you some kind of great thank you for this gift right here.”

He starts walking toward the door again, and Jungwoo even steps out of the way to let him pass, so you ask, “Where are you going with her?”

“I’m going to spend a little quality time with my daughter,” WinWin says, and if life were a cartoon then his pupils would be heart-shaped as Mei grips onto one of his fingers right then. “You and Xiaojun can finish up here. Clean up before we go to the movie tonight.” His gaze finally lifts from your daughter, flicking in Xiaojun’s direction.

Xiaojun starts to say something in response, but WinWin’s already ducked out of sight of the doorway, leaving Jungwoo still standing there.

He doesn’t move, even as Xiaojun stands and starts to gather his pants and underwear from where he’s kicked them. Jungwoo just stares at you, at your bare tits. You can kind of guess what he’s thinking, and right as Xiaojun’s shimmying his pants back into place, Jungwoo asks, “Does it taste alright?”

Xiaojun freezes, glancing between you and Jungwoo.

You don’t really care what his answer is. It’s breastmilk, it’s not meant for him anyway, so you don’t think his opinion on it really matters. Instead of intently listening to him, you climb out of bed, turning your back on your boyfriends to get dressed.

“It’s not bad. Wouldn’t be my first choice of drink, but I’m not going to pretend like I wouldn’t definitely do that again.” Xiaojun sounds so pleased with himself as he says it, and you roll your eyes affectionately, carrying your clothes in your arms into the bathroom to shower, leaving Xiaojun and Jungwoo out there to discuss your breasts and your milk. You need to shower and get ready for the first date you’ll have in months.

Once the others realize that you’re open to having sex again, you’ve got a parade of boyfriends trying to get between your legs again. Or at least, after hearing about what WinWin and Jungwoo had walked in on, they keep asking to taste your breastmilk.

Self-consciously, you cross your arms over your chest as Mark’s folded himself onto the end of your bed and just asked you in a very serious voice, “So can I have a taste too?”

“Mark, shut the fuck up.” Yuta’s sitting right beside you, holding Mei who’s just looking up at him and smiling. She’s been doing that a lot lately, making this absolutely adorable smile that has every single person in this house wrapped around her tiny fingers. “If you want to taste it just go get in the minifridge.” Yuta jerks his head over to the set up you’ve got tucked in the corner beside the rocking chair, now that you’re pumping milk just so you don’t have to get your tits out every time that Mei cries for food.

“Do not drink Mei’s supply, Mark Lee.” You get up, and as you walk toward the end of the bed, you reach up to ruffle your fingers through Mark’s hair. “You boys are all so weird. Every one that’ve had a taste say it’s weird, so why do you keep asking. You don’t even eat yogurt, Mark, what do you think breastmilk is going to do to you?”

Yuta snickers.

Mark laughs too, and you smile as you rest your hand on his head. He tilts back to meet your gaze.

And then you hear it.

Your head snaps toward Yuta and Mei. You feel Mark go still beneath you. Yuta’s frozen in surprise.

You hear it again.

“Is she laughing?” You climb back onto the bed, crawling up toward the head.

Mei’s tiny little body, her smiling face. She’s laughing. And if you’ve ever had a favorite sound, it is this. Your daughter’s little giggle. She’s three and a half months old, and this is the funniest thing in her whole life.

You’re still fawning over her and the cute sounds she makes when WinWin gets home.

He always comes up to see Mei first thing when he gets home, even if it’s super late, even if he’s already extremely tired. Even if he’s fresh off a fifteen hour long shoot, he pops through the door of your bedroom.

“Sicheng!” You look up, unable to lose your grin. “Babe! Come here! She laughed!”

He looks confused for just a split second, and then Haechan (who had come into the room looking for Mark) does something and Mei laughs again.

WinWin’s face goes soft with surprise and awe, and then he lights up. Yuta’s still holding her, but he gives her up easily when WinWin makes grabby hands at his daughter. WinWin immediately hugs her and you can see Mei smiling like the happiest little baby.

For the first time since you saw her, right now as you look at the way she’s looking at her father, you realize that Mei is like a real little human. Like, on some level you’ve known that this whole time. You’ve known it since you first felt her move inside you, since you heard her first cry, since you spent all night watching her breathe.

After a little while, the others drift away, making excuses to leave, and then it’s just you and WinWin with your daughter. You scoot close beside him so you can rest your head on his shoulder, looking down at Mei cradled in his arms. Her eyelids are growing heavy, a pacifier between her lips now.

“Sometimes, when I first wake up in the morning,” WinWin says in a hushed tone, “Sometimes I think that this has all just been a dream. That I’m going to roll over, get up, and we’re going to be back where we were a year ago, before we even knew you were pregnant, and in that moment after just waking up, my heart drops. And I think that it was such a good dream.” He sighs.

Mei’s eyes fall shut, and WinWin looks down at her.

“I can’t imagine my life without her.” WinWin admits. “I hope you know that. The day I got that test result, best day of my life. I just.... I can’t even describe....”

“I understand.” You sit up a bit and kiss his cheek. “And I’m happy you’re her dad. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually said those words to you. But you’re so good at this.”

“So you’re saying I’m the best boyfriend?” WinWin smiles over at you, and judging by the way that his gaze briefly flicks past your face, over your shoulder toward where the door to your bedroom is, you assume one of the others has come to call, and WinWin’s looking to irritate whoever it is. He meets your gaze again as he says, “You’re saying that all along you wished I would be the dad, and you were just playing along with Jaehyun’s fantasies of him potentially being the dad.”

You look over and see Jaehyun leaning in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. 

Honestly your mouth waters at the sight. He looks like he’s ready for climbing into bed and staying there. Shirtless and wearing sweatpants, hair pushed back with a headband. 

“I’m glad Mei’s your daughter, WinWin. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to make Jaehyun a daddy too.” You trace your gaze down the length of Jaehyun’s body, barely able to contain yourself. 

“Alright,” WinWin groans. “I guess that’s my cue to take our daughter and go. You look like you’re about to jump him, baby.”

“You don’t have to go.” You kneel up on your bed when WinWin stands up to go.

He shakes his head. “I’m not staying here with her while you eye-fuck Jaehyun.” He looks the other man up and down. “Have fun. Looks like you could both use it.” WinWin pats Jaehyun on the shoulder as they pass each other, and you watch WinWin leaving the room, holding Mei to his shoulder, kissing her head softly.

The softness you feel at that sight wars entirely with the lust you feel when Jaehyun slinks into your bed.

One knee lands between yours, a hand to your shoulder gently presses you back, and then Jaehyun’s over top of you, his lips press against yours. It feels so good to just kiss him, to feel his body on yours, all heat and hard planes. You love the soft little grunt of pleasure he makes against your lips when you trail a hand down his chest, fingers brushing over his nipple. You love the amused sound of surprise he makes when you suddenly push him over, rolling him beneath you.

Jaehyun’s hair’s grown long over these last several weeks, and now it flares out on the bed in a not-entirely-flattering manner. But you sit on his hips, reach forward to pluck the headband from his hair, and you toss it aside so you can run your fingers freely through his hair as you sink back in to kiss him some more.

“Did you mean what you said?” Jaehyun moans a few moments later as you begin to helplessly shift your hips. “About wanting to make me a daddy too?”

“Mmmh.” You kiss down his throat. “I would gladly give you a baby, I think. You clearly want one all your own.”

Jaehyun puts a hand to your shoulder, applying gentle pressure to get you to stop for just a moment. “Hey, look at me.”

You lift your head from his throat.

When Jaehyun’s eyes are looking right into yours, he says, “I want you to know that I am perfectly happy with Mei as my daughter. You know that, right?” You start to sink back down to get back to what you were doing, but Jaehyun catches your chin between his fingers. “I don’t want you to think that you, like, owe me a biological baby, okay? I know I always talk about this breeding kink thing, but in the end it’s just that, just a kinky thing. Of course, I would love to have a baby with you, but I don’t want you to feel obligated, okay? Tell me you know that.”

“I know, Jae.” You peck him on the lips. “But I want to make you happy too. And I don’t think I want to stop with just one kid. Especially when I see how you all dote on her. You’re all really amazing dads.”

Jaehyun chuckles, shaking his hand still holding your chin a little. “Don’t you miss our days of doting on you? Spoilt baby.” He flips things back over, sweeping your hands up over your head, pinning your wrists against the mattress. “Want me to spoil you again, princess?”

Warmth blooms through you, tingling down to your fingertips and toes as Jaehyun looks at you and talks to you like that. His hand dives under your shirt, pushing it higher up your chest until your bra is exposed; one flick of his wrist and the nursing bra you’re wearing falls apart, and your breasts are freed for him.

“Jaehyun, please.” Your breathy whine does exactly what you want.

Jaehyun, with one hand still pinning your wrists above your head, lowers his mouth to your breast. His other hand dips inside the shorts you’re wearing, inside your panties too. You gasp and arch into his touch as he grazes your clit. So enamored are you by the things he’s making you feel, that you don’t notice at first when he removes his hand from your wrist. It’s only as you feel your shorts and panties being tugged down that you realize your hands are free, but you leave them together above your head as Jaehyun pulls his mouth from you and shimmies your shorts away.

“God, you’re so fucking sexy.” Jaehyun sinks down low, lying on his belly between your legs. His hands press against your thighs, getting you to spread open a little farther. He leans up to kiss your belly just below your navel, right where the butterflies are going wild in your gut.

Sure, Xiaojun ate you out when you had sex with him, and you’ve fucked a couple of the others since that, but you haven’t had Jaehyun’s tongue on you in what feels like ages. Definitely for several months. So seeing him between your legs like this has really stirred you up, and you can feel yourself dripping more just thinking about his tongue and sweet lips on your pussy.

“Gonna make you cum until you can’t take anymore.” Jaehyun murmurs, kissing lower, his breath fanning over your wetness. “I love spoiling you, baby. Just let me know if it gets to be too much.”

And then there he is, fingers spreading your labia apart to give him direct access to suck your clit between his lips. You can’t stand how well Jaehyun knows you, how he knows exactly every move to make right now to get you to cum quickest. He buries his face against you, eating you out with such intensity and devotion that you’re lightheaded even before your first orgasm crashes over you. And it doesn’t stop there. Waves of pleasure as Jaehyun keeps licking your pussy, fucking you with his tongue, making vibrations to carry you through it by moaning as you drip on his tongue.

When Jaehyun sharply sucks your clit back into his mouth after that second orgasm, you squeeze your thighs around his head, and you whine, “Too much, Jae. Back off.”

He does slowly pull himself up onto his knees, lifting a hand to drag it back across his mouth, though he still licks his lips again.

“Good, princess? You only came twice. Don’t you want more?” As he shifts a little, you notice the tent in the front of his sweatpants. Immediately you want to offer to jerk him off or blow him, but you know that Jaehyun is just as likely to turn that down, to go shower and take care of himself instead, so you entice him the only way that you know for certain will have him staying.

You spreak your legs apart again. “I’m not finished. I want you inside me. Told you I want to have your baby too, didn’t I?”

“Stop. This is about you. Not me.” Jaehyun says, but he’s already got a hand on your hip, is already rolling you onto your belly. “Want to get on your knees, precious?”

You lift your ass up, cheek still against the bed, and Jaehyun slicks his fingers against your pussy, giving you just his fingertips before they disappear again, his fingers damp on your hips instead. You bite your lip to hold in the pathetic whimper that you almost made as you grind back against his fingers, pressing back until you feel the soft material covering his thighs bumping against your bare skin. His erection fits against your ass.

“Ah, shit.” Jaehyun moans, his hips pushing forward involuntarily.

“I need you, Jaehyun. I’ve missed your cock. It’s been so long since I had you inside me, remember?” You’re sure you’re creating a damp spot on the front of his pants, continuing to grind back against his erection. “Please fuck me, Jae. Please, Daddy?”

Jaehyun’s not always big on the daddy kink thing. That’s mostly Kun, occasionally Doyoung when he’s really feeling it. But from time to time, you’ve called Jaehyun daddy, and he’s loved it. Just as he does now.

You can feel him fumbling quickly with his pants, pushing them down around his thighs, his hands going back to your ass, thumbs spreading your cheeks so he can see as his desperately hard cock presses against your entrance and then as he pushes inside.

Jaehyun moans, swearing and sounding so lovely as he feels your warm vagina around him for the first time since the beginning of the year, like eight months almost. “Fuck, baby, you feel so good around me.”

“Yeah, Daddy?” You turn your head to the side, trying to get a look at Jaehyun’s face. “You missed my pussy?”

“Haven’t we all?” His hands slip from your ass to your hips, holding tightly as he starts thrusting into you. “Heard you keep telling most of them no when they come drooling after you, baby. Waiting for someone special? Only want Daddy’s cock to fill you up?”

He’s mostly right. Ever since Xiaojun, you’ve messed around with several of them. Johnny had come to you begging for attention as the one handjob you’d given him had been distracted and hurried. Kun and you had had a quick roll around the other morning, which ended with his fingers inside you and your hand down his pants. There was the moment when Jungwoo had sat there watching you try to nurse Mei, but when it turned out that she wasn’t hungry although your tits were hurting with the need to get the milk out, and he’d eagerly volunteered to help you with that instead of you having to sit there with the breast pump which was just annoying to have to deal with. You’d sat in his lap with his face buried against your tits, and after he’d had his fill, looking dazed and horny, you laid back on the bed for him so he could jerk off over your chest before licking it clean again.

For the most part, you’ve not engaged in actual penetrative sex with any of the guys since Xiaojun, but a couple weeks after that, you did share a single glass of wine with Doyoung, and it went straight to your head, making you feel all giddy and buzzy, so when Doyoung got you to your feet to go bed, you’d dragged him into a kiss. The kiss also went straight to your head, pulling and tugging Doyoung all the way into your bedroom with you, through the bathroom door, into the shower. It felt so good to have him in you again, moving against you, pinning you against the cool tile wall of the shower, water racing down your bodies and streaming between your lips as you kissed.

You’d had sex with Yuta too, convincing him to stay in bed with you one morning. He’d woken hard, your name on his lips, and as soon as he realized, Yuta hurried to climb from bed, to go take care of it himself, but you’d caught his arm and asked him to stay. Yuta was worried about hurting you, concerned about Mei in the corner. But she was already gone as it was actually quite late in the morning. You’d already fed her, and Taeil had taken her downstairs when he left your room. So you welcome Yuta into you, and he’s not normally so tender and romantic in bed. You know him better by the rough passion, each time normally touching on one of his kinks, but this time had been sweet and gentle, taking you apart second by second until you unraveled beneath him. He’d left afterwards, pressing a kiss to your forehead and promising he’d be back with breakfast in bed.

 But, Jaehyun was mostly right about you waiting for his cock. The few times you’ve had sex again, none of them had cum inside of you for one reason or another, and you know that if you tell him that now, it’ll really satisfy Jaehyun’s jealousy and his breeding kink, thinking that he’s the only one allowed to cum in you now.

“Waiting for you, Daddy,” you moan, gasping for breath as his tip drags right against your G spot. “Been waiting for your cum. Please, Jaehyun.”

“Of course, baby. I’ll give it to you.” He thrusts in deep, reaches a hand up to tangle his fingers in your hair so he can pull you up from where your face has been planted against the mattress.

Now, you know that you’ve not been trying to hold your moans in much, and Jaehyun’s definitely not being quiet either, so you’re not too surprised when your eyes open as Jaehyun tugs on your hair, and you see that all of these sounds have drawn some attention.

Johnny and Mark stand watching in the doorway.

No orgies, your doctor’s voice echoes in your mind. She’d been joking, you know that, but right now, you don’t care about how serious or not she’d been. You just want. You don’t think you can handle three of them—sure, you’ve had more and worse before than just three at once, but it’s been a long time, and your body would definitely not be up to it, already after just the two orgasms back-to-back that Jaehyun gave you, you were feeling it. You can take maybe one or two more, but not more than that.

“Jae, please,” you moan, throwing your head back so you can see his face. “Please.”

He glances over at the two in the doorway. He jerks his head, and Mark and Johnny come closer. Mark’s gaze is fixed on Jaehyun’s cock disappearing inside you. Johnny’s watching the way Jaehyun’s fingers are knotted in your hair.

“Are you finally giving her the treat she deserves, Jae?” Johnny asks as he joins you on the bed, kneeling in front of you. “How does she feel?”

“Sweet.” Jaehyun’s hand winds tighter in your hair, drawing you up more until your back is pressed to his chest, and his lips brush your throat. “Our baby girl feels so sweet. Tastes sweet too.” His tongue swipes quickly at your skin.

Johnny starts touching you too; a hand between your legs to rub at your clit, another raised up to tweak one of your nipples. And when he leans in, his lips touching the other side of your neck from Jaehyun’s lips, you lose control of yourself.

You keen at the attention being laved on you, an orgasm rocking through you.

Jaehyun’s teeth close down on your sensitive skin. Johnny chuckles, continuing to rub your clit and kiss your neck as you keep shaking, your body too overstimulated now on your third orgasm, pressed between two boyfriends with them still touching you.

“Oh my God, it’s too much,” you moan, shaking. “Jaehyun, Johnny.”

“Guys.” For the first time since entering the room, Mark speaks. “Back off, look at her.”

It’s a lot but you’re still fine. It’s not more than you can handle, though you appreciate Mark’s concern. But you don’t appreciate when Johnny pulls away, when Jaehyun stops thrusting toward his own orgasm.

You shake your head. “No, keep going.” You reach back, fingernails digging into Jaehyun’s hip. “Please, Jaehyun, I told you I want you to cum in me. Keep going. I need it.”

“Love when you beg for it.” Jaehyun picks back up where he left off, chasing his orgasm, and it’s only another few moments before he’s cumming, the long-awaited heat of his orgasm spilling inside you. “Mmmh,” Jaehyun moans, “now you’re all mine, baby. Gonna give Mei a little sister or brother, right?” He kisses your neck and you shoulder, and as he pulls his hips back from yours, you can turn around in his arms, and he kisses you on the lips.

“Come on, when’s my turn?” Johnny asks, his voice teasing, his hands reaching for your hips. “I’ve missed you too.”

You break the kiss with Jaehyun, twisting around somewhat uncomfortably to bat Johnny’s hands away. “I can’t, Johnny. It’s already been too much, too quick. I shouldn’t have even done that much probably.” It’s not like that sex had been too wild or anything at all, just a bit rougher than the others have been since you were cleared for sex again, but you can already feel a dull ache setting into those muscles.

Johnny sighs and leans back against your pillows. You can see the bulge in the front of his pants, and it hurts you to know how much he wants you, to know that the most you can offer him right now is another handjob or a blowjob, but not what he wants. He looks at you for a long moment, considering, and then he sits up, pushes himself off the bed, and walks out the door.

You sink back against Jaehyun, and he wraps his arms around you. Mark’s still standing there, looking after Johnny, but as the door swings shut, Mark looks back at you and Jaehyun. You groan, reaching down to dip your fingers between your legs, the cum dripping out of you now. “I feel so gross now.”

Jaehyun lets go of you, flopping down onto his back, eyes fluttering shut. “We should take a nap. Mark, you joining?”

There’s just barely enough room for three people on your bed, but it doesn’t matter, because Mark shakes his head. “But if you feel gross, how does a bath sound?”

You nod.

Jaehyun makes a little noise, stretching out an arm to lay it over your lap possessively, keeping you there in bed with him.

Mark rolls his eyes a little. “You can join us, Jaehyun. That tub might be big enough to fit the three of us and your jealousy.”

Jaehyun opens his mouth to retort, but you quickly cover his mouth with your hand. “Let’s not argue. Let’s just relax with a soak in the bath, then we can go see what WinWin and Mei are up to.”

After Mark steps out to go run the bath, Jaehyun moves his arm away.

He’s lying there stark naked, not trying to cover up at all, and you once more find your gaze drawing attentively and appreciatively over his form from head to toe. But as you return to looking at his face, you find that he’s watching you, smiling and blushing ever-so-slightly.

“Enjoying the view?”

You reach over, pinching lightly one of his nipples. “Shut up. You know you’re handsome. I don’t need to tell you that. And also, you don’t need to act so jealously possessive when Mark offers me a bath, like you just fucked me so good, Jaehyun. If I thought I could’ve handled more I would have gladly begged you to keep going, would’ve let Johnny and Mark too.” You lean down so your face is right above his. Jaehyun blinks slowly, dazed by your sudden proximity, and he makes a soft pleasant humming sound when you kiss him. “Only would’ve let you cum in me, though,” you promise him.

Jaehyun grins, resting his hand against the back of your head as he brings you back down into another, longer kiss.

You’re still kissing when Mark pops his head out of the bathroom to tell you the bath is ready.

“Coming?” You ask Jaehyun.

He shakes his head, watching you slip off the bed. “Think I’ll go steal Mei from whoever’s got her. Maybe I’ll just go take a nap.” But he’s still in your bed when you close the bathroom door behind you.

The tub swirls with steam and bubbles, the air scented with vanilla. Mark’s already soaking in the tub, but he opens his eyes as you ease a foot into the water. “Where’s Jaehyun?” He asks, his eyes following each inch of your skin that sinks beneath the bubbles.

“Decided to go bother whoever has Mei.” You sigh as the bubbles brush your chin, the warm water enveloping you, already working magic to relax that ache you’re feeling. “This feels so nice.”

“It does.” Mark’s hand brushes your arm beneath the water, circling around so he can pull you closer and closer until you’re sitting with your back to his chest.

“This is nicer,” you sigh, leaning you head back as Mark kisses the side of your head. “Relaxing.”

His hand slides down to yours, twisting your fingers together underwater. You rest your head on his shoulder, his head rests against yours, and you let your eyes close, feeling safe and good, all wrapped up in warmth and Mark.

After a few moments, he starts humming, playing with your fingers. He brings your intertwined hands up out of the water, and you smile to yourself. Mark rubs his thumb back and forth and back and forth and again and again at the base of your third finger until you finally open your eyes, turn your head slightly, and you ask, “What are you doing?”

“Just thinking,” Mark answers. “Remembering the night I proposed to you, how quickly you shot me down.” He kisses your head, then says, “I still want to marry you, by the way. I know things have been.... a little different since Mei. I know she’s not mine, so proposing like I did back then was maybe a little silly, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you at all. I still love you as wildly as I have done since I met you and even more. I know that you would probably shoot me down in a heartbeat again if I tried to propose, but I’m just thinking about how I would still gladly spend forever with you and Mei.”

Mark lifts your hand up, kissing right there at the base of your finger where a ring would sit if you’d said yes to him.

Mei’s giggles quickly become your favorite sound in the universe. She giggles when Miso comes up to snuggle beside her. She giggles when her dads or the other guys play with her. She giggles when you talk to her in silly voices or when you blow raspberries on her belly. She smiles and makes babbling noises, such a happy baby.

“Mei-mei!” Ten coos, lifting her up. “How’s the happy little princess today?” He scrunches his nose at her adorably.

“She’s been fussy today, actually.” You’ve had her lying on a blanket on the floor in the living room while you sit nearby and fold laundry, and she’s been making little crying noises for the better part of an hour, but every time you’ve checked her diaper she’s been dry, and she’s not hungry either. You’ve tried holding her and talking to her, giving her her favorite new toy. Nothing had worked until you put YouTube on the TV and started playing videos of the guys—music videos, interviews, reality shows, videos from their channels.

They’ve all been gone all day. The 127 members, the Dreamies, and WayV were all out, and you don’t know the last time you were in the house without any of them, or if you’ve ever been there without them. It was strange, and maybe that’s what Mei had been picking up on. And now Ten’s the first one back.

“She seems good now.” Ten sits down on the sofa, sitting Mei back against his chest. She’s making little happy sounds, which only turn to giggles when Ten takes her hands and starts clapping them together between his. That entertains her for another minute or two before she starts getting whiny again.

Ten watches in surprise as you start playing one of WayV’s videos and Mei immediately calms down, her eyes watching the TV screen, transfixed.

“Honestly, I think she wants WinWin.” You sigh, folding the last of the clothes and sitting it on top of the neat pile you’ve made. “She’s only four months old, and already such a Daddy’s girl. I swear she already has some idea of the time he normally comes home, because she just starts to get so excited and looks at the door. And watch, when he starts talking.” You point at the video, and as WinWin appears and starts talking Mei makes such happy sounds.

Ten laughs. “Is it just him she does that for?”

You shrug. “Sometimes Jaehyun. I think it’s because they’re the ones always stealing her from everyone else. You know how possessive they both are of her.”

“And of you.” Ten bounces Mei a little in his lap. She’s got her hand shoved into her mouth, drooling around it, and Ten just watches her do it with amusement. “Johnny came to me a few days ago, complaining that you’d left him on the edge again. Something about Jaehyun calling you about Mei, interrupting what you were doing, then you left him like that?”

You groan. You know exactly what he’s talking about. A few days ago, Jaehyun had happily volunteered to babysit Mei to give you just a few hours to yourself to relax. That relaxing had consisted of you going to get a wax (just because Doyoung had eaten you out and afterwards commented that he missed the times when you would be so smooth down there) and a massage and a trim for your hair too. And when you got home, Jaehyun wasn’t finished having quality Mei time (a nap side-by-side on the floor; it was adorable and you snapped quite a few photos of them), so you climbed up the stairs to your bedroom, but before you went inside, Johnny had peered out of his room, saw the glowing happy state of you, and invited you inside.

You’d been excited to show off to him how soft and smooth you looked, and Johnny had been equally as excited to get to experience it. So he’d laid you back on his bed, touching and stroking you until your belly was on fire with lust, your pussy dripping, mind going fuzzy with just how much you needed Johnny to make you cum. He’d taken photos too, a few small video snippets as well, sending them into your groupchat with your boyfriends to show each of them what they were missing out on, and as he teased you with light brushes of his fingers over your clit, Johnny had read out the responses of what the others were saying.

By the time that Johnny was finally inside you, his big cock feeling so good, and his warm arms and body surrounding you, making you lowkey lose your mind at the all-encompassing feeling of Johnny Suh, you’d forgotten about everything but him.

Until there was a frantic knock on the door.

Both of you ignored it. Lips locked together, Johnny’s hips knocking you higher up the bed with your hand braced against the headboard to keep from ramming into it.

It took another few harried knocks on the door before Johnny grunted a clearly annoyed, “What?”

“It’s Mei,” Jaehyun said from outside the door. “She woke up crying and she feels a little warm, maybe feverish. Sorry to interrupt, but I don’t—“

He didn’t even get the chance to say anything else before you were shoving Johnny away from you, pulling clothes on that weren’t even yours, and you were out the door. Mei had been fine; it wasn’t a fever or anything, she was just a little warm and hungry, and by the time you got that sorted, you couldn’t even find Johnny to finish things off.

In the back of your mind, at the time, you had wondered if Jaehyun had just fibbed about Mei feeling feverish just to break up what was going on with you and Johnny. If he’d seen the photos and videos in the chat, if his jealousy had overwhelmed him enough to make up any excuse to get it to stop. You’d convinced yourself that that was ridiculous; Jaehyun seemed genuinely concerned that Mei might be sick.

But right now, Ten looks at you like he believes Jaehyun had done exactly what you were suspicious of.

“I thought Mei was sick, so I had to go take care of her, Ten.” You push to your feet, coming over to offer your hands to your daughter. She babbles excitedly as Ten hands her over to you. “It’s not like I could tell Jaehyun to just go watch her, make sure she didn’t get too high of a temperature while I stayed to finish Johnny off. And by the time I’d settled her down, I couldn’t find Johnny anywhere to pick back up or to even apologize.”

Ten nods. “Yeah, he was with me. Don’t worry. I took good care of him.” He grins mischievously. “But afterwards we were talking, and he said that kind of thing has been happening a lot. Him feeling left behind or left out. I think you two should talk.”

You think he’s right.

It’s hours later when Johnny gets home. Mei’s asleep upstairs; you’ve got the baby monitor beside you at the table while Chenle and Jisung argue over who gets the last ramen cup in the cabinet. Jungwoo, Mark, and Sungchan are playing video games together in the living room with Yuta and Taeil calling out advice and commentary from where they’re watching. You feel at peace again with the house back to normal, loud and busy and relatively chaotic.

Yuta greets Johnny as he walks through the door, and as he passes the doorway into the kitchen, you call his name. He passes by then backs up, pulling out a headphone. “Did you say my name?”

You nod. “Can I talk to you?”

Johnny pulls his headphones out of his ears, tucking them away in his pocket. “Of course.”

Yuta strides into the kitchen then, bypassing the two youngest members of the group who are now standing at the fridge together, and before either of them notice, he steals the ramen they’d been arguing over. You shake your head at him, and he just smiles.

“Yuta, can you take this.” You hand him the baby monitor. “Just keep an ear on it for Mei, please?”

Yuta glances between the baby monitor and your face and Johnny’s. Something clicks in his eyes, and his smile turns more suggestive. “Ah, alright. I’ve got our little angel. You two have fun.” He accepts the monitor, and walks back out of the room with the steaming ramen in the other hand.

Johnny follows you as you walk outside into their small yard. It’s deep night outside, quiet but the air still buzzes with the nature sounds of insects and the wind. It rustles your hair as you sit down on the bench, Johnny settling down beside you.

“What’s up?” He asks. You notice the way that he reaches down to the knee of his jeans, fiddling with the frayed hole there.

“I was talking with Ten earlier,” you say, “and he told me that last week when I skipped out on you, you went to him instead.”

Johnny nods. “Yeah, like, you don’t have a problem with that, right? Kun and Taeyong still fuck around with him too.”

“I know. I’m fine with that. But, Johnny, Ten said that you’re feeling left out in this relationship lately, and that’s what I want to talk about.” You reach over, laying your hand over his on his knee. “Why do you feel that way?”

Johnny’s quiet for a few seconds, looking at your hand on his, and then he lets out a short, sarcastic laugh. “I mean, it’s not a ridiculous way to feel right now, is it? Not baseless? I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve had your wholly undivided attention, uninterrupted by someone else within the last, like, five months almost.”

“You mean since Mei was born?” You withdraw your hand. “Johnny, I’m sorry you feel that way, but you know I can’t just ignore my daughter, right? If she needs me, I have to go, because I’m her mother and that’s my responsibility.”

“Of course I get that. I know that you need to take care of her. It’s just fucking annoying when you leave me in the middle of something sexual.” Johnny argues, “Like, that time you gave me a handjob, and you definitely would’ve just left if I didn’t beg you to finish me off, and even then you did it so quick then just left. And when Jaehyun was fucking you, me and Mark walked in, got me so hard and then just told me to leave pretty much. Then there was the other day. And I get it, Mei needed you, but it just pissed me off that Jae interrupted, especially since it turned out that she was fine.”

You don’t know what to say. Those examples he gave you, two of those times it was because your daughter needed you, and the other time your body literally couldn’t take any more so there was nothing you could have done for him.

“And it just seems like you never have time for me anymore. There’s the sex stuff, but also, even when we’re together just talking or watching a movie or whatever it may be, I just feel like you’re not there with me. Like you’re thinking about something else, not listening to me or wanting to be there.” Johnny tilts his head back and looks up at the sky. “I love you, I really do, but lately it’s just felt like maybe I shouldn’t be here anymore. I want someone I can go have fun with and not have to worry about leaving me at a moment’s notice.”

“Well, I’m a mother, Johnny. That’s going to happen.” You tell him. “She comes first; she always will.”

“I know.” Johnny folds his arms in front of his chest. “So maybe we should end this. I thought that I was ready for a relationship like this, but now with all things considered – the other guys and Mei and everything – I think it’s too serious and too complex for me to be happy trying to keep doing this. Your attention is split too many different ways, and I hate ending it, because like I said, I do love you. But I... I just think that maybe we want different things.”

You look down at your hands, willing the tears not to flow, but you can already feel the hot tingle behind your eyes, the tightening in your throat. “You wanted a baby, Johnny. Do you remember that? We talked about it before I was pregnant. Hell, we talked about it while I was pregnant, when you were coming to the appointments with me, meeting my parents. You remember that, right? But now you’re saying that you can’t deal with having my attention split between you and her?”

“That’s not it.” Johnny’s voice drops low, offended and defensive as he says, “Not entirely. If it was just that, just split between me and Mei, I could handle that. But it’s the fact that you’re in love with all of us, that you’re dating all of us. That’s what I can’t deal with. You get that, right?”

You hate to admit it, but you do get it. This moment is strangely similar to when you and Lucas broke up. He had other reasons, mostly his growing feelings for Chaerin, but he also told you that one of the reasons was that he felt that your attention was too divided.

“I get it,” you agree. But you can’t bring yourself to look at Johnny.

“Are you mad at me?” Johnny asks after a few silent moments.

You bite your cheek, blink away the tears, and then you say, “Well, it’s not like I’m jumping for joy or anything over here. But I get it. I don’t like it, but not many people do like being broken up with.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes again. His hand rests briefly on your shoulder, and then he’s gone, leaving just the heat behind from his hand.

Kun’s the one that finds you a while later. You’re not sure how long you’ve been sitting out there, but the light in the kitchen has gone out when you hear the door.

“There you are.” Kun steps out, closing the door behind him to come sit beside you. “I was starting to get a little worried when I couldn’t find you anywhere inside.” As soon as he sits down Kun wraps his arm around your shoulders, drawing you into his side, and you lean your head down on his shoulder. “I’m guessing that talk with Johnny didn’t go well?”

You start to lift your head, but Kun lays his hand on your hair, pressing you back down. “How did you know about that?” You ask him.

“Ten. He told me that he told you what Johnny had been saying, and that you two needed to talk.” He strokes your hair soothingly. “And when I got home earlier, Yuta had the baby monitor, and when I asked, he said you were out here talking with Johnny.”

“Yeah.” You sigh. It feels like there’s a weight on your chest that won’t go away. You hate this feeling, like maybe if you’d just done something different, maybe you could make everyone in this relationship happy. But as you’ve been thinking about this since Johnny left you out here, the only thing different you could come up with is just choosing one of them from the start; that or not getting pregnant, but you can’t bring yourself to regret that one bit at all.

“What happened? If you want to talk about it?” Kun asks.

You pull your head away from his hand slowly, and Kun moves to let you do so. He makes a little sound as you sink down, resting your head in his lap and taking his hand to bring it back to your hair. The bench is a little hard and uncomfortable to lie on like this, but you don’t really care too much.

“We broke up. I didn’t, like, come out here thinking that’s what was going to happen. I thought we’d just talk, come up with a compromise or something, and then go back inside happily.” You close your eyes tight. “But Johnny thinks that I’m juggling too many people in this relationship, that I don’t have enough time and attention for all of you, plus being Mei’s mom on top of all of that. And he’s right, I guess. That’s partially why Lucas left me, and I know things have probably gotten worse since I had Mei.”

Kun twirls your hair around one of his fingers. “A little bit, but I thought we all understood that you have to focus on her. We can handle ourselves. But Mei needs you entirely; she’s a baby. And we, or at least I, can see that you’re doing your best to be what all of us need you to be. Aren’t you exhausted?”

You rub your cheek against Kun’s leg, loving the soft feel of his pajama pants against your skin. “A little exhausted.”

“You need a vacation.” Kun suggests. “You barely leave the house, so you need to just get away, get out of the city. Probably get away from all of us.”

A laugh bubbles out of you, and you turn onto your back so you’re looking up at Kun. He’s smiling, eyes glinting in the dim light. “Right, get away from all of you. And what about Mei? Do you think I could leave her here for a week or even a few days? With all of you?” You laugh again. “I love all of you, and I know most of you are good with her, but really, Kun? If you want me to relax, leaving my daughter here in this house without me would almost be as bad as leaving her in a fraternity house.”

Kun frowns. “We’re not that bad.”

You lift a hand up to touch his cheek. “No, you’re not. I know I can trust a couple of you with her, but I still couldn’t leave her.”

The longest you’ve been away from Mei is about four hours, and even then, she was only about twenty minutes away from you. What Kun’s suggesting, leaving the city for a getaway would last much longer and put your farther away from her than you’ve ever been before.

“Take her with you, then.” Kun turns his head, brushing his lips to your hand. “You, her, WinWin. Take a little family trip. He should have a few free days coming up on his schedule. And don’t mind anyone getting jealous about it if you take WinWin with you. He’s her dad. I think the three of you deserve some quality time together.”

It does all sound like a very tempting idea, so you keep that little idea wrapped up nicely in your mind for a few days, coming back to it again and again every time that a stressor pops up in your life. Like when you bump into Johnny and his expression shifts into something that’s a combination of sadness and concern and apology. After the third time of that happening, you decide maybe taking some time away from the house would be a good thing.

You bring it up to WinWin on a Tuesday morning.

He’s just woken up, rolled out of bed, and strolled upstairs into your bedroom. His hair’s still a wild mess, standing up in various direction, and looking especially silly because of the recent dyeing it had. You laugh and reach up to smooth it down as he flops down into your bed, dragging the sheets up. Miso hisses as the sudden sheet movement disrupts him bathing himself at the foot of the bed, and he stalks off, his tail held high, looking back once before he disappears out the door to give WinWin a disgruntled look.

“I want to go back to sleep,” he mumbles into your pillow. “But Hendery wouldn’t stop being loud. I get that he isn’t the one who had a schedule running into early this morning, but come on? Being awake this early?” WinWin smashes his face into your pillow, pulls the blanket up over his head entirely, and falls silent.

“You have a few days cleared on your schedule soon, right?” You lift the edge of the blanket so he can breathe. The lump under the blanket moves to signal a yes. “Do you want to get away and relax with me somewhere that’s not here?”

WinWin emerges from the blanket, squinting against the light. “What?”

“Kun suggested it the other night. He thinks you, me, and Mei should get away. Well, initially he just said me, but when I laughed about leaving Mei here in this house alone with all of you, he amended it to include you and her too.” You quickly reach up, trying to push his hair flat again, unsuccessfully. “What do you think?”

WinWin nods. “Sounds good to me.”

And three days later, you and WinWin pack up Mei and a weekend bag, and drive away to a beach a few hours away. You’re not there necessarily for the beach—after all Mei is only a few months old and you definitely don’t want to expose her to the sun or to the heat for too long—though it does make a very pretty view from the window of your hotel room. The pretty blue water lapping against the beach below makes you pause at the window, holding Mei who also looks out at the water transfixed (or maybe she just sees her reflection in the window and wonders who that other baby is), pressing her little handprints to the glass.

“Do you remember the last time we came to the beach?” WinWin asks, sneaking up behind you. He drops a quick kiss to your cheek, then brings a hand up to cradle Mei’s head.

“Mhmm.” You hum, and Mei waves a hand at the window, fingers leaving streaks on the glass. “I’m pretty sure last time we came to the beach is probably when we made her.” You stroke her soft cheek. “That was such a good day.”

WinWin laughs, and Mei turns her head to look up at him with her sparkly dark eyes. “I remember that day, like, I was joking around with Taeyong and Hendery, and then I looked over at you and Dejun sitting on the end of that dock. You were just sunbathing, and then the next time I looked over you were making out, straddling him, God, it was really sexy. I never pegged him as being the type to mess around in public like that, but neither was I really until right then. I still can’t believe we did that out in broad daylight where anyone could’ve seen us. Do you really think that’s the time that we made her?”

You shrug. “Probably. That’s definitely around the time that she was conceived. And Mei’s our little sea star. She loves her baths, and when I play white noise to help her sleep, the ocean waves are her favorite. Of course, that could all be a coincidence.”

WinWin smiles as Mei starts making nonsensical babbling sounds, kicking her legs as she looks back out the window at the beach and the people milling around in the sand. “We really did something good, didn’t we? Making her.”

“Absolutely.” She certainly wasn’t planned, but you don’t regret one thing about it. You and WinWin talk about this semi-regularly, both of you just absolutely enchanted watching your daughter exist, amazed that she’s the product of both of you. “And to think you almost didn’t come with us to the beach that day.”

WinWin shakes his head. “I don’t want to think about that. Mei-mei, you want daddy to hold you?” He repeats it in Mandarin, and as he says her full name Mingmei, she lifts her arms to him, so you pass her over. WinWin cuddles her, continuing to speak to her quietly as she gazes up at his face and clings tightly to one of his fingers.

It’s the next day when the three of you go down to the beach early on in the day, before the sun’s really beaming down, but nevertheless you’ve slathered Mei with some baby-safe sunscreen, you have a little adorable hat on her head shielding her from the weak sun rays. It’s not really warm enough to get in the water, but it’s nice enough that you and WinWin can sit on the sand for a while, put Mei’s toes in the sand, and eventually you carry her to the water’s edge and hold her right there, her little feet curl up as a cool wave washes over them.

“Does she not like it?” WinWin asks, chuckling as Mei lets out a sad little cry just once.

“You’re not too sure about that are you, Mei?” You laugh. She puts her feet back down after a minute, just to have another wave crash nearby, racing thinly over the sand, covering her feet. She watches the water carefully, and the next time it happens she giggles, quickly adapting to the strangeness of the water.

You don’t spend all day at the beach. There’s a temple nearby up atop a tall hill, so you put on a baby carrier strapped to your chest, fit Mei snugly in it, and you and WinWin go exploring with Mei along for the ride. It’s a nice walk, pretty out, and as you follow a path along the seaside, the breeze blows salty spray up at your faces. Once you’ve reached the peak of the hill, Mei is ready to be free of the prison you’ve got her strapped into on your chest, ready to be set free and held by her dad.

It’s breezy and cool, relaxing here atop the hill, looking down at the waves below. There aren’t too many people up here, so you decide to take a seat on one of the benches overlooking the sea, unpacking a little picnic.

WinWin sits across from you on the bench, both of you facing each other, and he holds Mei in his lap, her sitting up against his chest, waving her hands excitedly as you pull out a bottle you’ve kept chilled with your food. When you try to get her into your arms so you can feed her with the bottle, Mei just whines in protest, clearly wanting to stay with her dad.

WinWin, to be fair, tries his best to not grin in victory as you hand the bottle over to him so he can feed her.

“You know I carried you for nine months, right?” You tell her. “But he’s your favorite?”

WinWin just laughs, and as you watch him laughing and smiling, feeding your daughter, you fully understand why he’s her favorite. Why wouldn’t he be?

You take photos of them together, sweet snapshots of memory as the day goes on. WinWin feeding her, him holding her on his shoulders (you were both surprised and pleased just a few days before as she’d sat upright so well by herself), and even a photo of them looking out at the water with their faces side-by-side as WinWin talked to her in a gentle voice. But as the day goes on Mei starts to grow sleepy and fussy, crying loud enough that heads in the crowd turn to look, so you decide to go back to the hotel.

You sit out on the balcony together, the door cracked open behind you so you can hear if Mei starts crying inside. WinWin stands against the railing, and you stand beside him, your head on his shoulder.

“This is nice.” He sighs. “I don’t get many vacations, not many trips where I can just get away from all the cameras and everything.”

“Nice to get to relax some, isn’t it?” You turn your head and kiss his shoulder. “At least one good thing’s come out of Johnny and I breaking up.”

WinWin makes a soft sound of agreement. “We all knew this wasn’t going to be easy. From the start, we’ve all known that we couldn’t all stay here, doing this with you. I remember after we all found out that Doyoung had kissed you, we thought that was going to be the end, that you’d chosen him. But then a few days later Taeyong was bragging you’d kissed him. For a long time, this didn’t seem, like, real—that you chose all of us, that we were doing a relationship like this, and even when I finally realized that this was happening.... I definitely didn’t think that we’d end up here.”

“What, you didn’t imagine that all of our fun and fucking would lead to Mei?” You glance back over your shoulder. She’s asleep in a little portable playpen in a clear line of sight to you.

“Something like that.” WinWin’s voice sounds strange, and it’s only when he brushes your hair back behind your ear that you look up at him. “I love you. I’m so glad that we have Mei, even if the circumstances were kinda unconventional. But you’re happy, aren’t you? With Mei, with me?”

The longing in his voice, in his touch, warms your heart, and you lean in to his touch. “I am happy, Sicheng.”

You tilt your head to look him in the eye, and then he’s leaned in and is kissing you. The kiss is soft, tender, filled with every ounce of that longing that you’d just heard in his voice. You feel positively light and warm, so you let him guide you back inside. The balcony door slides shut behind you both, and you move past the playpen where Mei sleeps soundly, back into the bedroom. You let him peel your clothes away, kissing down your neck and shoulders and chest.

“You smell like coconut,” he murmurs as he kisses down your body, nose skimming between your breasts. “Mmm, love it.”

It’s like you’re drunk on the sun-warm heat of WinWin, the summer smell of sunshine in his hair when he’s kissing you on the lips again, the way that having him inside you and all around you makes you forget that it’s the tail end of summer and not the highest hottest part. You feel so good as WinWin makes love to you, both of you fallen into this high, dreamy haze together.

Even in the aftermath, sweaty and sticky skin pressed together, you can’t get enough of kissing him, his body still tucked between your legs, your fingers tangled in his hair as he lays against your chest.

“Mmm, god,” WinWin moans softly, kissing softly beneath your jaw, down the side of your throat, and retracing his steps to your lips. You smile into the kiss, giggling a bit as the way that his fingers brush over your ribs tickles. WinWin smiles, kisses you once again, and then leans up, breaking the kiss. He just looks down at you, and as you blink your eyes open, WinWin says, “Marry me?”

“What?” You trail your fingers over his miles of exposed skin. “Like, right now?”

He shrugs. “Whenever. I love you, and we have Mei, and I just want to marry you.” He kisses you again, but you put a hand to his shoulder, pressing him back.

“Dong Sicheng, are you serious?”

The warm glow pulses all around you, threatening to collapse or explode. The idea of what he’s proposing—marriage to him, a future with him as your husband and Mei’s father—it excites you, but terrifies you in equal measure. If you say yes to him, then what about the others? It’d be like a slap in the face. You love WinWin, of course you do, but you love them too.

You think of Mark, his underprepared proposal nearly a year ago, the hurt in his eyes when you’d told him no, but the persistent hope and love, the soft way that he traces a line around your ring finger when he holds your hand. You think of Jaehyun, a man so full of love and jealousy. You think of Taeil who looks at Mei as if maybe she could really be his daughter. You think of all of them.

“I am.” WinWin sits up, breaking contact with you, and the cool air floods in against your skin. “I want to marry you, but I know that you’re not going to tell me yes. Not now, anyway. But I just thought I should put that intention out there, let you know where I see this relationship going. I don’t expect you to actually tell me yes, so don’t worry your pretty head about it too much. Okay?”

He leans in, kisses your forehead, and then he’s slipping away, dragging his shorts back up, and he’s out of the room before you have the chance to say anything.

The rest of the vacation is very nice and relaxing, even after the slight awkwardness following WinWin’s proposal. Nevertheless, by the time you’re returning to Seoul, walking through the door of the big house with Mei in your arms, her fingers tugging at your hair, you’re pleased to be back.

The warmth of the beach faded quickly on the way back to Seoul where a chill has set in as the season turns over to autumn. As soon as you’re inside the house, Jaehyun, Taeil, and Taeyong are there, cooing at Mei, offering to take her from you. She goes easily into Taeyong’s arms, and he sweeps her away, playing with her and talking at her in a sweet baby voice.

Xiaojun’s there when you go back outside to help WinWin bring in the bags, and he pulls you quickly into a hug, tucking his face into your shoulder. You wrap your arms back around him, squeezing tightly.

Your reunion with most of your boyfriends goes as such, a warm hug, a murmured “I missed you,” a passionate kiss that gets booed and noises of disgust made at it. The last reunion is with Jungwoo as he gets home late from a schedule and comes into your room to use your shower, then crawls into bed with you and Mark, snuggling in between both of you.

“Where’s Mei?” He asks, casting one leg over yours, slinging an arm over Mark.

“Jaehyun and Doyoung are hoarding her,” Mark mumbles, pushing Jungwoo’s arm away. “How did the photoshoot go today?”

“Fine.” Jungwoo sighs, turning over so he’s on his back instead of his stomach. “They really liked Shotaro.”

You look at him, at the ever-so-slight downturn of his lips. “I’m sure they loved you too, Jungwoo. Like, yeah, Shotaro’s a cutie, but you....” You bite your lip and give him a once-over. “Very sexy. Sex appeal sells more than cuteness, you know. I know for sure your fans will buy up anything that’s got you looking sexy on the cover.” He’d looked so stunning when he walked into your room, his hair and makeup still done up from the shoot, and right now it’s all gone, but he is stretched out in your bed wearing only the towel around his waist.  

Maybe you reach out to touch him then, unable to hold yourself back when he’s lying there looking so tempting.

Jungwoo laughs at the ridiculously horny look you’re giving him. “Didn’t WinWin give you any sex while you were away? You haven’t looked this needy since before Mei, probably.”

“We did have sex. Several times. Should I tell you about them?” You can’t help it if you’re horny. Maybe that’s a good sign that your body is returning to how it was before the pregnancy, your libido skyrocketing again.

Mark leans up, resting his head on his hand as he watches your hands wander over Jungwoo’s chest, watches the way that Jungwoo’s nipples perk up, the way that Jungwoo bites his lip as you pinch at one of his nipples. You start telling them both about your fun on your little trip, continuing to touch Jungwoo as you do.

Mark just watches and listens, drinking in everything that’s happening. He watches you eventually swing your leg over Jungwoo’s lap, situating yourself right over the bulge that’s risen under the towel. He watches Jungwoo strip you of your shirt and bra; he moans a little as Jungwoo loses the towel and pulls you down, filling you with his cock. Mark moans again as Jungwoo starts touching your boobs, nuzzling against them, and then closing his lips around a nipple as you grind down on his erection. Jungwoo alone of your boyfriends is really into this; the others that tasted your milk thought it was okay or thought it was gross, but Jungwoo just genuinely loves doing this, tasting it on his tongue any chance he gets.

Jungwoo laves all of his attention on one, suckling as you ride him slowly. Then his other hand rises up to your other breast, the one closer to Mark, just massaging, his fingers occasionally tweaking your nipple.

And if Mark makes any sound you don’t hear it, but then he’s right there, head in front of your chest, tongue testing as milk leaks from your nipple while Jungwoo massages. Just as the first time it had been strangely very hot to have a boyfriend breastfeeding from you, so is it now, but multiplied as you’ve got two of them doing this.

As Mark grows more confident, he knocks Jungwoo’s hand away, and Jungwoo drops both of his hands to your hips, encouraging you to ride him faster. Both of them keep their mouths on your breasts even as you start fucking yourself on Jungwoo, feeling your orgasm building, getting closer. And then Mark’s hand slips down to your clit.

The orgasm bursts like a bubble of pleasure popped.

You shudder in their arms, quaking and moaning. Mark pulls his mouth from your tit, licking his lips.

“Good, Mark?” You ask after you catch your breath. You slump forward against Jungwoo. “Did you like that?”

Mark nods, looking a little dazed as if caught off guard by how much he’d liked it. You giggle, reaching to pull him in for a kiss, but just as you do, Jungwoo tips you backwards.

He drags your legs up around his hips, fucking into you now at his own pace, needing his own orgasm after he’s felt you cumming around him. Mark falls down beside you, happily seeking your kiss, swallowing down all of the moans that Jungwoo fucks out of you.

“Mark,” you sigh, “please. Please, let me help you feel good too.” Your hand searches down his body, looking for the spot where his shirt gives way to skin, so you can push your hand inside his shorts. “Mark, mm, please.”

Jungwoo nails a spot inside you that makes your eyes roll with pleasure, your hands grapple at the waistband of Mark’s shorts.

“You want my cock, baby?” Mark rolls away from you, getting off the bed so he can strip off his shirt and shorts, and when his weight next settles beside you, he’s naked, jerking his hand over his cock. “Open up, baby.”

Mark feeds you his cock, thrusting gently at first, his tip bulging your cheek, but you turn your head, breathe through your nose and let your jaw go slack, encouraging him to use your throat.

Neither of them are much for dirty talk, but as Jungwoo’s pace picks up to almost a brutal speed, you hear him start talking to Mark about you. “God, look at her, all open and pretty and wet for us, just a dripping fucktoy for both of us.”

“She’s our pretty slut again,” Mark says, thrusting down your throat, pinching one of your nipples. “Taking two cocks at once. When was the last time you did that, baby?”

It hasn’t been that long, not that you would tell Mark that even if you could right now, but the way that he’s now fucking your face makes it a little difficult to even draw breath, let alone attempt to speak.

Jungwoo cums a moment later, spilling his load inside you, but he keeps thrusting with his thumb on your clit until you experience your second orgasm of the night. He pulls out and leaves you and Mark, not that Mark notices really, too absorbed in fucking your face, feeling you moan and gag around him.

When Mark cums, he pulls back so just his tip is between your lips, and he looks down so he can see your eyes as you suck and flick your tongue over the slit on his tip. His hips just barely press forward, only the shallowest of thrusts between your lips, and he cums over your tongue, and you can feel just a bit of his cum dripping from the corner of your mouth.

Mark moans, swearing in at least two different languages, and after a moment he falls away from you, sinking back into his comfortable spot on the bed from earlier. You sit up, using your thumb to push what you’d spilled back into your mouth. Mark looks up at you as you straddle him, as you lean in to kiss him. He opens his mouth to your kiss, and makes a startled yet aroused sound as you let his cum leak from your mouth into his. But he takes it, kissing you with his cum passed between your mouths. It’s gross and dirty, but it’s something you’ve thought about doing before; you’re just surprised that Mark’s going along with it.

He swallows when you break the kiss, sitting up just a little so you can see his face.

Mark wrinkles his nose adorably. “That was gross. Does it always taste like that?”

You laugh and kiss his cheek. “Usually.”

Jungwoo returns a moment later, looking freshly rinsed clean, and he crawls back into bed with a damp cloth to wipe your face and chest and thighs down.

“Messy girl,” he teases as he watches you wipe between your own legs at where his cum is leaking out.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Mark mumbles, but Jungwoo’s already moving back off the bed, taking the cloth with him back to the bathroom. “Filthy, messy girl. Spitting my cum back into my mouth.”

He doesn’t sound like he didn’t like it, though.

You snuggle up against Mark’s side, your cheek on his shoulder, and Jungwoo cuddles up behind you, drawing the blankets up to cover all three of you. “Goodnight,” he whispers, kissing the back of your shoulder, “You know we love you, right? That we didn’t mean those things we said.”

You hum. “But I am a slut for all of you. I accepted that a long time ago.”

Mark pets your hair. “You’re an angel. Just go to sleep, babe.”

Several hours later you wake in the half-light of dawn in your bedroom. The door is cracked open a bit, letting in a little light from the hallway, and a nightlight glows in the corner, all of this allowing you enough light to see that Mei’s in her bed sound asleep. But it takes you another second to realize that Jungwoo is gone, that Mark is sitting up on the opposite side of the bed from you whispering to Doyoung.

“Doyoung?” You mumble, rolling over fully, stretching your arms above your head. “What are you doing? Where’d Jungwoo go?”

Mark leans over, kisses your forehead. “Go back to sleep. Jungwoo just felt like there wasn’t enough room with all three of us.” He brushes his fingers through your hair for another moment, and then your eyelids sink shut again.

The next time you wake, it’s much later. The sun is shining through the windows, Mark is asleep once more beside you. Taeil is sitting in the rocking chair, holding Mei and giving her a bottle. You almost feel a sense of déjà vu to a few months ago, though back then you’d woken in the middle of the night to this similar situation.

“Good morning,” you yawn, sitting up and stretching your arms above your head. “I didn’t even hear her cry out.”

Taeil shakes his head. “She didn’t. Jungwoo said you’d probably be pretty tired this morning, so I just came in to check on her. She just woke up a few minutes ago.”

You nod, and then look around, trying to find your phone, but it’s not on the nightstand where you would normally leave it.

“Why don’t you go shower?” Taeil suggests. “Lucas ordered in some breakfast for everyone.”

“Why?” You stand up, dragging the top blanket with you to keep your body covered.

Taeil shrugs. “I think he lost a bet yesterday or something. But go shower.” He tilts his head toward the door to your bathroom. “If you hurry there might still be some left.”

So you do go shower off, and when you come back out, Taeil’s gone but Mark is sitting in bed, his legs spread in a V with Mei lying on her back between them as he plays peek-a-boo with her.

You walk over to the nightstand to grab your phone, then remember that it’s not there. So you start looking in the bedsheets, then you crouch down to look under the bed.

“What are you doing?” Mark asks.

“Looking for my phone. I was going to send my mom some pictures from the trip.” You sweep your arm under the bed, only coming out with a pair of panties you thought you’d lost ages ago. You toss them toward the wash basket and then stand up, looking around, hoping that your phone will catch your eye from somewhere unexpected. “Have you seen it?”

Mark stands up, hoisting Mei up into his arms, and instantly she’s resting her head on his shoulder in a way that is absolutely one of the most adorable things. If she loves her dad the most, then Mark is a close second tied with Jaehyun. “Nope. Maybe it’s a sign that you should be away from your phone today. Did Taeil tell you about Lucas buying breakfast? I think he got some of those bubble waffles you’ve been wanting to try.”

You let it go for the time being. You know your phone is somewhere here in the house; you had it just last night while showing the boys some photos and videos, and now you’re just not sure where it’s gotten to. So you follow Mark downstairs to the kitchen.

Jaemin and Renjun are in there when you, Mark, and Mei walk in. They stay to hang out, playing with Mei to make her laugh while you and Mark eat breakfast, and then Mark disappears for a bit, and you give Mei a bath, play with her by giving her tickles and kisses, stretching her arms above her head and cycling her legs as you get her dressed. She smells clean and perfect, just a happy ball of sunshine as you bounce her in your arms as you walk around the house looking for your phone wherever it might be.

The house is oddly quiet. Most of the guys are gone though you can hear Jisung and Hendery playing video games downstairs. Eventually you walk into the room Doyoung, Taeil, Yuta, and Mark share, though right now only Doyoung is in there, curled up on his bed watching a drama, looking sleepy.

“Hey.” He sits up abruptly, pausing the show.

“Hey,” you reply. But you don’t stop to chat, you start moving around the room, nudging aside bags and piles of clothes, flipping the sheets on Yuta’s bed with one hand, moving Taeil’s pillows around. When you turn back to Doyoung he’s watching you with a confused expression. You sigh. “You haven’t seen my phone, have you? I know I had it last night, but I can’t find it anywhere this morning.”

Doyoung looks back at the drama. “No, I haven’t seen it. I’m sure it’ll turn up. Miso probably stole it. You know your cat is a real thief, right?” He glances back over at you. “Yesterday I caught him stealing a pair of my socks, and Taeil said he thought he saw him eyeing up that handstitched baby blanket from your mom. It’s like he’s nesting somewhere in the house.” He fiddles with his sleeve, and when his phone lights up beside his thigh with a notification, a thought enters your mind.

You lean closer, reaching for his phone. “Can I just use your phone to call mine?”

Doyoung snatches his phone away. “No.” He hides his phone on the opposite side of the bed.

Mei makes bubbly noise, blowing at her lips while she clings to your shirt as you try to reach Doyoung’s phone again. He moves it even farther out of your reach.

You stand up straight, shifting Mei slightly. “Doyoung, what the hell? Just let me see your phone.”

He shakes his head. His grip on his phone is so tight that his knuckles lose all their color. The screen lights up again from between his fingers, and you can just make out the sight of multiple messages coming through. And in the silence of this standoff you hear a quiet buzzing coming at the same time from beneath his bed.

Doyoung’s not fast enough to stop you as you crouch down and dig a hand beneath his bed, coming out with your phone in your hand.

“Wow, that’s crazy. How did that get there?” Doyoung asks in a very put-on voice, his look of surprise very clearly fake.

You frown at him as you rub the screen of your phone against your shirt to clean it a bit. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or do I need to look at this first?” You wave your phone, and at that moment, Doyoung reaches out and snatches it from you, hiding it right back beside his phone. “Doyoung. Seriously.”

You can feel Mei drooling through the shoulder of your shirt, but you don’t even care.

Doyoung shakes his head. “I just thought you could use some time away from your phone today.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” You readjust your hold on your daughter. “Are you really just going to lie to me like this?”

He shakes his head again, looking at you for a few long moments in silence as the phones continue to buzz periodically beside him. And eventually Doyoung sighs. He pushes away from his blankets, standing up in front of you, and then he puts a hand to your shoulder and presses you to sit down on his bed.

“The fans know about you and WinWin. Someone posted photos and videos of the two of you together on your trip. They got you and him and Mei looking like a happy little family, and this time I don’t think there’s any denying it like our team did last time.” Doyoung clears his throat. “And either that same sasaeng or a different one must’ve been outside here yesterday when you got home. There are photos of you and Xiaojun hugging. People are bringing up those old pictures and videos like they did last time. It’s a whole fucking mess, and I didn’t want you to see any of that.”

Suddenly the blurry memory from early that morning of Doyoung in your room whispering to Mark makes sense. The odd behavior of all of your boyfriends so far today, like the way Mark and Taeil had both tried to distract you when you were looking for your phone.

“We all think that you shouldn’t leave the house again for a bit. Like, fans are going crazy.” Doyoung’s hand massages your shoulder gently. “Like last time, there’s fans defending you and us, but there’s others too. I don’t think you need to see any of that.” He sinks down to kiss you gently, soothingly on the forehead. “We just want to protect you.”

You’ve been through all of this before, so this time it seems a little easier to handle. You can’t blame Doyoung and the others for wanting to keep you from seeing the things that are being said online. You even manage to keep yourself from looking at social media after you leave Doyoung’s room with your phone back in your possession. Well, at least for a little while.

Eventually you do look. You see fans talking about being so mad that sasaengs are camped out in front of the house. You see long threads full of the same pictures from before, with several more from your vacation with WinWin, plus several others that you recognize of you with the other boys over the last month or so.

You put Mei down for a nap and sit in the rocking chair beside her bed with your knees drawn up to your chest as you scroll through Twitter looking at all of this. You only get up to close the curtains over your window because even though your bedroom is on the top floor of the house and facing away from the street, you can’t help but feel surveilled. You see someone reposted some photos from one of those sasaengs that are apparently camped in front of the house, and you almost throw your phone away because you can hear that Ten, Johnny, and Taeyong just got home and those are the photos that are already being circulated.

This goes on for a few days. No statements put out by the boys or the company seem to sway the fans, and you can barely eat or sleep. You can’t leave the house. There are stalkers outside day and night, and you leave the curtains drawn on every window so you can at least walk around inside the house without feeling like they can see you.

On the morning of the third day, as the sun rises you’re sitting in the kitchen, watching Hendery sleepily eat a bowl of cereal. You haven’t eaten since about midday the previous day. You lost any appetite you might have had when one of the Dream members came home and a sasaeng nearly attempted to come in with him.

Since then their company did at least hire a security guard to stand in front of the house’s door, but your stomach is still tied in so many nauseous knots.

The front door of the house opens, sounding loud in the quiet munching of Hendery’s breakfast, and your heart sinks into the bare cavern of your belly, anxiety knotting your nerves. But then the door closes, and Taeyong calls out just loud enough for you to hear, “It’s just me.”

You hate that he knows that you’re this nervous about everything that he has to announce himself. He pops his head into the kitchen a moment later, gaze sliding from you to Hendery and then back again. He sighs at the look on your face, then comes closer. Taeyong asks, “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Did you?” You retort. He already knows the answer, you can see it written on his face that he wouldn’t believe you even if you said yes. “No, Taeyong. I haven’t slept. Every time I close my eyes, I just think about one of them sneaking inside and coming upstairs.”

Taeyong strokes your hair. “We have the guard. He won’t let them in. He barely let me pass by.” He smiles lightly in an attempt to brighten your mood, but it doesn’t work. “Babe, I can see that you’re beyond stressed about all of this. If you need to, go stay with your parents for a while, until this all blows over again.”

“But what if it doesn’t blow over.” You swat his hand away, suddenly overwhelmed by irritation at the patronizing way he’s petting you. “Your fans have a long memory. They’re not quick to forgive either. And some of their theories online are disturbingly accurate. They hate me.”

“They don’t even know you.”

“Well, they hate me for being happy in this relationship with all of you.” You fold your arms over your chest and stare down into Hendery’s cereal bowl until you hear the sound of Taeyong walking away.

Hendery taps his spoon on the side of his bowl for a few seconds before he clears his throat. “Are you unhappy?”

You almost roll your eyes. Of course you’re not happy right now.

“I mean, like, in this relationship. With all of us.” He sits the spoon down and pulls his hands back into his lap. “I know it’s unusual and that in itself makes this more stressful. I guess, what I mean to ask is, do you think you’d be happier if this relationship were more normal? If there were less of us?”

You look slowly into his eyes. “What?”

“I haven’t really been in this since Mei was born. I think, for me, what you and I have has mostly been about sex. At least, as I’ve been thinking about it recently, that’s how I think it’s been.” He nibbles nervously at his bottom lip. “Right now, there’s a lot going on, and it’s stressful for you and for me, so maybe if I back out of this relationship it will help a little bit.”

You want to say, “Right, because piling heartbreak on top of the rumors and hate is going to help.” But you don’t. You keep quiet because maybe he’s right.

You haven’t had Hendery around much since Mei was born. It’s not like you didn’t invite him to be around, he just doesn’t come around. He’s there, but not really. You know he’d been somewhat excited about you having a baby, had been there for you as he believed that she could have been his, but once he’d seen her with his own eyes and held her in his arms, once he’d learned that she shared none of his DNA, that’s when you’d felt him withdrawing somewhat.

And you know he’s right about the sex. Yes, you’d had your romantic moments together. Shared intimate date nights, soft ‘I love you’s between kisses, and many of the things you’d shared with your other boyfriends, but truly from the start this thing between you and Hendery had been sexual. And sex with Hendery was something that you hadn’t had in months.

“I’m sorry.” You duck your head as you apologize. You’ve gone months ignoring Hendery’s sexual needs. “God, I’m a really bad girlfriend, aren’t I? You guys keep breaking up with me and telling me how good I am at ignoring you, making you feel left out. And you’re all right.”

“I’m not blaming you for that!” Hendery quickly says. “You’re busy! You’re a mom now. You have all of us to pay attention to. And for so long you couldn’t have sex after Mei, and like I said, I really feel like that was a key point to our relationship. It might sound bad to say this now, but like, our relationship has been over for months now, and we’ve just been pretending that it’s not. But I think it’s time that we finally put the end stamp on it.”

So you do, and you feel that stamp like a dull bruise on your heart.

But he’s right. Things between you and him have been over for months. Similar to you and Ten, the end of this branch of your polyamorous relationship has withered and faded away.

And as you rise from the breakfast table, hoping to go upstairs to maybe catch a few moments of sleep, you feel the instability of this whole relationship around you. You’ve lost four of your boyfriends in what feels like such a short time. And you’re afraid that they won’t be the only ones.

Ten looks ridiculous, cradling Miso like a baby in one arm, holding Mei in the other, grinning and bouncing them.

It’s been almost a week now since the rumors started up again, and they’ve died down some, but there’s still a lot of attention on you and the boys.

“Why don’t you just marry one of them?” Ten asks as you voice your worries aloud. “I mean, get married, admit that you’ve got a baby, it’s a little less than traditional but it’s not like it’s not something that’s happened before. Other idols have announced all of those things after the fact. That would get the fans to butt out, but right now they’re just being nosy, wanting to know the details of what exactly is going on. They want to understand your role with all of us. I’m sure Mark would be glad to do the honor of marrying you.”

You sigh before admitting, “Sicheng has also proposed to me.”

Ten makes a noise of surprise that startles Miso who twists his way out of Ten’s arms and drops to the floor. Ten quickly and carefully makes sure that he’s got a good hold on Mei and that Miso didn’t scrape her or anything in his escape.

Once he’s comforted himself that she’s fine (as if she wouldn’t have immediately begun squalling if Miso had caught her with a claw), Ten stares at you. “He proposed? And you said no? Also, since when do you call him Sicheng?”

“Since I realized it was weird calling my boyfriend, the father of my daughter by WinWin when that’s not his real name.”

“But you still call Hendery by his name, not his actual name. And Lucas.” Ten points out.

Your heart gives an odd little beat. “Yeah, but neither of them are my boyfriends anymore. And besides, I call Xiaojun Dejun sometimes.” You start listing off all of your boyfriends, suggesting you call them by their actual names rather than the ones you and pretty much everyone else use for them.

Ten waves his hand at you to make you stop. “You’re just doing all of this to gloss over the fact that WinWin proposed to you, and you turned him down. Do you just not want to get married or something? Is that what this is? Because that right there is a very good option: the father of your child, extremely in love with you. He’s the perfect solution to everything going on right now. Most of the fans already believe that WinWin’s definitely the one that you’re dating in the group.”

“Well, they’re not wrong. They just don’t know about all of the others. And all of the others are exactly why I can’t marry him. It’s not fair.” You thought about all of this the first time when Mark proposed, rethought it when WinWin proposed. “And can’t you just imagine what a slap in the face that would be to Mark since I turned him down? How Jaehyun would react?”

Ten rolls his eyes now. “You can’t live your life worrying about how Jaehyun’s going to react to stuff. He can be very dramatic, but I promise you, babe, he just wants you to be happy. That’s what we’ve all ever wanted for you. For sweet, sweet Mingmei.” He looks down at Mei then, making a silly face that makes her burst into giggles.

“I don’t want to get married to any of them yet. Not when I don’t know.” You clench your fists against your belly where the knots that have been there for a week still grow even tighter.

“When you don’t know what?” Ten asks, glancing up from Mei.

You shrug. “Everything. How everything will play out.”

Over the last week, especially these last few days since you and Hendery had the quiet breakup in the kitchen, things have felt so odd and unstable. Almost all of them dance around you and your feelings, it’s only your exes who seem to be perfectly fine, like Ten and Johnny. You can feel the tension in the air every time you pass one of your boyfriends, like the crackling of static electricity in the air before a storm.

You’re just waiting for the first rumble of thunder.

Weeks pass with nothing.

Then late October arrives, the days cool and overcast, but your days with your boyfriends and your daughter as she hits 6 months feel bright and sunny, watching her grow and excel every day.

But that was just the silence before the storm.

Clouds gather and the static feeling grows in the air as the silence surrounding this whole relationship breaks after so long.

Someone (“an insider” according to articles being posted online) spilled some details of the relationship, talking about how the members of NCT are all involved in some way or another with you. They don’t list your name in the articles, not that it matters because fans dig up your private information, your social media and things like that before you have the chance to prevent it.

It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, just another rumor to brush under the rug. Except that this insider had really offered up very specific details. They cite the time you went to America to join 127 on tour. How you broke up with them, only to come back a few months later and then miraculously wound up pregnant just weeks later.

The article makes it sound like you’re a gold-digging whore of the group.

You suspect that it’s a manager of the group that had leaked this info, they’re the only ones that could have had the information without spilling it for all this time. Not even any of your closest friends had known all of this.

But the article is a massive success, sweeping the internet.

And just like that, the storm you’ve seen approaching for weeks breaks around you.

Jungwoo is the first to approach you that same evening. The house has been disturbingly quiet. WinWin came and took Mei away a little while ago, telling you that you looked like you needed some time to yourself, and that he could take care of his daughter for a bit. You know he’s right. Especially when Jungwoo enters your room.

He looks like an anxious disaster, can barely get through his explanation. He cites the pressure and attention from fans on the relationship right now. The things he’s seeing online, as now fans aren’t only attacking you but are also saying very terrible things about the members. It’s destroying him.

“I love you so much, I really, really do.” Jungwoo promises, holding onto your hand so tightly that you swear you can feel your bones grinding together. “But I can’t be a part of this anymore, it’s not good for me. And, also, I just—I don’t think I’m ready to be a dad, not really. Like I thought I could be, but watching you and WinWin with her, seeing the responsibility and everything of it, I’m not ready for that. I think I’d be better as her Uncle Jungwoo, you know?”

You do. You understand. You hate it, but you get it.

Taeil comes in not too long later as you’re still wiping at the stupid hot tears that pour down your cheeks. You’re hiccuping from the force of your crying, and at first you think Taeil’s just heard you crying and has come in to comfort you. He sits down on your bed with you, grabs some tissues for you to blow your nose and wipe your face. He puts his arm around you, and you rest your head on his shoulder.

You can tell the moment when he’s about to say the words you don’t want to hear. His breath hitches as he opens his mouth, searching for the words to say.

You sit up and put a hand to his chest.

“Don’t.” You shake your head. “Please, Taeil. Don’t break up with me. Please.”

His hand covers yours, warm and soft. “Baby, I think it’s now or never, honestly.” His voice is slow and sad, overflowing with all of these different emotions. “I think that before this is all over you’re going to have to decide on one of us to be with, and I hate it, but I just know that it won’t be me.”

Those words hit like stones, and something breaks inside you as you press yourself against him, clinging, silently begging him not to leave.

This house you’ve lived in has been on such unstable foundations since the moment Lucas left you, and now you feel like the ground it’s been built on has turned to liquid. Taeil can’t leave. He’s been such a stable person that you can rely on here. You love him.

Taeil presses his lips to your hair, holds you as you cry, as you repeatedly ask him not to leave you too. But you can tell that he’s already made up his mind, signed out of this relationship, decided that the others rank higher than him, even though it’s his bed that you’d shared for so many nights. It’s Taeil that you woke up to on so many happy mornings; it’s Taeil that you’d once spent all night during your late pregnancy talking to as he touched your belly and spoke softly to your unborn daughter as she stretched and rolled, the two of you whispering together about a future that you could have together.

He holds you until you stop crying but only because your throat hurts and your nose is running and you’ve started hiccuping again. Taeil leaves only when the door opens again and Taeyong stands there.

“Oh, sorry, I can—“ Taeyong points his thumb back over his shoulder, as if he can leave and come back later. But Taeil stands up, gestures for Taeyong to take his place, and as Taeyong slides in to take up the place of the ghost of Taeil in your arms, Taeil slips out the door and closes it behind him.

You don’t even give Taeyong the chance to talk to you. “Are you breaking up with me?”

The way he goes awkwardly stiff is answer enough. A few seconds tick by, your head on his shoulder, wet cheek feeling stuck to the cotton of his tshirt. Taeyong sighs, “I don’t really belong here as much as I once did. And I think it’s far past the time we stop pretending that I do. I just think I might be happier somewhere else. You might be happier with less people in this relationship. You’re always juggling us and Mei, trying to make time to make each of us happy, but you don’t give yourself the time. I love you, I love Mei. I want both of you to have the best in life, and I just don’t think that you need me here romantically to do that.”

The words spill out of him, his thumb stroking over your knuckles as he says, “Besides, I.... I really like what I have going on with Ten. It’s easier, honestly. We understand what each other needs on some level that I just.... I don’t think you and I have ever really had. Ten’s good at making me feel small when I need it, powerful when I don’t. We have fun and can trust each other, and, like I said, I love you, but we don’t have that in the same way.”

By the time that Taeyong leaves, you feel wrung out. You’re surprised that there are still any tears left, surprised that there’s any more of your heart to break.

And then Xiaojun walks into your room. You’re half buried in your pillow and blankets. You don’t even properly see him.

“Just leave,” you tell him. “Just like everyone else.”

Xiaojun makes a noise, but you cut him off.

“Don’t. I’m so tired of breaking up, Xiaojun. Please, just, let’s get this over with. You can leave.” You turn your back on him.

“I wasn’t coming in here for that....” Xiaojun’s voice is small. “But if that’s what you want, I guess, um, I understand.”

You pull your blanket cocoon tighter around you, press your face deep into your pillow, and wallow in the darkness as Xiaojun closes the door behind him, night falls outside.

Some time passes. You’re not sure how long exactly, only that you’d heard footsteps passing up and down the stairs, doors opening and closing, showers running. The night sky visible through the tiny gap in your bedroom window’s curtains shows that it is dark outside, truly dark. You should be asleep by now, fallen into fitful dreams after the misery of the past several hours. You’d heard your bedroom door crack open a while back, heard WinWin’s quiet whisper to Mei, heard the pause, then he’d backed out of the room and taken Mei with him, leaving you to wallow in the sorrow of your breakups.

The house has fallen once more into disturbing silence when your bedroom door next opens. You can’t tell who it is right away. And then he turns the light on, flipping the switch to throw the room into blinding whiteness for a moment. You blink against it, rolling over to face the door, and once your eyes adjust, you see Jaehyun.

He presses the door shut firmly behind him, leaning back against it as he stares at you.

“Are you going to break up with me too?” You mumble, wiping your snot and tears on the pillow case. “You tired of being watched all the time? Being whispered about and shitted upon by your fans? I know I haven’t been ignoring you, so that one can’t be your reason.”

Jaehyun just sighs and pushes away from the door to come sit down on the edge of your bed. He rests his hand on your back, rubbing up and down to help you relax, but you just bury your face in your pillow again and keep crying.

This fucking sucks. You feel like your heart has been run through a shredder. Four boyfriends gone in one fell sweep, just a few hours. And you pray with every ounce of your being that Jaehyun’s not here to break up with you too. You don’t think you would blame him. You don’t really blame any of them—they deserve to live a happy life that’s not tangled in with this drama of the polyamorous relationship, your daughter, the heavy judgement from their own fans because of you—and it does make sense, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not heartbroken.

You twist your head to the side and look up at the blurry colors of Jaehyun’s face. He’s just watching you with what you think is a sad expression (but his face really is quite blurry through your teary eyes). If he’s here to end things with you, then you want to say what you have to say first, so you just say it: “Mei’s not your daughter.”

Jaehyun’s hand goes still on your back. You can feel just how tense he goes too.

“I know that.” His voice sounds tight.

“She’s not your daughter, and I know how badly you wished that she was, and now with all of this shit going on, I wouldn’t blame you if you were breaking up with me too.” You close your eyes. “You could go be free of me, go start dating some probably really hot model or actress or other idol, go make a super hot baby with her.”

“You’re right, I could go do that.” Jaehyun says it simply.

Your eyes flash open to glare at him, but he’s smiling softly at you.

“I could go do that, but why would I?” His hand starts moving on your back again. “I love you. How many times do I have to say that before you get it through that thick head of yours.” His knuckles knock gently on your forehead. You frown, and Jaehyun just laughs. “I love you,  and I love Mei even though she’s not biologically my daughter. I don’t know why you think that I would leave you just because of that.  I know when we broke up the first time it’s because I was shitty and jealous all the time, but I’ve grown, haven’t I? And regarding what you were just saying about finding a hot model or whatever to have a baby with, I have no intention of leaving you for anyone else. You are already hotter than I can handle, thank you. I have a beautiful daughter downstairs. And if you ever want any more beautiful babies in the future, I’m right here to help with that. If you don’t, then that’s okay too. We have Mei.”

Your eyes feel hot and your breath hitches in your chest for an entirely different reason than minutes before. You squeeze your eyes shut as fresh, hot tears spill over.

Jaehyun sinks down to lay on the bed right in front of you. His thumb traces over the mess of tears on your face, and you bring your hand up to the back of his.

With your eyes still closed, you confess, “I’m so afraid of what the future holds right now. I feel like you’re all going to leave me. All of you.” You sniffle, then quietly say, “But then you have to go and say stuff like that, Jung Jaehyun. Do you mean it?”

“Every word. Promise?” Jaehyun offers, his pinky finger intertwining with yours already. 

You squeeze your pinky in a loop with his, and you each press a kiss to your hands to seal it.

“Why did you think I was going to break up with you?” Jaehyun asks after a moment. “Who else did? Why?”

So you start to explain to him the past several hours in a story with pauses for you to get through your hiccuping tears, with many deviations down side tracks through history explaining why you understand their reasoning. You talk and talk, and Jaehyun listens and holds you.

And by the time the morning sun rises, you don’t really feel better necessarily, but for the moment you feel like you’re at least being held together, you feel like maybe everything going on right now does suck immensely, but you have Jaehyun here holding you in his arms, ready to shield your fragile heart from anything else that comes your way.

Adore You <- Previous || Next -> Let Me

a/n: so this is the end of Part 1 of the Finale (I’m sorry for stretching it out into two parts, but this story isn’t able to be wrapped up in less than 40,000 words apparently). I really hated writing this, like there were so many breakups and poor y/n has to go through so much heartbreak in this part :( but it was inevitable, something I’ve been hinting at pretty much since the first part of the series I’m pretty sure. Part 2 should be posted pretty soon, so I promise the wait for it won’t be so long, but what do y’all think? Who do you think she’ll end up with? Several of them or just one? 

As usual, please let me know what you think through comments, reblogs, likes, messages, whatever. Sharing is definitely super appreciated!

[ofstarsandvibranium]

Swipe Right

Fandom: Marvel

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x F!Reader

Summary: Bucky has been your neighbor for a few months now, so he likes to think you two are friends. Which is why he thinks you're the best person to go to to help him get back into the dating scene.

AN: inspired by one line of dialogue from the first ep of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. lol also, FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER EP 1 SPOILERS!

Bucky felt lost. Well, he's always felt lost ever since he suddenly came back along with have of the world's population. He was pardoned by the government and now a civilian. He was going through therapy to deal with his 70+ years worth of trauma and trying to navigate his way through the modern world. Everything was new and exciting but also overwhelming and exhausting.

His therapist encouraged him to date and make friends. So that's what he did, or at least, tried to do.

He considers you a friend. You live in the apartment right beside him, gave him a friendly smile and helping hand when he first moved in. You two chatted when you'd run into each other in the hall or in the laundry room. You were nice, attractive, funny. He honestly thought about asking you out a few times, but you were his friend, his only friend it seems. So he couldn't ruin that. Therefore, he resorted to online dating.

He signed up to a bunch of dating websites and apps: eharmony, match.com, plentyoffish, tinder-SO MANY. Why are there so many dating apps?!

He's scrolling through his phone, so overwhelmed by the different pictures and information. What does DTF mean???

He scowls, tossing his phone onto a pile of dry laundry he should be folding. You enter the laundry room with a chuckle, "Everything alright?"

He glances over his shoulder and sees you. He immediately smiles and faces you, "Hey, um, yeah," he gestures to his phone, "Just, um..." he lets out a sigh and asks, "Do you know anything about dating?"

You look at him curiously and reply, "A little. Why? What's up?"

"I'm just," he nervously scratches his head and places his hands on his hips, "I'm trying this online dating thing and it's...a lot."

You can't help but snort, "I feel ya," you give him a reassuring smile despite your heart dropping to your stomach, "So, uh, what sites or apps are you on?"

"Um...all of them?"

You snort again, "No way. Let me see your phone." you hold out your open palm to him and he places his phone into your hands after unlocking it. You swipe through his apps and your brows shoot up to your hairline, "Well it's not all of them , but it's definitely a lot." you look up from the phone to Bucky, "Can I give some advice?"

"Please, I'll take anything you can give me," he replies desperately.

You hop onto the washing machine and hold up his phone, "Okay. These apps are usually for the older crowd. Like thirty five and up, so if you're not picky about age, feel free to keep these. Now, these apps are what the younger generations use. Tinder is usually for hook ups, one night stands and all that. Not many people take Tinder seriously. Bumble, is a level up from Tinder. You'll find people who are more serious about finding a relationship with also a mix of people looking for something casual. Hinge, I think, is a level up from Bumble. You don't see people's typical lame ass bios, but their answers to some fun questions, what kind of relationship they're looking for, if they smoke or do drugs, etc. Also, I'm not sure if you know this, but you can change the age range on all of these apps. So instead of having it from 18 to 50, you can narrow it so 25 to 35 or however you want."

You look at Bucky and see his brows are furrowed in...concentration? Confusion?

"Was that too much? Do I need to slow down?"

He shook his head, "No, no, that's not it. Um, thanks, Y/N," he shoots you a grateful grin and you smile back, "No problem, Bucky." You see the gears turning in his head and you ask a question, he might be scared to ask you, "Do you want me to help you find some potential dates?"

"Will you?" he asks in that same desperate tone from earlier.

Again, you put on a smile, despite your breaking heart, "Sure!"

You tap on Hinge, double checking on his preferences, and then going to the main page.

"Oh! Look here. She's a single mom, but she's also a nurse. On the weekends, you're most likely going to find her wine drunk and watching movies with her kids. She has pets. She'd like to have more kids some day. She sounds nice. How 'bout it, Bucky?"

"Sure. She-She sounds good."

"Cool! So you tap on the heart on whatever thing on her page. So let's like her....answer here. If you want, you can comment something, but if not, you just forward it and hope to see that she'll like you back and you can start messaging her! Also, it looks like some people already like you! So you just tap on this icon here and you can scroll through the different people who've liked something on your page and it's up to you if you want to make contact or not."

Bucky hums and plucks his phone from your hands, "Wow. This-Thanks Y/N. This really helped."

"No problem, Buck! If you ever need more help, just let me know!" you hop off the washer and proceed to start up a load of laundry. You mind running back and forth about how you should shoot your shot, but you were too afraid of ruining the friendship you and Bucky have.

______________________

Bucky: Hey

You: What's up?

Bucky: can you come over? I need more help with this online dating situation.

You: sure!

You let your phone fall to your side with a sigh, Bucky has been asking for your help with his online dating for two weeks now and while you're always happy to help him, it just sucks seeing someone get his attention that you wish you had.

You roll out of bed, not caring about how you looked and exit your apartment, knocking on Bucky's door.

He swings open to reveal him in a tight blue henley and some black jeans, "Hey!" he shoots you a grin and moves aside to let you in, "So, um, this girl, Janine. We've been messaging for a few days now and she wants to meet up. Is that too soon? And where should I take her? I've," he pauses to chuckle to himself, "I haven't dated since the forties so..."

Despite your feelings for him, you knew Bucky deserved to be happy, especially after all the shit he's gone through.

"Hm, well, what kind of vibes are you getting from her?"

"Vibes?"

"Yeah, um, what feelings do you get when you talk to her? Do you feel happy? Do you want to get to know her more?"

"Uh, yeah, I suppose so. I think it'd be nice to meet her in person and get to know her more face to face."

"Then yeah, take her out. But since it's your first time meeting her in person, it should be something casual. Low key, no pressure. A decent restaurant or a bar is probably best."

Bucky nods, "Yeah. Okay. Um, do you think you could help me pick something out?"

You can't help but laugh, "Bucky, I'm sure whatever you choose to wear, you'll be fine."

"Okay. Thanks, Y/N," he slowly wraps his arms around you for a hug, but not too tight in case you're uncomfortable. You surprise him by hugging him back, giving him a little squeeze, "You're welcome, Bucky."

It was Saturday and you didn't have work. You friends asked you to hangout with them, but you didn't want to. You wanted to stay holed up in your apartment, wallowing because Bucky would be going on his date with Janine tonight.

You're mindlessly watching tv , curled up on the couch. You turn your face into the pillow and scream in frustration. You should've just asked him out when you had the chance, but now that chance is gone.

You groan as you roll off the couch and head to your balcony. You just need some fresh air. You push up your window and climb onto the metal balcony. You sit on the outdoor chair you have there and stare up into the night sky. The stars are twinkling, the moon is shining. It looks like a perfect night for a date and here you are, alone.

"Hey-"

"AAAHHH!" you scream by the sudden appearance of Bucky on his own balcony. You're staring at him wide eyed, hand on your chest.

Bucky couldn't help but laugh at your expression, "Sorry."

You shake your head and stand to meet him, "It's fine. What're you doing here? I thought you were on your date."

"Yeah, uh, turns out Janine didn't, what phrase did you use once, pass the vibe check?"

You snort, covering your mouth as you giggled. Bucky's smile grows at the sound and you pull yourself together, "Um, yeah that's it. But I'm sorry."

He shrugs, leaning against the railing, "Honestly, it's okay. I don't think the online dating thing is really for me. I think I'll probably stick to the old fashion way: meeting in person and asking them out on a date."

"That's understandable," you say with a nod.

"So how 'bout it?"

You look at him confused, "How 'bout what?"

"Do you wanna go on a date sometime?" you give a look of surprise and Bucky immediately adds, "But I totally understand if you don't want to. I just-you're nice, and beautiful, and funny I thought maybe-but we're friends so I totally understand if you don't-"

"No, no. Bucky, I just-I'd love to go on a date with you."

"Yeah?" You nod and he holds out his hand, "Come on then."

You give a nervous chuckle, "What?"

"I picked up a pizza after that disastrous date. We can eat and watch a movie. Casual and no pressure, right?"

You look from his striking blue eyes to his outstretched glove hand. You reach out to place your hand in his but then pull back, "Wait. I should probably change."

You step back to head back into your apartment, but Bucky grabs your hand, "You don't have to. You look great."

You chuckle and begin to climb from your railing to Bucky's, with his help, "Alright, Prince Charming. I expect to be wooed tonight."

"Of course you do, which is why I ordered pizza from your favorite place and I'm letting you pick the movie we watch."

"Bucky Barnes, I could kiss you!" you exclaim thoughtlessly but then you realized what you just said. You shook your head and began to ramble off excuses, "No no! I mean not now! Now that I don't want to kiss you. You're very kissable. Not that I imagine kissing you or anything it's just-"

Bucky leans in and gives you a little peck on the cheek, "I don't kiss until after the date's over, doll. So will that suffice for now?"

You could feel your cheeks heating up as you nodded and squeaked out, "Yup!"

He chuckled, taking your hand in his again and leading you to the couch where the pizza was waiting for you.

[harrysddtittys]

Could you maybe write something where Harry is a single father to maybe a girl. And just write how he’d deal with her terrible twos. Like from morning to night or something like that? 🥺

wow i finally got a requestttt!!! here you go! I know nothing about young children, so i don’t even know if this is an accurate description of a 2 y/o lol. but i hope you like it <33

Warnings: fluffff, dadrry, most likely some typos :)

Masterlist ❣︎ Requests

Piece of work

“Oh my God, Lani.” Harry groaned, groggily, as he was pulled out of his sleep by his daughter sitting on his back and yelling “Daddy, wake up!” in an playful voice. As much as he tries to pretend to not to like being woken up so obnoxiously every morning, they both know he loves for the first thing he hears every day to be his little girl yelling in his ear.

He lays there for a couple more minutes, wanting to sleep for a little bit longer, but gives up when he realizes she’s not going to be quiet until he gets up. “Okay, okay. I’m awake. Calm down.”

When he says that, she immediately gets off his back so that he can sit up, sitting next to him. He looks over at her. She’s wearing a random shirt of her’s that she doesn’t really wear other than to sleep, and her pull-up that she wears to prevent wetting the bed at night, and she has a head full of curly, unruly hair. He just smiles, so in awe of the fact he helped create something so beautiful.

Fatherhood was by far the best thing that ever happened to Harry. The second he looked his little girl, Alani in the eyes, he instantly felt the connection. He loves her with his entire being. But she can definitely be a lot to handle

She turned two not even three months ago. Harry Honestly thought the “terrible two’s” stage was a myth. Boy, was he wrong. The tantrums hit like lightning. Not only is she in her terrible two’s, but she’s naturally very stubborn, and sassy. She definitely got that from him. He swears she’s a 13 year old in a 2 year olds body.

“G’morning, bug.” He says, sitting up slowly because of the stiff joints from not moving much all night. “Good morning, daddy!” She squeals excitedly. Once he’s fully sat up, Alani jumps on him, throwing her tiny arms around him, causing Harry to chuckle. She gets so excited when he wakes up for the day.

He wraps his arms around her and squeeze her lightly, but grunting as if he’s squeezing her as tight as he can, making her giggle. “Did you sleep good?” He questions, quietly. “Yeah.” She mumbles, feeling so content where she is, like in her dad’s arms is the best place in the world. “V’got some things to do today. Y’wanna go run some errands with daddy?” This causes her to pull away from him with with wide eyes, nodding eagerly. The biggest smile spreads across Harry’s features. “Yeah?” Which she responds to by nodding again.

“Then we gotta get ready, bub. Y’hungry?” He asks to which she responds with a simple “Yes.” “Alright let’s go eat.” When he says that, Alani gets down off the bed, before sprinting out of his room, and toward the kitchen full speed. “Stop running!” He slightly scolds, hearing her tiny feet padding down the hallway at a much slower speed than before.

He always gets so nervous when she’s running around, but especially when she’s running in the house. She’s so wild and crazy, yet so clumsy. Constantly falling, and running into things. She rarely actually gets hurt. Most of the time she moves on from it like nothing happened. But it scares the absolute shit out of Harry every time.

When he enters the kitchen, he sees Alani standing next to the counter. As soon as he’s in her line of vision she starts pointing to the box of cinnamon toast crunch. “Daddy, this?” with pleading eyes. Harry just laughs. He doesn’t let her eat those than often for breakfast, because of how sweet they are, choosing to fix something on the healthier side for them to eat instead. But today he figured it wouldn’t hurt to let her have a little bowl of it before the day starts.

He goes over to the little girl who is still aggressively pointing at the box of cereal, ending down to pick her up. “Alright, alright. Hold you’re horses, will you?” He coos softly. He gently sits her down on at the kitchen table before returning back over to the counter. He opens the cabinet, pulling out a small bowl. When he’s finished making her cereal, he grabs her one of her baby spoons before serving it to her. “Thank you!” she says loudly. “You’re welcome, princess.” he chuckles.

Harry doesn’t like cinnamon toast crunch, it’s way to sweet for him. He decides he’ll just pop a bagel in the toaster and call it a day.

* * *

Once they’ve finished breakfast, they got completely ready for the day, and we’re soon ready to head out. Harry turns around to look at his daughter. She’s dressed in a denim dress, with a white t-shirt underneath, and white tennis shoes. Her hair’s brushed up into two sleek pigtails, which he’d become a pro at over the past couple years. Harry decided on a white t-shirt with a gray pair of pants. “Y’ready t’go, love?” he asked, feeling around his pockets to make sure he had everything. “Mhm!”

once they’re out to the car, Harry straps Alani into her car seat in the back, peppering kisses all over her tiny face once she’s all buckled in. “Daddy!” She squeals. Giggling, he closes the door, and goes around to the drivers side, getting in and powering the car on. “Alright, let’s roll.” he sighs, turning around to back out of the driveway.

They needed to stop at the grocery store, just to stock up on some things they needed around the house. So that’s where they were headed to now.

“Daddy, look! Red!” Alani exclaimed, pointing at the red car that was next to them. “Yes, that is red, baby, good job!” Harry beams. “Y’so smart.”

They continue driving toward their local grocery. Harry looks into his rear view mirror to check in Alani, and catches her staring at him. She’s always staring at him. It seems to be her favorite thing to do. He pulls the silliest face he could think of, causing her to burst into laughter. Harry laughs right along with her. Her laugh is so contagious. “Do it again!” She giggles. Harry happily obliges, pulling the goofy face once more, causing her angelic little laugh to engulf his ears.

After a little while of driving, they finally reached their destination, pulling into the grocery store parking lot. Alani watches her dad get out of the car, patiently waiting for him to make his way around to her side to get her out of the car. Soon enough, he does, taking her out of her cars seat and carrying her on his hip as the go into the store.

* * *

“Daddy, Daddy! Can I have that?” Alani asks loudly, pointing to something. “Shhh, you have to use your inside voice, darling.” Harry reminds her gently. He looks over to where she was pointing and not to his surprise, he sees a doll on the shelf. He’s grown to hate telling her no, but they didn’t come for toys, and she has more than enough at home already. “No, my love. Not today.” Her face immediately dropped. “But… but please?” She whines, her lip quivering. Harry hates that she’s disappointed but he knows he can’t give in. “No, baby. You don’t have to cry. Just not today, okay?” he says gently.

That doesn’t help, considering her whimpers are quickly turning into loud wails, and he knows the meltdown is coming. “Lani, it’s okay. You have plenty of toys at home to play with.” he try’s to reason but it doesn’t stop the tears that are slowly rolling down her face, and the loud, attention drawing cries. People were starting to look, and Harry was starting to get frustrated, but she was only 2. He knew she was still learning how to deal with her emotions. But when your kid is having a complete meltdown, and screaming in the middle of a store over a doll, that’s definitely a bit annoying.

Harry leans down to be face to face with her in her, who’s seated in the cart. “Alani, I know you’re upset, but you’re not going to scream.” He says softly, but slightly sternly. She looks at her dad, still crying but visibly calming down. Harry waits for her whines to die down completely before asking her “Are we okay now? Can we keep shopping?” to which she responds to with a nod.

After picking up just a few more essentials, they’re in line, waiting to check out. Harry looks down at Alani, realizing she’s been pretty silent ever since she stopped crying. He sees her with the all too familiar scowl on her face, with a pout of her lips. “Why are you looking so evil, bub?” Harry asked, with a gentle shake of his head. She doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t need to because he already knows she’s mad at him for refusing to buy her a doll.

He just rolls his eyes and try’s not to laugh. She really is something else. But he knows that she’s genuinely mad at him and him not taking her seriously will set her off again.

Eventually, they make their way up to the front of the line to check out, and soon enough their heading back out to the car. Harry looks at her, as he’s loading all the groceries into the trunk of his car to see that she still has the same mean look on her face. “Y’gonna stay mad at daddy all day, huh?” He teases her solely for his own enjoyment, knowing she’s much to busy trying to have an attitude to laugh at anything he says. She nods silently, still refusing to speak to him. Harry can’t help but laugh at that, knowing that wasn’t true in the slightest. “Y’have to learn t’take ‘no’ for an answer, baby love.” He sighs.

When they’re in the car in the way home, Harry looks at her in the mirror, pulling some silly faces like he was doing earlier. She sees him, and while she was still trying to hold her angry face, he can see the smile tugging at her lips. He doesn’t stop until her scowl is completely replaced by a smile, her beautiful laugh ringing through his ears, making his heart flutter with joy.

“Ahhh, I thought you were mad!” Harry laughs, causing her to laugh along with him, knowing she failed her attempt at holding a grudge on him. “Are we gonna be friends again?” Harry asks jokingly. “Yeah, we’re friends again!” Alani states matter of factly, causing Harry to chuckle.

This child really was a little piece of work, but he loves her nonetheless.

“Good.”