#ft work and ft school is not for the weak

[gemsstudy]

also forgot that i accidentally signed up for a minimester class that starts in 1.5 weeks. gonna go run into traffic !

[spiderlily-w1tch-blog]

𝙰𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚠𝚊 𝚂𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚝𝚊 - 𝙰𝙱𝙾 𝚄𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚝

𝕎𝕀𝕊ℙ𝕊𝕀𝕄ℙ𝕊

— — —

ft Unknown Omega/First Heat, stepcest, claiming|mating + Daddy Kink, fingering, belly bulge, creampie, knotting, breeding

𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫: I do not own BNHA or its characters, all credit goes to its creators and actors

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆: includes stepparent-stepchild stepcest and large age gap(R: early 20s, A: late 40s-early 50s), obligatory exhibitionism/public sex warning (Series Warning)

WC: 4,375

【Ｍａｓｔｅｒｌｉｓｔ】

— — —

“Daddy! Can you drive me to the mall? I gotta get my phone fixed!” You called down the stairs to your stepfather. While you had your license, you didn’t have your own car and your stepdad’s was the only car you could use, though never without his permission.

“Sure thing, sweetheart! Just meet me in the car when you’re ready to go?” You heard his deep voice call back up to you. His deep, gravelly voice had an odd effect on you today. You had always known his voice was hot, though you tried to not let your mind wander too much. Today, though, it sent a shiver down your spine and just about made you weak in the knees. Literally. You felt your knees almost buckle below you.

“What the..” You muttered but just shrugged it off as your mind still being a little hazy from sleep. So you continued to slide on your clothes and pack your messenger bag.

“You almost ready, princess?” As you heard his voice again, the same shiver shot down your spine and a warmth planted itself in your lower belly. Now chalking it up to simply being hungry, you just grabbed your bag and threw the strap over your shoulder.

“Coming, daddy!” You heard the door close though it didn’t latch and you jogged down the stairs to meet your stepdad at his truck.

“Morning, princess. What’s wrong with your phone?” He asked when you climbed into the passenger seat.

You looked over at him and noticed his long black hair was tied back in a loose bun that hung low on the back of his head and his stubble was growing back from when he’d had to shave it for a meeting with the school board of the High School where he works. He wore a tight-fitting long sleeve black shirt and simple dark blue jeans with his normal black boots. His normally tired eyes didn’t quite seem tired but they were still lidded in an easy manner.

“I have no clue when it happened but the screen is entirely cracked and it looks like someone ran over it with at least a dirt bike..” You grumbled, twisting to pull your seatbelt across your body, leaving a hint that your stepbrother might have been responsible, though your stepdad seemed to gloss over it. He probably chalked it up to your constant butting heads with his son.

“Huh, well, hopefully, they can fix it quickly, it’ll be bad if no one can reach you if you go out on your own.” The rumble of the engine shook the truck and he started on his way to the super-mall in town since that was the closest place with a cell phone shop.

“While we’re there do you wanna get some food? I’m starving!” You announced with a slight laugh, seeing an amused smile playing on the Alpha’s features as he shook his head at your dramatics.

“Sure, princess, we can get some food. You okay with the stuff they got in the food court or do you wanna check anywhere else out?” He asked glancing for half a second at you out of the corner of his eye.

“Hmm.. Well, I’ll probably have to leave it with them to see if they can salvage it, or at least my data, so we should probably stick close.” You reasoned, thinking of places in the mall with any good food.

“Good thinking, we’ll get there and see where our bellies take us.” He chuckled, patting his hand down on your thigh which made you laugh more with his sentence. He fully turned to look at you with his amused smile when he finally parked at the mall, which you hadn’t realized you’d arrived at.

Having been so caught up in conversation, you hadn’t realized that you felt really warm and a haze starting to infect your mind. As you moved to leave the car, you felt an uncomfortable throb in your nether regions. Pushing it to the side in favor of getting your phone fixed, you trudged forward with the tall black haired man into the mall.

“You feeling okay, sweetheart? You look a little red.” Said man asked, lifting his hand to rest it on the side of your neck opposite him, slightly wrapping his arm around you. The touch on your scent gland felt better than you ever could have imagined and your instincts all but screamed at you to curl into his body, but you resisted any and all reaction.

“Y-yea.. Maybe it’s just the summer heat catching up to me, I guess I might have put on one too many layers,” You reasoned, forgetting that you only wore one layer over your underwear, as just a tank top and leggings.

“Hmm.. Okay, but if you start feeling off you tell me, alright? I’ll drive you home and come back to grab your phone if I need to.” He kept his arm around your shoulders, though he removed his hand from your neck. The loss of contact made you inexplicably want to whine. ‘It’s probably just because I’m feeling weird so I want the comfort or something..’

“‘Kay, thanks, Daddy.” You slightly leaned into him with a content breath and he just wrapped his arm further around you as you both walked through the bustling hallways. Finally reaching the cell phone shop, you were glad you didn’t have to wait too long to reach the desk.

“How can I help you- Oh! Aizawa Sensei! What are you doing here?” The green-haired Beta teen behind the desk greeted the black-haired Alpha.

“Midoriya,” Your stepdad greeted back with a slight nod, “I’m here with my stepdaughter, her phone is busted so we need to get it fixed.” He simply explained, vaguely gesturing to you with a glance, you still being tucked into his side and still looking slightly flushed.

“Oh, hello! Are you feeling alright?” The Beta, Midoriya as it seems, asked with worry upon seeing you flushed and leaning into your stepdad.

“Mhm, fine, thank you, just a little off today,” You offered with a smile which seemed to appease the boy.

“Well, alright then! What seems to be the problem?” He offered a smile of his own in return.

“You tell me,” You chuckled, fishing your phone out of your bag as you moved to stand on your own away from the comfort of your Alpha stepdad’s side. You placed your phone on the counter and badly concealed a laugh at the way the green-haired boy’s equally green eyes nearly bulged at the sight.

“W-What happened??”

“Not sure. I left it on the kitchen counter to make dinner and I couldn’t find it for an hour or so afterwards and suddenly it appeared like that in my room. I personally suspect my stepbrother..” You muttered at the end, earning another chuckle from the man beside you.

“I think you’re just looking for an excuse to blame him for something, sweetheart.”He teased, setting his hand on your shoulder as he sent another amused grin at you as he eyed you out the corner of his eye, making you ‘Hmph’.

“Well, I’ll have to check with the Techies if this can even be salvaged, and if not we’ll do whatever we can to retrieve your data. Either way, it’ll be a while so if you just want to stick around the mall until it’s ready, that’ll probably be best. Aizawa Sensei, we can let you know when it’s ready since the time can vary by whichever process is needed. Either way, I’ll get you guys a discount.” He lowered his voice with a mischievous smile and a playful wink.

“Thank you so much! You are a lifesaver! If I don’t have my phone I’ll pretty much be confined to the house without a chaperone,” You chuckled.

“Thank you, Midoriya. We’ll stick around near here until then.” Your stepdad said, giving a small nod of appreciation. After leaving your phone in the care of his student, the Alpha lead you out of the shop and started walking in the direction of the food court.

“You still hungry, princess?” He leaned down to speak into your ear from how loud the corridor was with the people yelling speaking loudly to each other. The closeness and feeling of his breath on your ear and neck sent a shiver wracking through your body and your knees weakened leading to you falling into his embrace, though it could easily be passed off as simply leaning back into him.

“Uhm.. A-a bit, yea..” You said, moving to lead him to the restaurant stations before he could question your stutter.

Once you arrived you were then even more flushed and you felt heat rising in every part of you, between your legs throbbing even more with a sort of cramping fire in your lower belly. You were panting and the haze in your mind had even more of a hold on you now. As you entered the dining area you could feel all the sensations overwhelming you.

“Daddy..” You whined, entirely falling into him for support as your legs couldn’t keep you up any longer.

“Y/n…” The Alpha muttered out your name, his arms wrapped around your back, keeping you up. His voice was huskier and thicker and when you brought your head up to look at him, you saw his pupils were blown and his nostrils were slightly flared.

“Daddy… It.. It hurts…” The heat was overtaking your body and the throbbing between your legs was verging on painful, your lower belly feeling just about on fire and an ache building inside that your instincts knew the solution to. It was your instincts that told you that that ache you felt was from the emptiness you were so hyper-aware of.

“D-Daddy… Please.. Make it stop.. Make the heat go away.. Please… Alpha..” As soon as his denomination left your lips he had your neck craned up, cradling the back of your head, his lips locked with yours. Your mouths moved clumsily against each other, teeth bumping and saliva leaking down your chins as your tongues tangled wetly. Your pheromones leaked out in droves and made every Alpha in the area turn and look.

‘Unclaimed Omega! Just presented!’ All of their instincts practically screamed at them. When they turned and saw an Alpha already ravaging you, their jealousy and competitiveness flared. A few started moving towards where your stepdad had hoisted you onto a table and started ripping your tank top off your body.

The second that your Alpha stepfather noticed other Alphas encroaching on his Omega- stepdaughter- he turned and planted his hands on either side of you. His hands, were far enough behind you to shield you from the Alphas trying to sneak a peak. He then let out the most vicious, possessive growl you’d ever heard from him and it sent another shockwave of need through you.

“A-Alpha..!” You let out a whiny moan, catching his attention once again. He dipped back in, making quick work of shredding the rest of your top, and started laving his tongue over your scent gland. His mouth pressed against your Claim Site made slick pool in your underwear and your need to submit grew even stronger. Suddenly, he stopped. He pulled away from your neck and clenched his teeth.

“Fuck… Can’t claim you… Fuck, I’m so sorry, princess.. I’ll make it stop hurting.. but.. I can’t claim you. No matter how fuckin’ much I fuckin’ want to, princess..” He muttered in your ear. You didn’t entirely know what exactly he was talking about but you knew it made you whine and let out a whimper. “Shh, it’s okay, princess. I’ll make you feel good, okay? That sound good, Omega?” At the sound of the title, it’s like something snapped in you and you didn’t let yourself wallow in the confusing distress his proclamation caused and only focussed on trying to get his clothes off, or at least enough that you could reach your end goal.

“Alpha.. Alpha, please.. Need.. Need a…” You tried to beg but you didn’t even know what you were begging for. Your stepfather assisted in your messy rush to get his pants open with one hand while the other lifted your chin to press another sloppy kiss to your already swollen lips.

“Need a knot, princess, ‘n’ I’m gonna give you one. Promise.” He growled out against your lips in his sultry voice.

“Yes!” Your instincts cried out that that was exactly what you needed, ecstatic that your Alpha was going to give it to you.

“Just hang on a second, ‘Mega, ‘kay?” He asked, trying desperately to stay calm and not lose his head. He knew that the second he gave into his instincts fully he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from claiming you. You, his little stepdaughter who still calls him Daddy, even though you’re already 19. 19, and only now presenting, as an Omega, at that, 3 years late which led to the assumption you were a Beta. Oh, how wrong they all were.

He deftly hooked his fingers in the waistband of your leggings and shimmied them down enough to hook into your panties as well. Quietly instructing you to lift your hips as much as you could, he slid your leggings down to bunch around your knees. The scent of your slick grabbed the attention of everyone around, not just the Alphas, drawing in Betas, too. The power of a freshly presented Omega surely was a dangerous one.

“Fuck, princess… You’re drawing everyone’s attention..” Your stepdad growled out in a sort of prideful possessiveness like he was glad that everyone was not only watching but desperately wishing they could take his place, “They can all smell your slick..” He smirked as he bit his lip when he dragged his fingers through your lower lips. The feeling on your oversensitive cunt had you throwing your head back and letting out a loud keen.

“D-daddy..!” You moaned loudly when he dipped two fingers in, both going in easily with extra space left over. Taking advantage of that, he slid a third finger in to join them, adding to your pleasure, finally feeling a stretch.

“Fuck…” You heard one of the bystanders moan lowly, making you look around and notice all the people watching with varying mixtures of lust, jealousy, and fluster.

“Ahh.. Daddy.. They’re.. they’re watching..” You got out with a moan, though you were far from dissuaded by the audience.

“They are, ‘Mega. They’re all watching you. You’re so fucking gorgeous they can’t take their eyes off you..” Your stepdad told you, spreading his fingers and giving you an even more delicious stretch.

“Please! Alpha! Please! Need you.. Need your knot!” You begged loudly, purposely glancing around and watching the reactions of all the other Alphas around you. All their eyes were firmly on you, some of them had even pulled their own cocks out and began stroking them.

“Of course, princess..” Your Alpha promised, leaning in once again and pressed his lips to yours, “Whatever my Omega wants..” He let out a husky growl into your open and panting mouth as he reached to lift your legs to align with his torso in parallel.

Then, finally, you felt what you had been needing for what felt like forever. You felt his cock pressing against your awaiting hole, trying to press in, to fully breach you.

One gutsy Alpha from the crowd decided he’d had enough watching and wanted to shove his knot inside of you if your stepfather was going to take so long. He stepped forward and let out arrogant and dominating pheromones to hopefully make the black-haired man step aside and simply allow him to dominate you instead.

The moment your Alpha smelt the other Alpha approaching and sensed his intent, he did 2 things simultaneously that made you tense up in an immediate orgasm.

He whipped his head around and let out a growl so possessive and protective and downright threatening. The other Alpha not only backed off but immediately submitted and bowed his head, his arrogance having entirely evaporated.

At the same time, he slammed his hips forward and bottomed out in one thrust. You felt the tip of his cock immediately make contact with your cervix and it only confirmed what your instincts had been latently screaming. He is the perfect Alpha, he fills you perfectly and it’s as if he was always meant to be there, situated inside you, filling you wholly.

The growl he let out shook through his entire body and in turn, it reverberated inside you as well. You felt the vibrations against your clenching walls and you even felt it where his pelvis was pressed flush against the backs of your thighs. The neatly trimmed hair at the base of his dick pressed right against your clit.

“F-fuuucckk-!” You nearly screamed at the instant feeling of fullness. Your stepfather’s hands gripped tightly against your legs, still up and flush to his chest, forcing himself to keep his hips still to let you adjust to the size. He hadn’t given you time to accommodate him as he went in so he worried he would only harm you if he started right away.

“P-please!! D-Daddy-! Move! Move! Please!” You could only beg for what wholly occupied your hazy mind, only knowing your need to be thoroughly filled and bred. That was all he needed to hear as he leaned forward, just slightly, enough to let your knees fold over his shoulder.

Giving you a silent warning with his eyes, he started moving his hips, pulling out until only the tip was left. From there, he immediately began a rough pace. The table he had lifted you into, which you vaguely noted at some point was bolted to the floor, began to shake with the force of his thrusts. His left forearm wrapped tighter around both of your thighs as his other hand snapped to grip your waist in a way that felt like it was divined.

“Fuck, Omega.. Fuck, princess.. You feel so fucking good,” his stubble scratched pleasantly at the flesh of your thigh as he spoke, nipping them every once in a while, “so fucking perfect, ‘Mega..” His words began to slur as he lost himself to the feeling of your cunt gripping down on him like a vice.

“Alpha.. Alpha!! Need.. need your cum, please! Fuck, Alpha, please!!!” You simply shouted out what your Omega was telling you, not even knowing if you were getting any coherent words out at all, though that didn’t matter to you. Not to you, not to the raven-haired Alpha plowing into you, not to any of the bystanders enjoying the show.

With your head thrown back in pleasure from the delicious scrape of your stepdad’s cock against your walls, you could faintly gather that a couple of Alphas had paired with the watching Betas. They plowed into them at the same rhythm you felt your hips clashing with your stepdad’s. It seemed at least one had even already knotted and was simply humping in tandem.

Many other cocks were visible as well, being fucked into fists or simply teased, some were buried in the throats of Betas and the few other Omegas alike. You almost felt envious of the Omegas getting to choke on a cock, your mouth feeling empty for a split second before a loud cry of pleasure was ripped from your throat.

Your stepdad had used his Alpha Claws to shred your leggings right down the middle and, almost simultaneously, pressed your knees to your chest. He leaned forward even more, adding a slight burn to the backs of your thighs, though you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Your knees were now thrown over both shoulders as he relentlessly pounded into you, hitting all new spots from the new angle.

You could feel his cock head drag over your g-spot before it rammed into your cervix, again and again, as if it were demanding entry for itself. Your lewd moans and the wet slapping of skin against skin, along with the loud squelch of your cunt, still gushing slick were reverberating around the entire dining area. You wouldn’t be surprised if the sounds reach all the way back to the Cell Phone Shop.

Soon enough, you felt the beginning of his knot forming and catching on your hole the more it inflated. The feeling of it pushing its way into your sopping hole, again and again, was going to drive you insane. After a few more thrusts and the recognition that his knot was nearing full, your Alpha stepfather shallowed his thrusts just enough to only leave his knot out until he reached full capacity.

His thrusts stayed fast but eased up on their force, making you let out an instinctive whine. You needed to be filled. Filled to the brim! No shallow thrusts! No soft thrusts! You needed a knot!

Luckily, it seemed your prayers were answered almost immediately as his knot reached full inflation and after only a couple more thrusts, he rocketed his hips into yours and shoved his knot inside you. The stretch of his large knot made you cry out in ecstasy from the sting of it forcing its way inside you. Finally. Finally! You had the knot inside you that you so desperately needed.

Mere moments after his knot was fully settled inside you, you felt his hot cum shoot out inside you and fill you to the brim. It was only then that you had been able to notice that his cock alone had managed to cause a bulge in your belly from how deep it reached and the bulge only seemed to grow with how much seed he was implanting in you. In your womb.

Faintly, as if from far away, you heard most of the audience you had wracked up reach their own ends, some inside of someone, others into their hands.

“Alpha..” You breathed contently, letting out a sigh of relief at finally being filled with both knot and seed, and at the ache being released from your legs as he moved to let them rest comfortably beside his hips. You looked down and gently placed a hand, aching from how hard you had been gripping the edges of the table,(though you don’t remember doing so) over the swell of your stomach, smiling weakly at the warmth it emanated.

“Princess…” Your Alpha responded, lifting his hand to place it over yours, “Do you feel that, ‘Mega? That’s where you’ll be carrying our pups. I’ll keep you full with my cum for your entire heat and make sure… Make sure that you’re carrying my pups.” You looked up and met his onyx eyes, his hair loose from his low bun and falling in his face, making him look like a being of pure beauty and sex sculpted by the Gods themselves. He had a lazy yet confident grin on his lips, a mixture of yours and his saliva making them glisten, the faintest hint of his Alpha Fangs showing.

He looked like the perfect vision of an Alpha. The perfect vision of Your Alpha. He may not be able to claim you, but you wouldn’t let that stop you from declaring yourself as his. You would proudly carry his pups and submit to his every desire like the perfect little Omega for him.

Your Alpha leaned down and kissed you again, though this time it was slow and sensual and loving rather than the fast and wet, fiery passion it had been before.

“Love you, princess. So fucking much..” He panted against your lips, pressing another chaste peck before resting his forearms beside my head to keep himself up.

“Love you, too.. Daddy..” Your voice was slurred with fatigue, both from the exertion of being perfectly bred and from the pure exhaustion your first heat had shot through you.

You didn’t know when, but you slightly stirred awake from when you had, apparently, passed out, at the sound of a low growl. You were still mostly asleep so you couldn’t comprehend much, but you could tell you were now being held against your stepdad’s chest as he sat in what seemed to be a booth. You vaguely recognized that he had growled at an Alpha who had gotten just barely too close to you both.

The protectiveness lulled you back into a comfortable sleep against his chest, happily breathing in his pheromones. You hadn’t been able to even realize if you could smell his pheromones earlier, your mind too occupied by the physical sensations you were receiving.

When you awoke again, you were situated in his truck, buckled up as he pulled out of the parking lot. You realized you were in his shirt and some new pants that seemed to have been bought just earlier. You felt an ache in your hips and between your legs, one you knew you wouldn’t trade for the world. Tiredly, you dragged your hand to rest over your lower belly once again.

“You finally awake, princess?” Your stepfather’s husky voice asked, seeming more than content. Looking over you found him shirtless and smiling at you as he waited for the light to change. You gave a nod with a matching grin, singing contently.

“Yea.. I’m finally awake..” You spoke, voice hoarse from your loud moans and cries, though you couldn’t be happier.

“I’m awake..” Your Omega purred happily, the sound emanating from you, too, filling the truck with the sound of a happy, filled, and bred Omega.

You could feel the heat calming in your body, leaving you with an exhausted form feeling aches all over and a feeling inside you that you couldn’t pinpoint. All you knew was that your Omega was completely and wholly content and happy. You felt inexplicable giddiness and ecstatics, like everything had gone according to some grand plan.

You couldn’t seem to bring your hand away from your belly, feeling like you were meant to hold it. To cradle it.

‘Who knows? I’ll just have to figure out these instincts as I go.. Maybe it’s an Omega thing.’

— — —

𝕋𝕒𝕘𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕥:

@frosch-thefrog

[csbnova]

adore you ft. chigiri hyoma

tags: fluff, high school au, f. reader

notes: wc. 1.6K, supes cute imo, little reo cameo

synopsis: newfound crush is getting closer with you after a silly little question, what could possibly happen a few days after?

being sat next to chigiri hyoma is not for the weak. he’s always mumbling some snarky remark and somehow it’s always funny. to make matters worse he’s fine as hell. like—infuriatingly fine. what kind of dude has perfectly radiant skin? such cute lips? even that luscious hair of his?? it just doesn’t make sense.

it doesn’t help that now the two of you are friends. it started when he heard you giggle from him whispering about one of your classmates bad luck and he was absolutely enamored. not that you noticed though. you were too busy studying his silly smile when he realized he’d been heard.

for months your friendship had progressed, and you’d realized he was much more than a pretty face. he was kind, yet sarcastic. observant, yet oblivious. charming, yet absolutely horrid at flirting. and he was someone you’d grown to like.

…like a lot.

“hey, hyoma? do you think it’s weird for a girl to confess to a guy?”

it had been quiet. your head was on his lap while his fingers danced across your scalp, decorating your hair in pretty little flowers that complimented your skin very nicely. your fingers had been aggressively moving across the screen of your phone as you played a game despite your mind being elsewhere.

“how would that be weird? i think if a guy doesn’t like it then he’s a wimp and shouldn’t have a girlfriend in the first place.”

he’s raised his eyebrow and he’s still focused on your hair as the background fighting music for some stupid mobile game quietly plays from your phone. As you pause it, you sit up, putting your phone on the floor as you looked at him with curious eyes and a hint of blush resting on your cheeks.

“so, if a girl you liked confessed to you, would you mind?”

“you really think that matters? Y/n, you should know by now i don’t care for stuff like that. why are you even asking?”

there’s that stupidly adorable head tilt he does. his hand reaches to fix a flower that moved out of place but then he comfortingly pats your head instead.

with a sigh, your hands move back to grab your phone as you lay your head in his lap once more. “it’s nothing, just got curious. if you said no i would’ve eaten your shampoo or something.”

nearly a week has passed since you asked chigiri the confession question and nearly a week has passed since he’s been clingier than usual. he’s letting you(more like forcing you to) touch his hair more often than usual, he’s leaning on you more, and overall just by your side for as long as he can be.

“y/n, do you think you can come watch me practice today?” his heads resting on your shoulder and he’s watching as you gather material for your house in minecraft. currently, it’s the last period of the day but the teachers gone and the subs giving you guys a free day since there wasn’t any work given to him to hand out.

“hmm, yeah i’ll come today. any particular reason why you want me there?” your phones almost dead by now but since chigiri’s head was on your shoulder the motivation to move had been lost a long time ago. you press save and quit on your screen and then turn off your phone, placing it down before a hand of yours moves to ruffle chigiri’s hair. he doesn’t try to move, but instead smiles a little as his face warms. hyoma wasn’t the type to be very physical with anyone until he met you. to him, your touch was like a kiss of fire. it was comforting, yet it burned a little too good. and he didn’t even care he just wanted more of it.

“can’t i want to show off my skills a little?”

and there it is. that cute little eye roll he does. paired with the sarcastic smile? and the way he’s gazing up at you through his eyebrows? it’s a known fact that chigiri was a really pretty guy but my goodness there were no words to describe how much you adored the way he looked at you. or the way he made you giggle. which was what was happening right now. you were giggling and he was beginning to giggle too—just from the sound of your lavish laughter. the air surrounding the two of you was so endearing it’d made some of your classmates smile in adoration and others slump down at the feeling of loneliness.

“right, right, not like you show off during your games like alll the time.”

he sits up, with a shake of his head and adjusts his position, placing his elbow on the desk and a palm to his head. so he could look at you better.

“well, i am an egoist, it’s natural for me to show off, especially when you’re watching me.”

he looks so smug but in reality he’s actually so nervous and wondering why he said that but also what would you say? would you get mad? get shy? would you avoid eye contact? would you hit him? what would go through your mind? he wants to know.

well. you smiled. chuckled a bit and rolled your eyes. it didn’t take much for him to see the pink skittering across your cheeks and his entire world lit up right then and there. he opened his mouth to say something else but before he could, the bell rang, cutting him off and signaling that it was time for practice.

as the two of you walked, there was a comfortable silence. that warm bubble of air was still circulating the two of you—wrapping your cheeks in a rosy kiss, and his in the same. his hand had brushed against yours a few times but he made no comment on it, afraid of your reaction. you’d felt the same. conflicted with your feelings. you didn’t want to possibly lose his friendship, but the thought of becoming his lover just sound so wonderful. so as the two of you had reached the field, you sucked in a breath and grabbed his wrist. it was a light touch, your grip was loose, but to chigiri it felt like a phoenix had gripped onto him and commanded him to stop. it felt exhilarating and calming all at the same time. he bit back a smile and your eyes met once again.

“hyoma i- well uh…okay hold on gimme a sec.”

your heart was racing and at this point he could probably hear it too. that is, if his wasn’t racing just as fast and loud as yours. he nodded and watched you take a deep breath. this whole time he’d been quietly staring at you, hoping that what you’d asked last week was pertaining to you—that this was that moment you spoke of.

“um okay. you think- you think we can go out sometime? like not as a hangout like usual but as a date. i really, really like you, hyoma. a lot. and i don’t think i can handle being just friends anymore.”

there’s no tension in the air when you talk despite your nervousness, and he’s still smiling warmly—even starting to blush more than he already was. his eyes are enamored with the way you look asking him out and before he even knows it his hands are interlocked with yours and he’s nodding his head like a fool in love.

“how could i ever say no to you?”

that’s all he says before you let out a breath and a small laugh, giving a shake of your head. the relief hits you in a huge wave and you look back up at him with a vibrant smile decorating your lips.

“so, then, you wouldn’t mind a date after practice ends?”

your eyes are bright and your voice is sweetly soft as you speak, your fingers playing with his own.

“i mean, it’s not like i have to be here…”

he’s smiling. and he’s giddy inside but he’s also cool so he’s acting like he set this whole thing up (he didn’t, he was nervous as shit). the fingers yours had danced with suddenly hold yours still and pulled you closer to him. your faces are radiating with warmth and he’s speaking so softly it could lull you to sleep.

“we could go on that date right now if you want to..”

you can feel his breath caressing your lips—and even the way his nose has scrunched up a little in joy as it was brushed up against yours. he moves away a little to watches your reaction lovingly and you can see him physically melting. you’d begun to nod your head before a voice from behind chigiri splits that romantic air of yours in half and replaces it with a cold breeze in between you two.

“can’t skip if you’re already here man.”

chigiri sighs with an eye roll as he turns to the voice of his teammate, simultaneously pulling you in his arms.

“well, technically i haven’t stepped foot onto the pitch yet, reo, so am i really here? and besides, you let nagi skip all the time. give me a break this once.”

reo, albeit amused by the scene, huffs at chigiri’s comment and rolls his eyes right back. (such sassy men we have..)

“alright, alright, but you better hurry up and go before coach gets here.”

chigiri nods and says goodbye to his teammate, watching as you waved as well and the two of you leave the school grounds, that precious warmth surrounding the both of you once again.

“so, reo, was it? he the team captain or something?”

“we really gonna talk about other men on our first date?”

“what, you jealous already?”

“no…”

you guys…i actually love how this one turned out especially since it was my first actual fic

i feel like the confession part wasn’t as good as it could be tho 💔

not proofread at all 💀 don’t mind any writing mistakes 😞

[gor3-hound]

meant to be yours

ft. leon kennedy x fem!reader

cw: 18+ content, dead dove, unwilling cannibalism - reciever doesn't know! self-mutilation. obsessive, creepy, delusional reader. no real sex but masturbation n fantasies. very little smut and also a lil vomit.

a/n: idk why, but i... could not get this out of my head. been writing this the past few hours n it's now 1am... all i'm gonna say is read at your own discretion

word count: 1.9k words

There wasn't much good in your life. Not really. You'd never been one to talk much. No family, no friends. You spent most of your life working, dropping out of school, and saving money from a young age in order to pursue your one true passion - baking.

Opening up your own shop was hard. You went hungry most nights in order to skim a little cash from your dead-end job to be able to afford the down payment. But it worked. You had your own bakery, and business was booming.

For once in your life, you felt happy.

The day Leon came into the bakery for the first time changed everything. A festering desire found its way into your mind, an itch that wouldn't leave. He was your soul mate, you knew it. He was the sweetest thing you'd ever seen. So pure and untouched.

He made your skin crawl. You needed to be closer to him, to corrupt him in a way that no one would ever come close to you. You needed to be his, mind, body and soul. His smile made you nauseous. How many others had received that same smile?

No. You had to have him in a way no one else could.

You started experimenting. Simple things, really. Your love for him was all consuming, and you're sure in time he'd come to understand how much you worshipped him. He'd be appreciative of all you'd done for him once he found out.

It made it all worth it as you carved into your flesh for the first time. Your teeth clamped down on an old leather belt of yours to stiffle your screams, a piece of fabric tied tight around your thigh to slow the bleeding as you cut chunks of your flesh out.

The pain almost made you pass out, but you wouldn't let your weakness get in the way of showing devotion to Leon. You swallowed your bile as it rose up your throat, blinked past the blurriness of your tears.

You did your best to treat the wounds efficiently after. YouTube can only teach you so much, and your hands wouldn't stop shaking, so you couldn't wrap the bandage as tight as you should have. But that was okay. You couldn't go to the hospital, couldn't risk someone stopping your plan.

You swallowed some painkillers and went to bed, content with the knowledge that tomorrow was Saturday. That meant Leon would be coming. You had something really special for him.

You wake up with a hop in your step the next morning despite the excruciating pain you were in. You down more painkillers and pop the pack in your pocket, although it does little to dull your pain.

You grind the carefully harvested flesh down. You had already made the dough which had expanded nicely. This would have to be your best work, after all. You carefully lay out the necessary ingredients, combining them before placing the filling neatly into the dough.

You gather up the edges of the disc you'd made, folding them over the seasoned flesh and tucking them in to form a nice ball. You smile at yourself, feeling like you deserved a pat on the back. Once the egg wash is on, you place them into the oven and glance at the clock.

Perfect timing.

You smile and set up the rest of the bakery for opening. Once the buns are cooked, you take them out and place them in the back. You greet all the customers as friendly as always despite the burning in your thigh and the obsession making itself known in the forefront of your brain.

The closer it gets to Leon's usual entrance time, the more antsy you get. You can't keep still, shifting your weight between your feet as it becomes increasingly more difficult not to snap at every customer that walks in. They were all wasting your time.

Your eyes flick over to the clock on your wall constantly. The quiet ticking makes your eyes twitch and keeps your nerves on edge. You want to rip the clock from the wall and-

“Hey.” Your head snaps to the door. A smile makes its way to your face as you relax. Finally. You lean on the counter, your gaze trailing Leon's face appreciatively.

“Leon. Hi.” You breathe out, all the tension seeping out of your muscles. He makes all the pain you endured worth it, just to see his smile. “The usual?”

He nods softly, and you get to work packing his order. He likes to treat himself to a slice of cake and a pastry at the end of the week. It's the cutest thing ever to you, and you always like to throw in an extra little snack. On the house, of course.

“Hey, I tried something new today. Saved some for my favourite customer. Want to try it?” The festering in your mind returns tenfold. You didn't know what you'd do if he didn't accept. Your mind was screaming at you, wanting nothing more than to see him eat your flesh. To become one with you.

Please. Your mind supplies, your breathing growing shallow as you wait for his reply. The seconds feel like they stretch into hours, your nails digging into your palms and leaving little crescent shaped marks in the flesh.

“Sure! What did you make?” He asks, sweet as ever. The air you suck in after that satisfies your whole body, like the first breath of air after you'd been drowning. Your lungs stop burning, your mind stops screaming.

“I'm trying out some more savoury stuff. Trying to broaden my horizons, you know?” You say with a chuckle, stepping back to retrieve the tray. “I made some pork buns. Saved them just for you. They're all yours, if you like them.”

He lets out a laugh himself, eyes examining the food in front of him. “You're too good to me. These look amazing.”

Take one. Please. Just one.

“Ah, it's nothing.” You say causally, your eyes locked on his hands as they reach out for one of the buns. Your heart beats faster, feeling like it's about to break free past the cage of your ribs. “You're an officer. Just giving back.”

“Oh, is that what it is?” He says with an amused smile, finally picking up one of them.

Yesyesyesyes. Just a little longer.

It takes every ounce of willpower in you not to make a noise as he takes a bite. It's even harder to keep a neutral expression as he chews it, his eyes widening slightly. He swallows the bite, looks at you and grins. You lean forward, watching with morbid curiosity as his Adam's apple bobs, picturing the chunks of your flesh sliding down his throat.

“Wow! These are, like… really good. You should definitely start selling them.” He compliments, taking another bite. You watch him finish up the bun with increasing interest, your eyes practically sparkling with joy and your pussy throbbing with need.

“That's, um…” Your words come out shaky, so you clear your throat and try again. “Thank you. That means a lot. I'm really glad you liked it.”

“Did you need anything else today? Or is that all?” You ask politely, your hands idly brushing the edge of the counter - desperate for something, anything to ground you as you wait for his response. The anticipation was enough to drive you mad with desire, but you had to stay composed.

If only Leon could understand how much you truly wanted him. How much you needed him to see you, to really see you, not just look at you. What you'd do for him to touch you. Consume you. Become one with you.

“No, no. I think that's it.” He says with a head tilt, not looking unlike a puppy in that moment. You want to keep him in a little room, safe from the cruelty in the world. Maybe a cute little display case you dust off every day.

“Alright, no problem, then.” You say as you start to ring up his order, telling him the price and taking the money. “Let me just wrap these up, and you can be on your way.”

With practised ease, you quickly wrapped the ordered items in paper, making sure the wrapping is secure. Once done, you carefully place them into a brown paper bag, double checking everything was intact. Reaching out, you held it out towards Leon, a kind smile on your face as you tried to ignore the aggressive beating of your heart. Your hand shook slightly, yearning for contact. For just a tiny moment of skin on skin. "Here you go.”

“Thank you so much! I'll see you next week.” He tells you as he reaches for the bag, his fingers brushing yours lightly as he takes it, getting ready to leave the bakery.

"Have a wonderful day." You reply, your voice breaking slightly as you watch him walk away. Your eyes follow his form disappearing down the street until he was out of sight before you let out a ragged breath, collapsing against the counter. Today had been... too close. Too much contact. You needed to calm down.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Your mind wanders for the rest of the day, thinking about how satisfying it would be when you were finally his. You'd get him to accept your gifts with open arms. How could he not love you when he'd realised how much you'd sacrificed for him?

You wanted him to dip his tongue in your wounds, to thank you properly for the pain you'd sustained for him. You'd worship every inch of his body, give everything you'd had to him.

Oh, how good it would feel when he sunk his cock into you for the first time. You'd be perfect for him, open up so easily for him. You'd take every inch without complaint, let him fuck you as often as he wanted.

Maybe he'd sink his teeth directly into your neck when he realised how much he craved your flesh. You'd make him crave another taste. The thought made you shiver, arousal pooling into the gusset of your panties, making the fabric stick to you.

You closed up early to return to your apartment. You find your bed instantly, flopping down and stripping within seconds. You shove two fingers deep into your cunt as you pictured Leon fucking you. The sloppy wet noises fill your room as your moans echo off the empty walls.

Your free hand shifts to the wound on your thigh, and you press down harshly. You scream in pain, nausea hitting you instantly at the agonising pain. It's enough to make you cum, your pussy gushing around your fingers. You lean over the edge of the bed, throwing up onto the hardwood floor. You'd deal with it later.

You curl up into a ball, breathing heavily through tears and mucus as the burning sensation worsens. You can barely breathe through the acrid scent assaulting your senses. It was all worth it. You'd tear every muscle fibre of your body apart to show your reverence to Leon. No one can love him like you can.

You wouldn't be content until he devoured you whole. Not until your souls became intertwined and you were sure you'd plague his thoughts like he had plagued yours. His teeth would sink deep into the flesh of your still beating heart, and only then would he understand the extent to which you adored him.

His innocent appearance meant nothing when he could ruin you so completely with one simple look. One touch. One smile.

He already had.

[kaeddehara]

small scenarios with csm boys <333

ft : aki, denji, and yoshida !!

[ fem!sub!reader, male receiving oral, implied drinking, hair pulling ]

for aki, this had been routine for as long as he can remember. doing his daily tasks before making himself a cup of coffee and taking his time to read the paper and smoke a cigarette on the balcony. you’d finally caught up to his routine and would occasionally visit him during this time. he appreciated this time spent with you as, during working hours, he rarely got to see you at all.

even though he’d spend his mornings so peacefully, he couldn’t help but be drawn in by your seductive tone and wandering hands. simple conversations leading to pleading tones and more likely than not, akis loose pants would end up just barely pulled down while his painfully hard cock was being taken care of by your pretty mouth. 

first few times you tried this on aki, he insisted you go inside or save it for after work, where power or denji wouldn’t be able to find you both out on the balcony. however, being so needy for aki, you insisted that they’re not waking up any time soon, and he just needed to relax. 

with the effect of the nicotine and your warm, wet mouth working so lovingly on him, he couldn’t resist. his body wouldn’t let him. “just make this quick, you know how they are” ( ‘they’ referring to denji and power. )

stroking his thick cock, you kissed and licked at the pink tip while your hand worked on what you couldn’t reach with your mouth. 

“that’s a good girl, doing this for me before we go to work…” he’d groan out when you take him deep inside your pretty mouth. releasing with a pop before kissing that sensitive spot on the underside of his tip, making him grip on your hair and forcing you back down. forcing himself to take a drag of his cigarette to avoid alerting anyone of either of you. aki would’ve never guessed hearing you struggle to take him down your throat would be one of his favorite sounds.

“fuck, i need to make this back up to you” you massaged his balls with one hand while the other teased over his tip.“hehe, spending the mornings with you is to make up enough.”

aki swore in his mind he couldn’t find a more perfect woman than you.

“maybe a few drinks would cover it” you wink at him before finishing him off and concluding your lovely morning routine with aki <3

[ fem!dom!reader, riding sweet boy denji, use of good boy and praise, *denji is aged up*]

“ah! i’m still confused! how did you even get that!?”

denji rubbed his head, confused at the numbers written on your paper from a tutorial you tried to give to him. you sighed contently at his sudden outburst before replying to him. “denji, have you been listening at all in class?” it was a rhetorical question, as both of you knew the correct answer to that. either way, denji thought about it gingerly, thinking back to class and all the time he spent stealing glances at you. shaking his head, he groaned out and laid his head on the floor. 

you looked down at him, noticing his messy blonde hair spreading out and face relaxed. he opened his eyes soon after he felt your gaze was gone before setting his hand on your thigh. getting your attention rather quickly, you looked down at his hand then face, knowing exactly what he was implying. “can i have my reward now?” he sheepishly asked you in a pathetic tone. 

denji and you have a recurring situation that would start out very simply : you invite him over to study after school, denji gives up rather quickly, which leads to you getting each other off. almost like friends with benefits but feelings more than likely were attached.

really it was routine at this point and now denji just thought it's simple to ask for. but now, you had all the power to decide what should happen next. 

“you want it now, denji? but, do you think you’ve earned it?”

that shift in tone in your voice made denji weak in his knees. he swallowed before nodding his head and giving a soft “yes”. you hummed, leaning over his body with a hand on his firm chest. 

“you know, only boys who’ve earned it can really have it, don’t you denji?” 

the way you said his name always made it hard to even focus on what came after. he nods eagerly as you can feel his heart beating rather quickly in his chest. you lean down to give a gentle kiss on his lips before saying against his face,

“i don’t think you’ve earned it”

you whisper which makes he pouted as he tries to reason with you. it’s cute, honestly, seeing him so stressed over whether he deserves getting to feel you. you push on his chest a little harder, leaning down even closer to his lips.

“i’m gonna be the one taking my reward.”

denjis eyes lit up, whether it was with excitement or curiosity or both, you knew you were in control of him. 

using your hand as leverage as you straddled his lap, making his cute cheeks blush a bright pink. trailing the hand on his chest down his toned torso. he was so hard you found yourself grinding against his hard cock while denjis nails pierced your sides at how good it felt. 

⋆

finding yourself finally sinking in of denjis rather enlarged cock as you panted above him. adjusting slightly to him as you breathed out with your face facing downward. 

“a-ah good boy denji, you always know how to do what you’re told” 

denji hums in satisfaction as his eyes close and eyebrows furrow at how warm and soft you feel. your chest practically hanging down in front of his face that’s just asking to be touched up. you notice his focused eyes on your plush chest and know exactly what he wants. 

“come on, you know what to do” you paused momentarily to grab his hand with yours and use his fingers to pull down your unbuttoned shirt and bra, your soft tits spilling out. denjis seen your naked chest many times but every time your beauty always entrances him. 

pushing down on his stomach with both hands, you used your whole body to ride him. denji felt like he was in heaven with the sight in front of him : your panting face and messy hair, pretty tits spilling out of your school uniform top, and the best feeling was your warm pussy inviting him in over and over again and again. if it wasn’t for your voice luring him back to reality, he might’ve just slipped completely <3.

[ fem!reader, reader is wearing a dress, exhibitionism, yoshida is taming you, biting, choking ]

“yoshida, is something bothering you? you’ve seemed distracted all evening.”

you ask concerned at his strange behavior. yoshida wanted to take you out on a cute little cafe date this evening sure. what he didn’t expect was for you to show up in a cute little dress that had most stealing glances or staring. you seemed to be ignorant of all the attention you gained from the strangers and only focused on yoshi.

“nothings wrong, you’re just oblivious is all…”

he trailed off at the end yet you still heard his sassy remark.

“oblivious of what? we’re supposed to be on a date and all my attention has been focused on you”

you pout at him while giving him a serious look. at first, he couldn’t take you serious, not even a bit, not with how cute you looked trying to convince him otherwise. he smiled at you gently, alerting you he was about you tease you. you knew how yoshi was after all, he loved playing games.

“well if you’re so focused on me…”

he leaned in close to you, letting his breath hit your soft skin.

“why don’t you show me?”

instantly your face lit up, knowing what he was referring to. you got shy at his tone and tried to hide yourself away from his teasing gaze. “we can’t here yoshi, too many people” you whispered out at him before hearing his chair move against the floor and he stands up. you looked up and he was still wearing his same smile as he waited for you to do that same. getting up from your seat, he grabbed onto your hand and didn’t let go until you’d both made it to a darkened alleyway.

“where are we? hmm i thought you meant somewhere different”

you said with uncertainty being prevalent in your voice. as you turned to look for yoshida, you were met with your back flat against the cold brick wall. causing you to gasp, as his hot breath hit your face, feeling good for a moment as the air outside was rather cold and nipped at your revealed skin.

“shhhh, i don’t want to hear anything besides your noises”

he pressed his lips up against yours quickly which you relaxed into immediately upon feeling how warm they were. running your fingers through his soft black hair, he latched his hands onto your waist, feeling you up through your dress. as he rubbed your sides up, yoshi decided to take this a step further. releasing himself from your lips while you panted softly, trying to catch your breath. his eyes moved down to your chest noticing your hard nipples poking through the thin fabric and immediately pinching both nipples between his fingers. hearing you moan out at the feeling but grabbing onto his wrist to pull away.

“god you’re so cute it’s a shame i can’t take you here”

your face contorts to a confused and desperate one as you snap back at him,

“why not?”

yoshidas eyes widened as he almost laughed at your question, already knowing that when he’s laughing it’s never a good sign. he could get mean so quickly.

“oh so now you wanna do this? what cause i kissed you and felt you up a bit? you’re that easy?”

you swallowed nervously, eyes shaking and face falling at his questions. he frowned at this and grabbed you by your neck, forcing you to look up at him.

“gonna ignore me now huh? pull up your dress”

you ignored his request at first before his grip got tighter and he was breathing against your neck, his breath being seen in the cool air.

⋆

you didn’t know how long he’d been at it. the skin of your neck and collarbone has been covered in spit and bite marks, tits spilling out from the top being pulled down on your dress, back pushed up against the wall still as his hips worked tiredly into yours. your mind was so hazy and face absolutely lost in the pleasure you couldn’t even think for yourself. so much cum being pumped into your womb you felt so full. a few more lazy thrusts into you before yoshida laid himself over your shoulder and panted exhausted.

“see where talking back gets you?"

"yeah, and i can't say i wouldn't do it again when this is the outcome"

[starlightkun]

❧ word count: 25.5k ❧ warnings: cursing, neck/shoulder biting and marking if you’re squeamish about that, talking about like werewolf scenting and stuff, blood, brief kissing with blood on/around mouths, this is a werewolf fic either you’re into this stuff or you’re not lol ❧ genre: fluff, so incredibly fluffy and sweet it should’ve been a warning honestly, established relationship, modern magical creatures au, college au, werewolf sungchan, human reader, ft. siren shotaro, werewolf jeno & various magical neos, same universe as strawberry sunday, sequel to changer ❧ extra info: this is a sequel to changer! it cannot be read as a standalone, you must read changer first! this work is set in the same universe as strawberry sunday but can be read as a standalone! there is no continuing plotline between fics in this universe (aside from changer to this one), they simply take place in the same world/magic system and may have overlapping characters (neos may pop up in more than one work!) ❧ author’s note: so this is technically the spiritual threequel (fourqual?) to my werewolf jeno fics (pupsick + abh) but you still don’t have to read those to understand this one at all! this is absolutely meant to be read by itself (after changer, ofc), and if you were able to survive changer, then you deserve a medal. and this is that medal, i suppose!

─── ⋆��☆⋅⋆ explore the strawberry sunday universe more here!

The whole thing probably lasted just a couple seconds, but to you it felt like minutes, as every one of your heartbeats pounded through you, ricocheted around in your skull and grey matter. Could Sungchan feel that? Feel your pulse in his mouth? Was he scraping at it with his canines? Just one wrong move away from tearing open something vital?

“Shh, shh, it’s okay, Sung.” You wrapped your arms around your boyfriend, holding him close with no hesitation, even as his own arms were much slower to react. But once they did, he pulled you to him with a nearly crushing force, a strength that could all but make you forget that he was only half-werewolf.

Tonight, he’d let you stay with him for one of his shifts. It was exactly because he was half-werewolf that he’d even considered it in the first place, his shifts were much less intense than full werewolves, generally less violent and possibly dangerous for anybody who happened to be around him. He’d described it to you after the last full moon, that it was more just sort of painful, confusing, and sometimes sort of like when drunk-you left problems for sober-you, like drunk-dialing people or spending too much money online. Except in his case, werewolf-him generally destroyed smaller pieces of property like school notes or clothes. When he said that he always asked Shotaro to leave the night of the full moon, you asked if you could be with him the next time. It sounded terrible to have to do that alone every month. And to your surprise, he’d only responded with a weak ‘please?’

So when you’d arrived this afternoon, you’d taken everything out of his room that you feasibly could that he didn’t want to chew up: his bookbag, textbooks, nice sneakers, photo albums, laptop, etc. And then you’d locked the door, and stayed with him.

Now he was coming out of it—a glance at his bedside clock that had been knocked out of place but was otherwise fine told you that it was almost three in the morning. You cradled the back of his fully-human-again head, not minding the matted, damp hair.

“I’m right here,” you reminded him. “I didn’t go anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”

You felt him shudder as he let out what sounded like a whine of pain. It made you worried about him staying up on his own two feet. “Sung? Do you need to lay down?”

He didn’t answer, and you realized he might not be back at the point where he could speak yet. Before you could finish weighing your options of attempting to drag the 186cm still partially-shifted half-werewolf to his bed by yourself, he’d buried his face in your neck, opened his mouth, and was resting his set of sharp canines against the curve of where your neck met your shoulder.

You breathed in through your nose, hand still on his head as he just… waited. For what, you couldn’t say. He was still whining softly, though now there was a slight undertone of need cutting through the pain you’d heard earlier.

Your hand was still resting on his head, and you gently pulled him closer, feeling the dull pressure of his teeth against your skin. “It’s okay, Sung. Whatever you need. I trust you.”

Finally, he closed his jaw. But it wasn’t a bite at all, it was more like a toddler teething on something cold to soothe their aching gums while their new teeth grew in. It didn’t hurt; he certainly wasn’t breaking skin, and you doubted that any marks would be left. The worst damage would be slobber, you were sure. If anything, it just… tickled. Suppressing a giggle at the feeling, you stroked his hair affectionately.

“There you go, Sung. There you go…” You murmured quietly. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You’re okay, baby…”

“Bite…” He finally let out a grunt that sounded akin to a real word.

“What? What was that?” You tried to pull your head back to be able to look him in the face, but he didn’t want to detach from you in the slightest, his whines becoming less pained and more pathetic. Giving up on the task, you shook your head just a little, “Never mind, sorry. But what were you saying, Sung? Something about biting? You didn’t chew anything up this time, actually. We kept you in check pretty well. Your wallet will thank us, I’m sure.”

Sungchan continued to mouth at your neck a couple more times before he gave another full body shudder and tremble, then fell to his knees. As wrapped up in each other as you were, you went down with him, your kneecaps only saved by the fact that he had a nice plush rug. Your forehead wasn’t so lucky, as it got cracked against his on the way down, and you bit your tongue as a result.

“Shit!” You hissed, but couldn’t even focus on your own pain for very long, because Sungchan was now leaning most of his weight forward onto you. You quickly readjusted hold him up by the underarms. “Woah, woah. You alright, Sung?”

“I… bite…” He groaned again.

“You bite your tongue too?” You guessed humorously, scooting to sit on the floor against his bed and ushering him to lay down with his head in your lap. Ideally, you’d be in the bed, not on the floor next to it, but this was close enough.

Sungchan curled up in your lap as if he’d forgotten how big he was, fitting as much of the top half of his body there as he could. It was as he turned over slightly onto his side that you finally got a good look at his face again and saw just how exhausted he looked. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, and his skin was warm, flushed, and drenched with sweat. You gently brushed the damp bangs away from his forehead with one hand, reaching your other up towards his nightstand. After fumbling around in the top drawer for a ridiculous amount of time considering you’d put it literally right on top, you finally grabbed the lunchbox filled with cold, damp washcloths and ice packs that you’d stored in there earlier.

Unzipping it, the ice packs were all melted, but the washcloths were still nice and cool, which was what you really needed. Taking the first one, you blotted it along Sungchan’s forehead, cheeks, and neck, following it up with fleeting touches of your hand to assess if it was really helping or not. Judging by the small, soft, not painful sigh he let out, it at least didn’t seem to be hurting.

“Y/N…” He panted, grabbing your wrist as you were pressing the washcloth to his cheek.

“Yep, I’m right here, Sung,” you reassured him, putting your other hand over his. “I’m right here, okay?”

“I…”

“Do you need something, baby? Water? Food?

“I want…”

You dropped the washcloth from his face to listen attentively. “Yeah, Sung?”

His eyes finally opened, letting you see that his irises were still the same glowing, burning amber as earlier in the night. Not quite out of his shift yet. He sat up until he was nearly level with your neck, breathing in deeply. His grip on your wrist tightened, then he all but collapsed back onto your lap again, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Mm… I should… We should… I wan’ to…” He was slurring his words like he was drunk, chest heaving with every breath, and his grip on your wrist relaxed until he was loosely holding your hand, pulling it down to cradle your forearm to his chest like it was a stuffed animal. “Wan’… give you my mating bite… Y/N…”

You stared down at Sungchan with wide, dumbstruck eyes. As he slowly blinked, you could see that his eyes were still that same bright gold. He just shifted further up to try to fit more of himself in your lap, though, pressing his head against your stomach and wedging his shoulder in the gap left by your criss-crossed legs.

Even as you were so shocked, you curled up and readjusted to mold your body around him, one hand giving his head a soft, reassuring pat as the other rubbed up and down his arm, soothing over the surely tired muscles.

“You…” You trailed off in your attempt to get clarification, unable to even begin to try to rephrase it yourself. In packs, mated werewolf couples bit each other in elaborate rituals. Neither of you were any of those things. Could Sungchan even give a werewolf mating bite, as a half-werewolf? Could you receive one? You definitely couldn’t give him one back. Wouldn’t he want one back? Or maybe not? Not to mention he wasn’t in a pack and had never been in his life. What did a mating bite mean to him?

God, your head hurt, and you weren’t even the one who had gone through a werewolf shift tonight.

Sungchan took another deep breath, and long, slow blink, his eyes almost back to their normal brown color. “‘Cause I… I love you. I wan’ to… ‘cause I love you… my… Y/N.”

His eyes fluttered shut, and you heard his breathing even out as he finally fell asleep in just a few moments.

It didn’t seem like you’d get the answer to any of those questions tonight. And as much as the idea of going any longer without knowing made your stomach twist into painful, uncomfortable knots, Sungchan needed the rest. He wasn’t in the right state for any sort of conversation like that. There wouldn’t be any way he’d be able to answer your questions even if you could force yourself to ask them.

Taking a deep breath, you leaned over to gently peck his hair. “Your Y/N loves you too, Sung…”

Your back ached. You had a crick in your neck. And another one in your back. And another one in another part of your back. And yet another one in one more part of your back. You groaned, rolling over in bed to try to crack some of the kinks out without having to actually get up.

That gave you pause. There was definitely a mattress underneath you, blankets covering you, and a pillow supporting your head. But you remembered falling asleep on the floor next to Sungchan’s bed after his shift last night.

Squinting one eye open suspiciously, you saw that it was still very dark in his room, but you had without a doubt been mysteriously tucked into his bed. Much too tired to investigate past that, you pulled the blankets up over your head and buried your face in your pillow, very quickly falling back asleep.

When you woke up again, it was brighter outside, and at first you thought Sungchan had put a weighted blanket on you in the middle of the night. Odd choice, considering you didn’t have one on you the first time you woke up, or at least that you could remember. And then you realized that Sungchan was your weighted blanket.

Your boyfriend was fully snuggled up on top of your back, completely passed out, as you were dozing on your front. You couldn’t even roll him over, he was dead weight. With a sigh, you closed your eyes again, wondering if you’d be able to go back to sleep for a second—third?—time this morning.

“You up?” He mumbled in your ear, voice barely above a hoarse grumble.

“You’re awake?” You asked in disbelief.

“Yeah?”

“So you’re suffocating me on purpose?”

He rolled off onto the mattress next to you, and immediately your lungs could work better. “Oh, so when you do it to me, it’s cute and I’m supposed to enjoy it, but when I do it, it’s attempted murder and ‘Ouch, Sungchan, get off of me, you’re crushing me with your big, huge werewolf muscles.’”

“So I don’t need to ask if you’re feeling better,” you scoffed, but nevertheless shifted onto your side to face him.

He wasn’t pink-faced and sweaty anymore, instead looking unnaturally pale, with dark circles under his eyes like he’d pulled two all-nighters in a row for finals week. You cupped his cheek, gently running your thumb under one of his eyes. His skin wasn’t warm to the touch, instead it felt the same temperature as yours—cold for a werewolf or half-werewolf.

“You’ve got a chill, Sung,” you observed with a frown, taking your hand back as you prepared to get up.

“It’s normal, baby,” he reassured you, grabbing your arm to keep you from leaving. “Just uh… returning to homeostasis or whatever. I’ll be okay.”

“Alright… if you say so…” you sighed, staying put and pressing a kiss to his forehead, sneakily taking note of his temperature that way instead. “You can at least eat, right? Breakfast sound good?”

“Sure. In a minute.”

“You stay here, I’ll go make you something. Breakfast in bed. What’s better than that?”

He pretended to deliberate on this, then grabbed you with two arms around your waist, pulling you to his chest. “This.”

Tucked under his chin, you couldn’t look up to read his face, instead just staring at his t-shirt. “Really? You’re not hungry?”

“A little. But I won’t die if I don’t eat right now.”

“Are you implying that you’ll die if we don’t cuddle right now?”

“Yes,” he replied dramatically. “Absolutely. I’ll simply perish if I don’t get my Y/N time this instant.”

You couldn’t help but snicker at that, finally giving in. Not forgetting about his drop in temperature, you made sure to pull the blankets up around you two before you fully snuggled in, wrapping your arms around him and nuzzling your face into his chest.

“Alright, alright. Slow your roll on your imminent decay. I’m right here, Sung. Like I said last night, I’m not going anywhere.”

“You did say that, didn’t you?” He mused, tangling your legs together.

“Yeah, I did.” You chewed on the inside of your cheek nervously. “Uhm… How much do you remember about your shifts?”

“While I’m fully shifted? Not a lot usually. Immediately before and after? Depends. Why? Did I do something?”

The hairs on the back of your neck stood up as you remembered the feeling of his teeth on your neck, of him asking to bite you, to give you his mating bite. Did he remember that? Sungchan wasn’t bringing it up… Surely he’d mention it again now if he remembered, or was serious about it.

“Well, afterwards… you were kind of saying some stuff. I just didn’t know if you—”

“Hey… look at me?” Sungchan requested as he leaned back from you. When you’d picked up your head to oblige, he looked you in the eye with no hesitation, his face entirely serious now. “Of course I meant it when I said I love you. I’m sorry I said it to you for the first time looking like a hot fucking mess, and again now not in much better shape, but I mean it all the same. I love you, my Y/N. So much. So goddamn much I feel like I could explode if I don’t tell you every 5 seconds. Except you might get kind of tired of me if I did that.”

Despite it not being the words you were expecting to hear, you were beaming from ear to ear, even managing out a choked laugh through the happy tears suddenly welling up in your eyes.

“Woah, hey, I didn’t mean to make you cry with how bad my confession was,” he joked, wiping at the first tear as it slipped down your cheek.

“Oh shut it!” You chastised him. “What have I told you about being a sweetheart?”

“Own up to it or don’t do it at all,” he recited dutifully. “I’m sorry, baby. I love you, so fucking much and I’m going to explode if you don’t say it back maybe? But no pressure? Also, I love you. And no pressure to say it back right now.”

“Oh my god, Sung, I love you too,” you laughed, grabbing his face in both of your hands to pull his mouth to yours. “So fucking much.”

Dr. and Mr. Jung lived in a two-story townhouse just a couple blocks over from campus. The old bricks on the face of it were a warm red, and as you got closer, you saw that there were shimmery flecks mixed into the rogue.

“How old are these buildings?” You asked Sungchan, reaching out to touch one of the bricks around the entryway. “There’s dragon scales in the brick.”

“There’s what?” Sungchan’s eyes widened, and you pointed to a particularly large chunk, about the size of the head of a thumbtack. It reflected amber in the setting sun.

“Dragon scales. They used to be incorporated into building materials to make them more durable. You know, before integration. There’s been really big debates at like, every open-door City Hall meeting about if we should keep buildings up that have dragon scale brick in them or not, since so many dragons had to be killed to make them.”

“Oh my god.”

“So far it looks like they’re going to move towards tearing down abandoned buildings made of dragon scale brick at least.”

“How-How many dragons? Were killed?”

“We have no way to know. And the thing is, you can gather dragon scales without hurting a dragon, it’s just not going to be enough to make dragon scale brick of any usable quantity.”

“So it should’ve never been made.”

“No. It shouldn’t have.” You turned away from the wall with a shake of your head. “Anyway, that’s why I was asking how old these homes are. They’re by the university, so pretty old, I guess.”

“I have no clue. You’d have to ask my parents.” Sungchan ushered you towards the door with a hand on the small of your back.

“I don’t think I will. Not incredible meet-the-parents dinner conversation, really.”

“As much I want to say they’ll love you anyway, which they would, I do have to agree with you. Maybe save the existential horror of the materials of their home for the second dinner.” He kissed the top of your head.

“Will do.” You nodded. “Now, are you going to knock on the door, or are we going to keep standing out here like we’re casing the place?”

“Oh, sorry, you can’t hear that. My mom’s—”

And then the sound of the front door unlocking came, and you looked up at Sungchan questioningly. It was opened by a face familiar to you only from pictures.

Dr. Jung was already beaming at you. “Hello! Oh, I’m sorry if I startled you, Y/N. I was grading in my office and could hear you two coming up the steps, got a bit excited.” She gestured to the window next to the brick that you’d been discussing.

Dr. Jung was an economics professor at your university, though you’d never taken a class from her personally.

“I was about to give you a heads up,” Sungchan patted you on the back. “I heard her footsteps, that’s—”

“—why you weren’t knocking. Of course.” You nodded, then turned your focus back to Sungchan’s mother. “It’s lovely to meet you, Dr. Jung.”

“You too, Y/N.” She was still smiling ear-to-ear as she reached forward to take your hands. “You’ll have to tell me more about the history of these dragon scale bricks, I truly had no idea.”

You looked at Sungchan in alarm, and he just shrugged. But she was already leading you into the house by your hand, your boyfriend trailing behind.

“Mom, I don’t even get a hug? No hello for your own son?” Sungchan complained dramatically, closing the door behind you three.

“Well since you’re going to be a big baby about it.” A man’s voice suddenly joined in as you had emerged from the front hallway into the living room. You turned around towards the stairs to see Sungchan’s dad standing on the bottom step, still not eye level with his son even with the added height. He wrapped his arms around Sungchan with an affectionate fake growl, and your boyfriend eagerly hugged his dad back.

Mr. Jung was a middle school science teacher, and you couldn’t help but wonder if that was where Sungchan got his love for science from. He never said it specifically, but he’d told you plenty of stories of doing home science experiments with his dad as a kid.

“Hey, Dad.” He was grinning so brightly as he pulled away, then eagerly gestured to you. “Dad, this is Y/N. Y/N, this is my dad.”

“Jung Yoonseo, how are you?” The other human greeted you. But your gaze got stuck on the dip of Mr. Jung’s shoulder, where his neck met shoulder, and two-thirds of a dark bite mark were visible above the collar of his shirt.

You tore your eyes away from the mating bite to look up at his face, smiling again. “I’m good, Mr. Jung, thank you. How are you?”

“I’m very well.” He nodded to you, starting towards the connected kitchen.

“Oh, honey, Y/N was just telling me that apparently our home is made of dragon scale brick,” Dr. Jung pulled you into the kitchen as well.

Mr. Jung turned around from where he’d started peeling a vegetable to look at his wife curiously. “Sorry, you said dragon scales, Jieun?”

“Yes! Go on, Y/N. I didn’t catch much of what you were telling Sungchan, I came to get you all as soon as I heard that you’d arrived.”

You looked to Sungchan imploringly, but he just shrugged again, then mouthed something that looked like ‘go for it’ to you. So you inhaled, and went for it.

“Dr. and Mr. Jung, do you two know how old your house is?”

“I think that went pretty well,” Sungchan declared as the two of you walked down the sidewalks hand-in-hand later that evening. He had a bag filled with containers of leftovers in his other hand.

“Glad you think so. I felt like Renjun, giving people impromptu lectures at the most out-of-pocket times,” you scoffed.

“Yeah, and they loved it. My parents are big nerds like you.”

“You’re literally a STEM major.”

“Point taken.”

“So your dad wasn’t just being nice when he invited me over for tea, then?”

Your boyfriend looked down at you with wide eyes. “When did he do that?”

“When you and your mom were packing up the leftovers and he was showing me the backyard. I forgot how it came up, but I’d mentioned the boba shop, and he said if I liked tea, then I was welcome to come over for a cup anytime. Since he’s still on summer break and everything.”

Despite the smile that had creeped across his face as you spoke, you furrowed your brow suspiciously.

“What? What are you smiling for?”

He surprised you by smooching your temple loudly. “I was wrong. It didn’t go pretty well. It went great.”

“Being invited over for tea is a good sign?” You asked cautiously.

“Definitely.” He stopped the two of you on the deserted sidewalk, letting go of your hand just to immediately seize your waist, pulling you towards him. The surprised noise you were about to make got muffled by Sungchan sealing his lips over yours. You curled a hand around the back of his neck as the other gripped onto his forearm for some kind of stability as he kissed you breathless.

As he pulled back to look down at you with that same big, tender grin, you couldn’t help but let out an airy giggle.

“And what was that for?”

“I love you. And do I need a reason to kiss my amazing, beautiful girlfriend?” He punctuated each of the last three words with more kisses to your cheek this time, making you giggle again.

“Like that, in the middle of the street? Yes.” You pinched his side teasingly, earning a laugh as he squirmed away from your touch. You made sure to tack on an, “I love you too, Sung.”

“We’re not in the street, we’re on the sidewalk.”

Before you could give your retort, he’d caught your lips in another sweet kiss, and all banter was gone from your mind.

“Are you staying at my place?” Sungchan asked when you’d finally restarted your journey.

“Let’s do my place tonight, hm?” You suggested, squeezing his hand.

He tilted his head, an adorable, confused pout on his face. “Why?”

“Because I don’t have some poor roommate that we’ll be annoying.”

“Says the girl who used to specifically ask if Shotaro was going to be home before she’d agree to come over,” he snickered.

“I did that because I had a huge crush on you and you’d friendzoned me, you ass.” You elbowed him in the side teasingly. “Having Taro there made it easier to ignore the aching hole in my chest whenever I looked at you, you dick.”

You landed a gentle mock punch that was in actuality a light tap to his chest, but Sungchan was no longer laughing. He looked down at you, pensive sadness on his features.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to articulate how much I regret putting you through that. You didn’t deserve to ever feel… an aching hole, because of me.”

“Ah, Sung.” You hugged his arm to your chest, resting your head against his shoulder as you walked. “I know you would’ve never done that to me on purpose. But if we can’t laugh about it—about the uh, admittedly kind of funny scenario we put ourselves in before we started dating—then we’ll never be able to really move past it. We’re together now, and that’s what really matters.”

He sighed. “I agree. I just… I don’t think I’m past the feeling bad part yet.”

“That’s okay.” You squeezed his upper arm reassuringly. “Just don’t beat yourself up on my account. Alright?”

“Okay,” he said, and you could hear the small smile in his voice.

“So, my place?”

“I just remembered that my mom put in some leftovers for Shotaro. Kelp rolls.”

“We should probably take that to him, huh?”

“Yeah…”

“Hopefully that’ll be enough to counteract us existing around him.”

Shotaro was enthused to receive his kelp rolls, not even commenting on you staying the night as he excitedly took his food into his room.

“You want something to eat?” Sungchan asked as he put the rest of the leftovers in the fridge.

“No. I ate plenty at your parents’ house.” You shook your head. Stretching and yawning, you started towards the hallway with their bedrooms. “You make your little post-dinner snack. Feed your half-werewolf metabolism. I’m going to get ready for bed.”

“Feel free to take a sweatshirt or something.”

“Way ahead of you.”

Your boyfriend found you a few minutes later already curled up in his bed, bundled up in just one of his oversized hoodies. He scooted in next to you, encouraging you to move your head from the pillow to his lap as you went to snuggle up to his side instead.

“Whatcha eating, Sung?” You mumbled, mouth splitting into another yawn. All you could tell was that he had a bowl of some kind of finger food, as he’d brought no utensil in with him.

“Some fruit. Strawberries, honeydew, blueberries… Oh, you want a grape?”

“I’m still not entirely convinced that you’re not trying to fatten me up to eat, you know?” You said teasingly. “Like some mix of the witch from Hansel and Gretel and the big bad wolf from Little Red Riding Hood…”

“Banana slice?”

But you knew it was just his instinct to feed you, so you always indulged him to a certain extent—not so much that you felt like you were going to burst, but enough to calm his need to know that you were well-fed.

“Mm, grape.” You opened your mouth like a baby bird. He deposited the fruit on your tongue, but due to how you were laying, it landed more-so on the inside of your cheek. You had to sit up and prop yourself up on an elbow to chew and swallow properly without choking, but then promptly laid back down, nuzzling your face into his thigh.

Just a few seconds later, he asked you through a full mouth, “Baby? You want another?”

“I’m good, Sung, thank you,” you replied sweetly. “Your dad’s a really good cook, I ate a lot at dinner.”

“Yeah, he is,” he agreed proudly.

“Now finish your food so you can cuddle me to sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

And less than ten minutes later, you were laid on your side, pulled flush to Sungchan’s front, your back to his chest and your legs tangled together. You had one of his arms ensnared, fingers laced loosely with his as you wrapped the limb tighter around you. His face was buried in your neck, planting absentminded kisses to your skin as you were gently floating between waking and sleep.

“I used to think you liked him, for a little bit, you know,” Sungchan murmured next to your ear, clearly a sudden blurting from his own train of thought that you weren’t privy to.

Oh, this sounded like a conversation. You squinted your eyes open blearily, turning over in his arms to face him. Throwing a leg over his to pull him closer, you offered him a sleepy smile and asked, “Who?”

He readjusted to keep holding you like that, one hand resting where the bottom of the hoodie had ridden up around your hip, settling on your thigh. His thumb and forefinger messed with the hem of the sweater, and you could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down in the dim light as he swallowed.

“Shotaro. Since you’d always ask if he was going to be at the apartment. But your heartrate never went up around him.”

You hummed in amusement, reaching out to gently pinch the tip of his nose. “Endearing that you were listening to my heartbeat to figure out if I liked your roommate.”

“But it did… go up around me sometimes. I knew that,” he confessed, his eyes locking on yours, desperate. Like he was searching, asking you for something. Absolution, penance, maybe. “And it made me happy. Even though I had told myself that I shouldn’t have you. It still… made me happy at first, but then it’d make me sad. That you hadn’t moved on. Because I thought you’d deserved to move on.”

But he’d done no sin that you needed to cleanse him of in your eyes. He was a guy who made a few mistakes and then finally made the right choice. After you smacked him upside the head with it, but nobody was perfect. The person who really needed to forgive him was himself. He was still stuck in the past, seemingly afraid that he could lose you at any moment. But he wasn’t going to, and you wished he would just believe that.

“But you got me now,” you promised, cradling his face and wishing he could feel just how much you really meant those words.

“I do.” He brought his hand up to cover your own, and you felt like you could cry. “I do got you now.”

“And I’ve got you.”

“You’ve always had me. I just hadn’t told you yet. But you’ve always had me,” Sungchan admitted with a bittersweet smile, curling his hand around yours.

You surged forward to close the minute gap between the two of you, kissing him so hard that your lips hurt. Your fingers tangled in his hair, your hands grabbed at his shoulders, his clothes, anything to pull him closer to you. He was hugging you tight to him, thank god, because it felt like you could never be close enough. Your bones ached with a need to break the laws of physics and exist in the same time and space as him, and a tiny part of you believed that if you just wanted it enough, if you tried hard enough, maybe you could.

“You know, I thought all I’d feel was relief when you and Sungchan finally got together, but instead I’m plagued by near constant nausea.”

You stopped in your tracks in the hallway. You’d been trying to quietly pee then hurry back into Sungchan’s room the next morning, but instead, you spun around to face Shotaro, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

He was standing in front of his door at the opposite end of the hall, arms crossed over his chest.

“Maybe go see a witch about that. It sounds serious,” you wrinkled your nose teasingly. Thankfully you’d had the wherewithal to pull on a pair of sleep shorts you had stashed in Sungchan’s drawers before leaving his room that morning.

“Yeah, that and my recently developed insomnia, too,” he scoffed. “Three in the morning, Y/N. Some people like to sleep, you know.”

Your skin burned as you started shuffling backwards towards Sungchan’s room. “Sorry! Bye!”

You slammed the door behind you, startling Sungchan awake.

“Huh?” He blinked sleepily, lifting his head to look around.

You launched yourself back into bed, burying your face in the pillow in shame.

“Woah, Y/N, you okay?” Sungchan’s voice was thick and deep this early in the morning, but you couldn’t even focus on that. He rubbed your back soothingly as you shook your head.

You turned your head just enough to clear your mouth to speak. “We should’ve gone to my place... No roommate...”

“Oh, Shotaro giving you a hard time?”

“‘Three in the morning, Y/N. Some people like to sleep.’” You did your best Shotaro impression. “I don’t think it was enough kelp rolls.”

“Ah, I’m-I’m sorry, baby.” Sungchan kept rubbing your back, but you could hear that he was holding back laughter.

You rolled onto your back, shooting him a glare before staring up at the ceiling. “Why do I always let you talk me into staying at your place?”

“Because you love me,” he replied in a sing-song voice, pressing a lingering kiss to your cheekbone, near your hairline.

“Yeah, but I mean, why do we always end up at your apartment, Sung? Why do you never want to come over to mine?”

The teasing dropped from his tone as he straightened up slightly. “It’s not like that, Y/N. I like spending time with you, no matter where we are. We could be in the cold vacuum of space, and I’d be fine with it as long as we were hanging out. And, in space suits so we didn’t die, you know. But, it’s just... I don’t know, I like having you here. In my space. It feels like everything’s right in the universe, like I know everything will be okay, that you’re going to be okay. As stupid as that sounds—”

“No, Sung, it’s not stupid.” You shifted to face him, brushing some hair back from his face. The same anxiety that you’d seen the night before was painted across his features again, and you didn’t like that you were seeing it more and more often. His sentiments weren’t stupid, they were loving, but the root of them concerned you. Was he constantly plagued by worries of something bad happening to you?

“Not at all...” You reiterated softly, running your thumb over the crease between his brows. “Sung? Baby?”

“Yeah?”

“I know you have class today but… can I stay here? While you’re on campus? Then we can do something together when you get back. We can go downtown or something.”

You could feel his face relax again under your touch, and he nodded with a smile.

“Yeah, of course. If you think you can handle being around Shotaro for that long. He’s off work today.”

“I’ll manage, somehow.”

When it was finally time for Sungchan to go to class, though, you encountered an issue.

“Sung, you need to go to class,” you sighed, nudging him from where he had his arms wrapped around you. You’d been lounging on the couch when it struck time for him to finally depart for campus, but you were now dealing with a clingy werewolf.

“The professor doesn’t count attendance for a grade,” he grumbled. “I can skip.”

“You literally said this morning that you had a quiz today.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did, you liar,” you scoffed, trying to wriggle out of his grip. “And you need to go take that quiz.”

Shotaro, meanwhile, was observing the entire thing from the threshold between the living room and the hallway, a fascinating mixture of equal parts disgust and amusement on his features. You looked at him pleadingly for any kind of assistance, and he rolled his eyes, but nevertheless helped you anyway.

“Sungchan, dude, seriously,” Shotaro sighed, his tone on the border of exasperation and understanding. “Y/N’s wearing your clothes, staying in our apartment, and you haven’t let her go for I think the past four hours straight, not even to pee. You’ve scented her up enough to last the next month, a few hours will be fine.”

Your jaw set as there was a sudden spark of recognition in the back of your mind, but you couldn’t follow that train of thought in the moment. Sungchan loosened his grip on you, sitting up and blinking as if woken from a trance. “R-Right. Sorry, Y/N.”

“It’s okay, Sung,” you smiled, standing up and yanking him to his feet as well. You practically dragged him towards the front door, shoving his backpack in his hands. “Now go, you’re going to be late.”

He looked down at you with a small, fond smile as well, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “Bye, love you.”

“I love you too.” You got up on your tiptoes to give him a fleeting kiss goodbye, and he wrapped an arm around you for a hug. You were worried that this was about to be another borderline hostage situation, but he took one more inhale near your neck, then let you go and straightened up.

“Okay. See you in a few.” He said, his hand on the door handle.

“Go, Sungchan.”

“Fine, fine. Bye.”

And with that, he was finally gone. You turned back around to Shotaro, letting out a sigh of relief. The siren just chuckled, shaking his head.

“Werewolves, dude.” He flopped onto the opposite side of the couch from where you and Sungchan had just been.

You sat back down, kicking your feet up and pulling out your phone. “Yeah. Werewolves...”

Shotaro started flicking through a streaming service to try to find something to watch. “Hey wait, shouldn’t he be scenting you less since he’s a half-werewolf?”

“I... don’t know,” you admitted. “There’s not really any sort of research on half-werewolves. We don’t know anything about what they ‘should’ be like. Not even one of those unethical case studies from the 1800s.”

“Huh. But like I was saying earlier, you two make me nauseous.”

“Just put on your trashy reality TV that we know you’re going to pick after scrolling around for 30 minutes.”

“The browsing is part of the experience.”

As Shotaro browsed on the TV then eventually picked a show, you searched on your phone. The Real Sirens of Diamond Bay was great background noise as you dug through the internet, and you barely even realized the time until your friend was calling for your attention from the kitchen.

“Hm?” You looked up from the forum post that you’d been reading.

“I asked if you wanted lunch.” He opened the fridge, taking out the containers of leftovers you and your boyfriend had brought home last night. “Or if only Sungchan could feed you.”

“Yeah, sure, I could eat.” You joined him in the kitchen, stretching out your back. “So you noticed that too, huh?”

“Oh, the pre-mating behaviors? Well, you did give me a very convenient list when you were still in your denial phase.”

You punched his arm, making him nearly drop the plates he’d just gotten from the cabinet.

“Ow!” He rubbed the spot with a pout, handing you one of the dishes. “Rude... I’m feeding you food from my fridge.”

“No, I’m letting you eat my leftovers,” you corrected him. “Dr. Jung made us take all the steamed buns because she knew they were my favorite.”

Shotaro had been loading said steamed buns up onto his plate, then started shoveling the rest of them onto yours. “Calm down, I wasn’t taking them all.”

You looked at the empty container with a sigh, putting half of yours back. “Well, we can’t just leave nothing for Sung.”

After you’d made your plates with minimal bickering and warmed them up, you took them to the small dining table in the corner of the living room to eat. Shotaro continued playing the episode he’d been on for ambiance as he engaged you in conversation.

“So what were you so invested in on your phone?” He asked, cracking open a seaweed-infused sparkling tea drink popular with younger sirens. “You usually love Real Sirens.”

You popped the tab on your soda, taking a sip before answering. “I was doing some research, on what we were talking about earlier—”

“I thought you said there wasn’t a lot of research on half-werewolves.”

“Not a lot of scholarly research. But I found some people posting online about their own experiences either as half-werewolves themselves, or dating half-werewolves. About the scenting.” You explained, pausing to take a bite of your food. “And it seems like the general consensus is that most likely because their sense of smell isn’t as great as full werewolves, but they still can smell that kind of stuff, unlike humans, half-werewolves get a little more… intense with scenting behaviors.”

“Gross.”

“I meant the clothes and the hugging, dude.” You soft-balled a kick at his shin under the table. “Not my fault you’re immediately gross.”

“Does it ever stop?”

You grimaced, “Well…”

“No?” Shotaro asked with wide eyes, presumably having the rest of his recently renewed lease flashing before them.

“Again, there aren’t a lot of half-werewolves. Or at least ones talking about it. But there is one half-werewolf/human couple I found who says that the scenting took better, and the behaviors therefore decreased after…” You trailed off, messing with the strings of Sungchan’s hoodie.

“After…?”

“After they followed through with the werewolf mating bite.”

The siren stared at you blankly. “Oh.”

“They’re the only ones I could find online who has done that, so who knows if that’s a guaranteed result, not to mention that at that point they were also human married, and had been together for over five years, so there was definitely just a lot of security in their relationship not to mention they’d been living together for years so they were going to smell like each other anyway—”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” Shotaro stopped your defensive rambles gently. “You two don’t need to do that for me. Just wear his clothes and be annoying, it’s fine.”

You stabbed your fork into a bun. “Yeah, I know that.”

“That was some weird stressing of your words there, Y/N. Anything you want to share?”

You let out a long, steady breath, your lips just a centimeter away from being pressed together. Your mind was swirling with the memory of Sungchan’s last shift. Of him asking you to take his bite. He hadn’t mentioned it again since, but you couldn’t stop thinking about it. Especially because he hadn’t brought it up again since. And seeing his dad’s last night…

“Sungchan mentioned it once, but I don’t know how serious he was being, and he hasn’t brought it up again,” you admitted before tearing into the bun you’d just assaulted. It was filled with delightfully seasoned veggies wrapped in smooth, pillowy dough. God, these really were some of the best steamed buns you’d ever had.

Shotaro practically did a spit take with his tea, dribbling the sip he’d just taken back into the bottle. “He what? When?”

“Shotaro—”

“No, he brought up essentially werewolf engagement to you— What? While you two were playing video games or something? And neither of you mentioned this to me?”

“It wasn’t like that but... sure. I guess.”

“No, no, what was the context? Post-nut confessions or something?”

“God! Why are you like this?” You groaned, dragging a hand over your face in exasperation. “No, he let me be with him for his last shift, it was when he was coming out of it. He wasn’t all there, he was tired, he had all the extra adrenaline and everything else going through his body still.”

He didn’t seem convinced. “So I was right.”

You gave him an unamused look. “Think more like a boxer with a concussion.”

“And you haven’t brought it up with him since?”

“I was just focused on making sure he was okay. And now, I don’t know, he hasn’t mentioned it again. Maybe he wasn’t serious about it?”

“If he was... would you say yes? To be werewolf married?” The siren waggled his eyebrows at you teasingly. “Or half-werewolf married? Half-werewolf half-married?”

“They really need to make like even a single MCS class mandatory in the Gen Ed requirements, because what the hell are you saying to me right now?”

“You know what I mean. Would you say yes?”

“I… need to talk to some other people, I think.” You turned your eyes downwards as you tried to really think about it.

“That wasn’t a no! Hell yeah! I’m so going to be Sungchan’s best man!”

You rolled your eyes. “You have no clue what you’re talking about.”

As you finished up your lunch, your mind wouldn’t stop turning over what Shotaro had said. If Sungchan had been serious, would you say yes? You knew from class what the bite meant to werewolves within packs, but did it mean the same thing to Sungchan since he was half-werewolf? Did that even make a difference? Not to mention that you weren’t any part werewolf, the exchanging of bites was supposed to be an entire ritual similar to a couple exchanging rings on their wedding day. You couldn’t exactly bite him back. And the couple online was already legally married anyway…

Well, you did know one other werewolf/human couple that you could talk to, at least. You quickly texted Jeno.

[you: hey, are you home right now?]

Miraculously, he texted back almost immediately.

[jeno: yeah, just got back from a run]

[jeno: why?]

[you: mind if i come over really quick? need some advice on something with sung]

[jeno: oh sure]

[jeno: everything okay? should i have tissues out…?]

[you: omg no like werewolf stuff]

[jeno: oh good]

[you: thanks though. be over in a few]

Standing up from the couch, you stood off to the side of the TV so you didn’t block Shotaro’s show as you announced, “I’ll be right back.”

The siren gave a thumbs up in acknowledgement as his focus remained on the screen. You nodded before hurrying to pull your shoes on. The last thing to do before leaving was shoot off a text to Sungchan.

[you: hey sung, i’ve got a quick errand to run. i should be back before you get home from class, but just in case i’m not, i’ll be coming right back to the apartment! love you!]

“Hey, Jeno, thanks for having me over on such short notice.” You offered your friend a nervous smile as you stepped into his apartment.

“I’m not your professor that you’re seeing outside of his office hours, Y/N,” he chuckled, shutting the door behind you. “Don’t worry about it. What’s up? You said it’s something about Sungchan?”

“Is your girlfriend here?” You looked around the living room as the two of you sat down.

Jeno tilted his head curiously. “No, she’s at the bakery this afternoon. Did you need her too?”

“Not necessarily, it’s just...” You dropped your head into your hands, frustrated. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Try to start at the beginning?”

“Right. Sung let me be with him on the last full moon.”

“Wow. I haven’t even done that.” Jeno sounded genuinely impressed.

“Well… Uhm, do you know? About Sung?”

He stared at you blankly. “Need you to be way more specific here. I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

You tried to pick your words carefully to give him enough of a hint if he did know without outright telling him if he didn’t know. You were sure that Sungchan wouldn’t mind if Jeno knew that he was half-werewolf, but you still didn’t feel like that was your place to go around telling people. “About his parents?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah.” Your friend nodded in recognition. “Half-werewolf, that’s why he was able to have you there, duh.”

“Anyway, when he was coming back out of the shift afterwards, he mentioned us... he mentioned the werewolf mating bite.”

His eyes widened as he took a short inhale before slowly starting with, “Well, I can tell that you two haven’t done that.”

“I figured. So, with Sung being half-werewolf, he’s been having a difficult time with the scenting. I think because he can smell it enough to notice it, but not as strongly as full werewolves...”

“He would have a higher threshold for scenting in order to register it, right. Hence your current attire, I’m guessing?” Jeno gestured to the large black leather jacket you were currently drowning in, which was much too hot for the sweltering summer heat that was still going on outside, but still a better option than the hoodie you had previously been in.

You gave a resigned, what-can-you-do smile. “Yeah. And he’s not going to say anything about it, but I know he’s going to be stressed when I see him after this and he can smell you and Jaemin.”

“Oh, definitely.” He snorted lightly, not judgmental, but more sympathetic. “Let me guess: he gets all needy and clingy? Likes to bury his face in your neck?”

“Exactly. And the cuddles would be nice but, I don’t know... I hate seeing him like this, you know? So... anxious. It’s not like him.” You sighed, beginning to feel more guilty the longer you stayed here and got wrapped up in the smells of other people.

“It’s the first time in his life the wolf side is in charge of him and not the other way around. He’s really understanding what it’s like being a full werewolf outside of the full moon, of course he’s not having a good time.”

“Is it like that for you? With her?”

“Kind of. I can smell everything better, so I can smell the subtler things. Without going into too much detail, all those instincts aren’t on edge for me as much as Sungchan’s are right now. And we also figured something else out.”

“Something else?” You asked curiously. Last time you saw Jeno’s girlfriend, you couldn’t remember her having a bite mark. But maybe there was something that hadn’t been covered in your classes. After all, several millennia of the cultures, histories, and customs of fourteen species just couldn’t be fit into one undergrad degree. Your bachelor’s was nothing more than a survey of the two fields, to give you the broad strokes and the tools to start wading in.

Jeno pulled on a leather cord that you hadn’t even noticed was hanging around his neck, bringing a pendant out from under his collar. It was a pale white stone, flat, the size of a coin, with opalescent flecks that caught the light as he showed it to you.

“Moonstone. We have matching ones. They’re even enchanted so that when I…” he wrapped his whole hand around the stone “…hold onto it a little tighter, it reacts, and she can feel hers warm up too. So she knows I’m thinking about her.”

“And it helps with your shifts. That’s really sweet, Jeno,” you said, watching as he tucked it back under his shirt, presumably to keep it in skin-to-skin contact so he could feel if she squeezed her gem back in response.

“But that’s what works for us. It needs to be whatever works for you guys.”

You looked down at your fingers nervously. “But you two haven’t even…”

“I haven’t bit her?” The werewolf said bluntly.

“Yeah, and you’ve been together for a lot longer than us.”

“We’re not you and Sungchan. We may have set you guys up, but we’re not you.”

“You set us up? What?” That little off-hand comment had stolen your focus for the moment.

Jeno’s brow furrowed. “Did you never get the full story of how you got sent on that first blind date with him?”

“I mean, Jaemin had shown me a picture of him from your Instagram account, and I knew that you two knew each other through your girlfriend. But no, I guess I never did get the whole story. Jaemin said something about a deal, I think…”

His wide eyes and ‘oh shit’ face said it all. With a wince, he sighed, “I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you this…”

“What? Jeno, come on,” you pleaded, clasping your hands together in front of you like you were kneeling at an altar.

“Ah, fine, fine.” He gave in easily, regret immediately coming to his features as you perked up, eager to hear the story. “We were all playing soccer one day and her—” he jerked his thumb at the empty space on the couch beside him that the both of you had both been vaguely referring to whenever you mentioned his girlfriend. “—and Sungchan made this bet. You see, something had happened at the park that day. There was another werewolf there, and he called my girlfriend something nasty. And Sungchan was saying that because of stuff like that, he wanted to just stick with dating other werewolves. He also kept saying something about love making my brain rot. It made sense in context. Sort of.”

You raised an eyebrow, but didn’t interrupt Jeno for fear that you’d get him off-track and lose your opportunity.

“Anyway, they made a bet that if she was on Sungchan’s team and did her best in the game against me, then Sungchan would let her set him up on one blind date with anybody, werewolf or not. And he wasn’t allowed to intentionally bomb it, he had to actually put in a genuine effort.”

“And I was that date…” You surmised, several pieces falling into place. Specifically, Jaemin and Donghyuck’s initial pitch of Sungchan to you.

“Jaemin suggested you, and we thought the two of you would be a good fit.”

You added humorously, “And I’m not a werewolf.”

“Well, yeah.” Jeno ducked his head sheepishly like he was a puppy that was afraid you were going to notice the shoes that he had chewed up behind him. “But we really did put a lot of thought into it, I swear. And then when we heard he made you walk out in ten minutes, we were actually going to make him go on another one because we thought that he had sabotaged his one with you.”

“Amazingly, no, I think that really was his best effort at the time.” You snickered.

“Now I feel like I have to apologize for subjecting you to him.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Anyway, he said he didn’t want to go on another date, he had to fix things with you first. She let up on him after that. Apparently believed his mind had been changed.”

“I don’t know how a ten-minute conversation where he practically accused me of being a werewolf fetishist for dating two werewolves, and I asked about his major and told him about my cheating ex could’ve possibly changed his mind but— Hey, look how far we’ve come.”

“And now you know the story of how you two ended up on that ten-minute, awful, terrible blind date that I almost wish we didn’t send you on now that I’ve heard what happened on it.”

“I’ve had worse dates.”

“But like I was saying. We—” he pointed between himself and the empty space proxy of his girlfriend “—are not you two. Just like in human relationships, the big steps happen at different times for everyone, there isn’t one right answer to when a werewolf couple take on each other’s bites. There’s even less of a blueprint for werewolf-human couples. So as far as I’m concerned, you and Sungchan? A half-werewolf and human couple? You two do whatever the hell you want. You’re unprecedented.”

“Unprecedented…” You repeated to yourself, drumming your fingers along your knee.

You and Jeno chatted for a few more minutes about this and that, but you soon decided that you’d have to be going. Sungchan had texted you the full sequence of finishing class, leaving campus, and arriving home while you’d been talking, and there was a pinch at your heart as you could imagine him getting more anxious with each passing minute that you weren’t there. And then there were the smells that you were going to have to deal with once you did return, too.

As Jeno walked you to the front door, your eyes drifted over to the kitchen, an idea popping into your head.

“Hey, Jeno? Can I have a glass of water?”

“Sung?” You called out into the seemingly empty apartment as you turned to close and lock the front door up. “I’m— oof!”

You were knocked off kilter by 186cm of werewolf, barely catching yourself against the door on your forearms to avoid bonking your forehead into it. Sungchan had his arms wrapped around your waist, already nosing around your hair and neck.

“Hi…” Sungchan said against your cheek, his tone apologetic. He got too excited, he didn’t mean to almost KO you like that.

Slowly, you reached over to finish flicking the deadbolt into the locked position. Then, you blindly stretched a hand back to pat him on the head. “Hey, hey.” You kept your voice calm and soothing.

He was getting down to the collar of the shirt you were wearing—one of his t-shirts, and you could feel him shifting to hold you tighter. He’d definitely noticed something was off.

“You know, I’m really sorry, Sung,” you began, turning your tone mournful and looking down at the wet patch on the front of your shirt. “I know this is your shirt, I feel really bad about this, but I spilled water on myself while I was out. Do you think I can throw this one in your wash here and borrow a new one?”

He immediately perked up at this, “Yeah, of course!”

You smiled. “Thanks.”

Success.

After your dinner and night out together in downtown, you ended up back in Sungchan’s room, fitted in your new crewneck sweater—this one for a concert he’d gone to last year. You were reclined between his legs against his chest as you half-watched him game, half-scrolled on your phone, and half-snoozed. You’d been playing the game in multi-player mode with him earlier but put your controller aside some time ago when you’d let out a couple loud yawns. Ruminating thoughts of your conversation with Jeno had kept you from fully falling asleep, though.

“Sung?” You waited for a pause on a loading screen to call for his attention.

“Mm?” He hummed back to let you know he was listening, even as the new map loaded in. He hadn’t moved his character yet, fingers frozen as they hovered over the buttons.

“Can we talk for a second?”

“Of course.” Your boyfriend quickly saved and exited the game, setting the controller beside yours on the nightstand.

He wrapped his arms around your waist to pull you tighter to him, resting his chin on your shoulder as he waited attentively for you to start with whatever you needed to talk about. You could hear him take a pause to sniff the air around you, and a small, disgruntled sound came from the back of his throat almost immediately.

“Face-to-face?” You requested quietly.

“Right, sorry.”

He loosened his arms, reluctantly letting them fall from around you.

Pushing yourself up off his legs into a full sitting position, you turned around in place, still finding yourself between his thighs. He straightened up a little bit from his spot against the headboard.

You reached out to take his hands in yours. “This is something that really stresses you out, isn’t it? The smells?”

“It’s… I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like…” He took one of his hands back to run his fingers through his hair, and your chest hurt to see the distress on his features. “Imagine being able to constantly see something right in the corner of your eye, but when you turn your head, you can’t actually look at it. You know it’s there, but you can never actually get a proper look. Humans never know it’s there, and werewolves get to look at it head-on. But I don’t get either. It’s terrible.”

“Ah, Sung… That sounds awful, baby.” You grimaced sympathetically, unable to imagine how wound up and panicky he must be all the time. You just wanted to cut this conversation short right now to wrap your arms around him, rub his back and tell him you were never going to leave him again. But for right now, all you could do was squeeze his hand tighter, and hope he got the message.

“I know that sometimes you smell right and sometimes you don’t. But I don’t know why, usually. And it’s not like you smell bad like you need a shower or anything. But like… ah, I can’t describe it.” He groaned, rubbing his face. “I don’t even know what I’m smelling all the time. But it’s just—”

“Not right. I get it, that made sense. And it’s better when I wear your clothes, or spend time with you? Here?”

“I’m sorry…” He said weakly.

“Woah, hey, where in there was I asking for an apology? I’m trying to figure this out together, okay? Not make you feel bad for being unable to turn your nose off. I don’t like that you’re this stressed all the time, you know?”

“In my normal, thinking brain I know you should—and I want you to—be able to wear whatever clothes you want to wear. And I’m glad that you’re spending time with your friends, and I want to go wherever you want to go, whether that’s out somewhere, or to your place. I loved our date night out tonight. It’s not those actual things that bother me at all, it’s just that you smell different.”

“I know, I know.” You reassured him, continuing to hold his hand and gently rubbing his forearm with your free hand. “So maybe there’s something more permanent we can do to help you with the smells?”

Sungchan met your gaze uncertainly. “Permanent?”

“You mentioned it after your last shift. Me taking your bite. I found one other half-werewolf/human couple who did it, online, and they said it helped with the scent anxiety.”

“Y/N…” He breathed your name out.

“I understand if you’re not ready for it. I know it’s a really big step for werewolves. But I had to put it out there, if there’s any possibility that it’ll help.”

“This is not how I imagined this conversation going at all.”

“What?”

“The human reassuring the werewolf that it’s okay if the werewolf isn’t ready for a mating bite yet.” He laughed, throwing his head back. “Oh my god. We really are one-of-a-kind, huh?”

You couldn’t help but chuckle too. “When you put it like that, that is pretty funny. You thought you were going to have to convince me, huh?”

“I wasn’t going to badger you into it if you didn’t want it, that’s for sure. But I mean, I didn’t bring it up again after my last shift because I wanted to do it more… I don’t know, romantically than being a sweaty, exhausted, slurring mess in your lap. I just hadn’t figured out how to do that yet because I’ve been too focused on spending every spare second I can with you.”

“I thought you were a very cute sweaty, exhausted, slurring mess when you asked me last time,” you giggled.

“Right, thanks.”

“So, do you want to do it, then?”

“Aren’t I supposed to be asking you that?”

Jeno’s words came back to you: You two do whatever the hell you want. You’re unprecedented.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be doing anything any specific way, Sung. We just do it. But if you want to ask me, go for it.” You smiled at him encouragingly. After a few beats of silence, though, you pinched his thigh teasingly, “I’m waiting.”

“What—Right now? Really putting me on the spot.” Sungchan rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

“Well when else—”

“No, I’ve got it.” He squared his shoulders, face turning serious as he turned his eyes to you. Briefly kissing the back of your fingers first, he began, his voice much shakier than you had expected, “Y/N, I’m ready to give you my mating bite, if you will accept it. But I don’t want it to just be me biting you. I-I want you to do whatever you need to do to make it feel complete to you, too. Since you can’t give me one back. If that’s okay with you?”

Despite you (mostly) knowing what was coming, you still unexpectedly found yourself tearing up as you went to nod your head yes. “Of course, Sung. That’d be perfect, yes. You’ll have to give me some time to figure it out, but yes, I love that.”

“I love you.”

You stood up on your knees to wrap your arms around his neck, giving him a quick kiss before burying your face in his collar. “I love you, too.”

Sungchan hugged you back tightly, pulling you back with him into almost the same position as before, with you against his chest. He pressed kisses to any part of you that he could access, your cheek, your jaw, your neck, your ear. You turned your head enough so that the next one he could plant on your lips, a sweet, loving kiss.

“Ah…” He sighed, his eyes squeezed shut, a bright smile on his face.

“What?” You traced over the smile lines at the corner of his eye.

He was almost nose-to-nose with you when his beautiful brown eyes were open again. Looking at you, he admitted freely, “I’m just… so happy.”

“Me too.” You beamed.

“And I can’t believe I almost let myself miss out on this, on you, so many times.”

“Let’s see… the night we actually got together.” You teased, ticking the instances off on your fingers.

“Mm-hm.” A pink flush was starting to creep up Sungchan’s neck.

“Valentine’s Day at the boba shop. Which you owe me emotional damages for, by the way.”

“Yeah. Sorry…” The pink had overtaken his neck and was starting to flush his cheeks.

“Our first date.”

Completely red-faced, he nodded and sighed. “Like I said, I’m just happy that—”

“Oh, and the bet.”

“Huh?” He was entirely frozen, staring at you with wide, unblinking eyes.

“I saw Jeno today,” you stated.

“Yes, I did smell him when you came home.”

“I finally got the full story of how you ended up on our blind date, Sung.”

“Listen, I am a proud member of the Love-Rotten Brains Club now.” He tightened his arms around you and nuzzled his nose along your cheek and neck as he spoke, making his lips brush over your skin in ghosts of kisses. “I’m the president and the whole board and the social media intern and whatever else. Never have I ever been more proud of being wrong. I’ll say it every day for the rest of our lives.”

“Ah!” You squirmed and laughed as he was over a ticklish spot. “Alright, you don’t have to do that. But I’m glad they pushed you out of your comfort zone.”

Sungchan let up, allowing you to simply rest your head in the crook of his neck.

“To my credit, I was the one who offered the terms of that bet in the first place.”

“Really? You had to know that they were definitely going to set you up with someone who was not a werewolf, right?”

“I knew. I figured I could make polite small talk for an hour and be done with my end.”

You couldn’t help but laugh loudly, from the gut. “Oh, baby, if polite small talk was your goal, then you failed miserably.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” he said remorsefully.

“Now, I’ve got to know.” You poked his chest pointedly. “Everyone seems convinced that you were like, in love with me and a changed man from that one plane crash of a conversation. Shotaro says that you kept walking around talking about how you wanted to apologize to me for weeks after. Jeno and his girlfriend didn’t set you up on another date despite you not really holding up your end because she was content that you had changed your mind. So?”

Sungchan’s chest rose and fell under you with a deep breath, and he took a pause as if piecing together his thoughts before responding. “Even if we didn’t end up meeting again, I think that date with you was always going to be an important lesson for me, about getting my head out of my ass. I’m just glad I got to take what I learned back to you and apologize and show you that. Like, yeah, our first date was only a few minutes, but I kind of hate to admit that I thought about it for weeks afterwards, because that sounds like weirdo behavior. I mean, literally until the night we saw each other at the boba place. It’s not that it was even romantic at that point, it was more guilt than anything else. I knew I was in the wrong, and I felt awful that I might not be able to tell you that I knew that.”

“I’m glad you found me again at the boba shop. Not a lot of guys would’ve had the guts to actually apologize. Probably would’ve grabbed their drink and ran. Or ran as soon as they saw me and not even ordered.”

“I just wish I had the guts to actually ask you out that night.”

“Me too. But I’m not entirely blameless either. The start of our relationship isn’t a weight that falls solely on your shoulders just because you’re the guy, or the werewolf, or whatever.” You shrugged. “And we figured it out eventually anyway.”

“Yeah, we did.” Sungchan pressed a kiss to your forehead.

Stopping in front of a familiar red brick townhouse, you ran up the couple short steps to knock on the front door before you could psych yourself out. You and Sungchan had decided to go through with the mating bite after the next full moon in one week, which was a couple days after the end of the summer semester. It gave him time to focus on his finals, and fell in the two-week break between the summer semester ending and the fall semester starting. This was going to be your last year as undergraduates, both you and Sungchan were graduating in the spring. You could hardly believe that you only had two more semesters left of your bachelor’s degree. And then you had grad school.

But right now, you had this: The front door being opened to reveal Mr. Jung to you, a smile immediately crossing his face as he recognized you. Even behind the glasses perched on his nose, you could easily see Sungchan in his features.

“Hi, Mr. Jung,” you greeted him politely.

“Oh, hey, Y/N.” He tucked the pen that was in his hand behind his ear. “Here to see Jieun?”

“Uh, no. Sorry to just drop in, but I wanted to talk to you about something, actually. Do you have time for some tea?”

He backed up, waving you in. “Sure, of course. Come on in.”

“Thank you.” You walked in with a grateful head dip, taking your denim Jasmine & Pearls baseball cap off as you passed over the threshold of the front door.

“Sungchan’s got a hat just like that,” Mr. Jung commented, leading you further into the home. “Or is that one his?”

“Oh, we actually won them in a game at the boba shop that Shotaro works at. We each have our own.” You looked over the purple embroidered logo fondly. “It’s kind of how we met. The second time.”

“Right, the boba tea place that Shotaro works at…” He echoed, recognition in his tone.

You followed Mr. Jung upstairs, which you didn’t get to see the last time you’d been over for dinner. He led you into a room with wallpaper depicting cartoon spaceships, planets, moons, and stars. The ceiling was covered in glow in the dark stars, and even the curtains were embroidered with star maps. The furniture itself was set up to be an adult’s home office, though, despite the shell having clearly been a child’s bedroom. There were still some shelves on the wall with trophies from science fairs and sports teams.

“Sorry, Jieun doesn’t drink tea, and the electric kettle in the kitchen is busted.” Mr. Jung half-explained why he’d brought you in here, another electric kettle in his hand. “Give me a second, I need to fill this up.”

“Of course,” you nodded, not entirely paying attention to what he was saying. Truly, you were still looking around at what was obviously Sungchan’s childhood bedroom.

Any kids’ furniture was gone and replaced with a desk, laptop, two chairs, and a printer. But you didn’t mind, as you leaned in to read the little engravings on his science fair trophies, and from his soccer teams, and baseball teams, and spelling bees, and mathletes competitions—god, you were dating a mathlete? He’d failed to mention that. There was a picture that looked like it was from a field trip from primary school, of his whole class in front of a space shuttle at the closest space and natural history museum. You squinted your eyes as you studied the picture, trying to figure out which one was your boyfriend.

“Sungchan’s the really tall one that you probably thought was a teacher’s helper,” Mr. Jung said humorously, announcing his return.

You turned around, the picture still in your hand, and your eyes immediately landed on the child he was referring to. Gangly, awkward, nearly a head taller than the rest of the kids, but still smiling so brightly—his crooked smile gap-toothed at that moment in time—because he was just so, so excited to be there.

“Ah, yep. There he is,” you smiled fondly, setting the picture back down.

“He gets his height from Jieun’s father. In case you were curious.”

Mr. Jung set the kettle back on its stand on the desk and started heating it up. He cleared a huge stack of papers off a second chair that was next to the desk, then gestured for you to sit. You did so, watching him take down a couple mugs from the shelves over his desk, and pull open the top drawer to root around in it.

“Jasmine?” He asked.

“That sounds lovely, thank you.”

He took out one tin, right as the kettle made a small ding to let him know the water was ready. Mr. Jung poured the water into both mugs first, then took out a couple small, empty pouches. He measured out the loose jasmine tea into each before sealing them and dropping them in the water.

“I figured you would’ve wanted to talk to Jieun about the bite,” he said as he handed you your cup. “Also, let me know if you want some honey for that.”

“I’m good on the honey, thanks,” you smiled awkwardly. “So he told you already.”

The other human eased himself down into the office chair in front of you. “Yes, Sungchan’s been keeping us appraised. He was nervous to tell us at first, since you two haven’t been together very long.”

“Well, yes—”

“It’s okay, Y/N. It’s a decision for you and Sungchan to make, not his parents.”

That put you at ease again. “Thank you.”

“And it did make Jieun laugh when she heard that you were the one who did the mating bite talk with him. She likes you a lot. We both do.”

“Oh, thanks…”

“So why did you want to see me? I’m always happy to have some tea with you, but it sounded like you came with a purpose.”

“I wanted to ask about what it’s like? Taking a werewolf’s mating bite as a human?” You plunged into the conversation head-first. “The only other werewolf/human couple we know hasn’t done it, so I don’t really have a point of reference. Like, in class, I’ve learned about the sociocultural importance of it within werewolf packs for mated werewolf couples, but… Sung and I are a bit different, you know?”

Mr. Jung nodded thoughtfully. “I can tell you what my personal experience is, sure. It may be different for you since Sungchan is half-werewolf.”

“Right, of course.” You sat forward, interested. Blowing over your tea, you took your first sip, the lightness of the jasmine dancing across your tongue.

“The biting itself hurts at first. If we were werewolves, my understanding is that it’s nearly painless since their bodies are prepared for it. Humans, not so much.” He rubbed at his mark absentmindedly. “So it will hurt, which I’m sure my son will feel awful about. The shoulder will be a little sore for maybe half an hour or so after, but he won’t even draw blood. And it heals very fast, too. Then you’ll be left with the mark. Werewolves who receive bites have something happen biologically in them with pheromones or something. Again, we don’t have that going on. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t be meaningful for you at all. That meaning will just manifest differently, I’m sure.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jung. That was really informative.” You took another drink of your tea.

“Of course. And you know that it’s not a one and done, right?” He warned.

You let out a half-chuckle. “I do know that, yes.”

“Again, I don’t know how much it’ll vary since Sungchan is half-human, but the bite will need to be refreshed more often than if you were both werewolves. My guess would be even more frequently than if he were a full werewolf, but that’s just purely speculation.”

“That would make sense. Thanks for the heads up.” You said, watching the metal of his wedding band glint as he lifted his mug to his mouth. “Can I ask… when did you take your wife’s bite?”

Mr. Jung sighed, a bittersweet sort of smile coming to his face. “It was before we were married. We’d been dating for some time at that point, a couple years. When we first got together, there were some… vocally unhappy members of her pack, but they did quiet down after a while. However, I think they hadn’t expected us to last so long, or that Jieun was just going through a phase or something. After a while they started pressuring Jieun to break up with me and date within her pack— or at least another werewolf. We’d discussed the bite once or twice before, and she thought that if I took it on, it would make everyone leave us alone; that we’d look like any other mated pair of werewolves. It ended up doing the opposite. It was way too far in the eyes of Jieun’s pack. I already knew at that point that I was going to spend the rest of my life with her, so from there we eloped, settled down here, eventually had Sungchan a few years later.”

“And you all… have you spoken to her pack again since?”

“No. Unfortunately Sungchan has never been able to meet his family on that side. I suggested it to Jieun when she was pregnant, but she looked me in the eye and asked me if her pack reacted that way just to us being together, then could I imagine what sort of awful things they might think of our child? And would I want to put our baby through that just for some romanticized idea of family? I never brought it up again.”

“What about your family?”

There was no more bitterness in his smile anymore, just pure love and fondness. “They’ve been incredible. Never looked at Jieun or Sungchan as anything other than family. I know Sungchan would probably rather have the pack but—”

“What do you mean?” You couldn’t help but blurt out, furrowing your brow in confusion.

“I know he doesn’t tell people he’s half-human. And really, it’s alright. I get it, being a human isn’t anything to brag about.” Mr. Jung sounded like he really had come to terms with that, that his son would rather not tell people about his dad, about where he came from. Which wasn’t even true.

“That’s not why he tells people he’s only a werewolf. He’s not ashamed of you, or of what he is, on either side. He loves you, a lot. He does that because if he tells people that he’s half-human half-werewolf up front, they take it as a free pass to ask him weird questions.”

The man’s face relaxed, and he nodded his head in acknowledgement. “I never realized that. Thank you, Y/N.”

“And I mean, you didn’t need me to tell you that. Just look around you. It’s not like he’s exactly got wallpaper of spreadsheets and supply/demand graphs in here, right?”

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth at that. “You’re right. It’s… comforting, though, to have outside confirmation.”

“I know, I get it.”

Mr. Jung gazed past you, out the window behind your head wistfully, taking another sip of his tea. “Growing up how he did… we—Jieun and I—were worried about him for a while, you know.”

“Worried how?”

“Well, that he’d spend so much time trying to protect himself from what our life was like, that he wouldn’t actually be looking for what he wanted.” Mr. Jung’s eyes focused back on yours then, and he smiled at you. “But as soon as he brought you home, we knew we could rest easy.”

“Because I’m human?”

“No, no,” he shook his head, lifting his mug to take another relaxed sip of his tea. “We would’ve loved you if you were human, werewolf, fairy, dragon, anything.”

“I’m sorry but… I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“When he was in high school… he and his mom used to get into fights. Teenager hormones, half-werewolf teenager hormones… it was a lot. I know the fact that he was the only half-werewolf at his school, and the only werewolf not in a pack, too, didn’t help either. A lot of it was Sungchan not understanding his mother’s choices, either about leaving her pack, or dating a human in the first place, or not going back to the pack, or whatever else he decided she’d done wrong that day. He’d pretty much always declare that he’d make the ‘better choice.’” Mr. Jung put air-quotes around the last two words. “You know, have a werewolf partner so that his family wouldn’t get harassed, join his future partner’s pack, things like that. Sungchan mellowed out a bit more after he started college, and they started properly getting along again once he moved out last year.”

That mostly lined up with what Jeno had told you about his conversation with Sungchan at the park, his previous policy to only date other werewolves. You frowned thoughtfully, taking a long, slow drink of tea.

“Seeing how Sungchan is with you… he’s not hiding from anything,” he finished fondly.

“I’m sorry I was so dismissive before, Mr. Jung,” you finally said, your voice quiet and contemplative. “When you were talking about Sungchan not telling people he’s half-human. I jumped in completely forgetting that you’ve known him for his whole life… and there could’ve been a lot more reasons why you would’ve thought he was ashamed to be human.”

“Hey, Y/N.” Mr. Jung put his tea down on the desk, perching on the front of his seat to gently place a hand on your forearm. “It’s okay, really. For one, I know you meant well. And two, we know Sungchan very differently. Obviously, yes, I’ve known him his whole life, but you were lucky enough to meet him now, when he has some stuff already kind of figured out. And I’m very glad you did. Because trust me, you should not have met Sungchan in high school. I love my son, I’ve always loved him, but I definitely do not think that if you two had met in high school, you and I would be sharing a cup of tea right now.”

You couldn’t help but giggle at that, thinking not only of the high school version of Sungchan that had just been recollected to you by Mr. Jung, but also of yourself in high school, who honestly wasn’t any more put together. “Yeah… I don’t talk to any of my high school boyfriends anymore. Saw one of their moms at the grocery store last week actually, and she still recognized me, gave me a nasty look, and blocked the aisle with her shopping cart so I couldn’t get by her. I dated her son almost five years ago now, I think?”

The other human laughed, giving your arm a couple pats before taking his hand away and reclining back in his desk chair again. “Not to mention, if we both had known him his entire life, then I wouldn’t get to tell you any of the fun stories about him as a kid. Has he told you he was a mathlete?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Team captain junior and senior year. They were semi-finalists both years he was captain and even won the State series his senior year.”

“Did he have like a little dweebus uniform or something?”

“Polo shirt, khaki cargo shorts, the whole nine.”

“Please tell me you have pictures.”

“Oh yeah, him and Shotaro.”

“Taro too?!”

[you: attached image]

[you: attached image]

[taro: HOW DID YOU GET THOSE?????????]

[taro: WHAT THE HELL I MADE SUNGCHAN PROMISE ME THOSE WOULD NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY AGAIN]

[you: did you make Mr. Jung promise you though?]

[taro: does sungchan know that you’re getting blackmail material from your new bestie, HIS DAD??]

[you: what do you mean blackmail material?? personally, i think you look SO cute in those pictures in your little mathletes uniform]

[you: i didn’t even know sirens could need glasses and braces]

[you: wait does this mean you wear contacts??? i feel like it’s illegal to know this]

[taro: it is, now i have to kill you]

[you: ooooohh, wait till i tell sung]

[taro: not if i drown you first]

[you: you can’t kill me, i know where Mr. Jung keeps the mathletes photos]

[taro: damn it]

[you: and the ones from your first school dance]

[taro: DOES THIS MAN JUST HAVE A SHOEBOX LABELED “OSAKI SHOTARO BLACKMAIL MATERIAL” OR SOMETHING WHAT THE FUCK]

[you: no it’s labeled “jung sungchan blackmail material” actually but you just happen to be in a lot of the pictures too]

[taro: wait for real?]

[you: no, dumbass, he’s sungchan’s dad, of course he’s going to have a lot of old photos of his son and by extension, his son’s friends]

[taro: don’t get a guy’s hopes up like that, damn]

[taro: alright come on, let me see the bad pics you got of sungchan now]

[you: noooo, they’re not bad, they’re actually really cute 🥹🥹]

[you: attached images(+5)]

[you: like just LOOK at my little guy 🥹 he was so little and cute]

[taro: the FUCK are you talking about]

[taro: he’s clearly like 20cm taller than me and everyone else INCLUDING THE TEACHER SPONSOR]

[you: yeah, and he’s JUST a little guy, so little and cute]

[you: i wouldn’t expect you to get it, taro…………sigh]

[taro: attached image]

[taro: THIS IS YOUR MANS????]

[you: WELL WHEN YOU ZOOM IN ON ANYBODY’S FACE LIKE THAT OF COURSE IT’LL LOOK A BIT OFF]

[taro: the favoritism is so real right now]

[you: i’m so tired of your dramatic ass like what fucking “favoritism” 😭😭 of course i like sung better he’s my boyfriend]

[taro: and??]

[you: you’re not??? the fuck you mean “and??”]

[taro: and i think a good friend should be fair and impartial]

[you: i came here to name and shame you to your face, not to be fair and impartial i don’t know how you could’ve been under any other impression]

[taro: i’m so telling sungchan about this]

[you: don’t forget to leave in the part where i called him cute and you intentionally manipulated a picture of him to make him look worse]

[taro: i regret ever setting you two up]

[you: actually jeno and them did it first]

[taro: and i should’ve left you two crashed and burned and SINGLE where i found you]

[you: love you taro 🫶]

[taro: nice try demon that lives in my apartment and doesn’t pay rent 🫶🫶🫶]

[you: SUNGCHAN DOESN’T LET ME WHEN I TRY TO CHIP IN FOR HOW MUCH I’M OVER THERE I SWEAR]

[taro: i figured, which is why i don’t let him pay more than his half either]

[you: then why are you being mean to me about it 🥺]

[taro: do you feel bad enough that you’ll delete those mathlete photos off your phone now?]

[you: nice try demon that i’m never paying rent to 🫶🫶🫶]

Pushing open the door to the next shop on this street, you were pleasantly surprised by the calm, quaint atmosphere that you were greeted by. The bright red and gold pillars outside of the toy and watch shop had suggested otherwise, but inside of it were a few display cases filled with watches and other pieces of jewelry, while the other half of the shop had shelves upon shelves of toys. Every item in the store seemed handmade, and even to your untrained eye, you could tell that several had magical properties. A girl about your age was behind one of the watch and jewelry counters towards the front of the store, which also had the register on it. She was fiddling with an open watch, and you watched as she readjusted the light of the lamp above her with just a flick of her wrist—not touching a single button or switch on the device. All the jewelry and other accessories she was wearing already made you think she might’ve been a witch, but that just locked it in for you.

Some music played throughout the store, though you couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from, as there were no visible speakers on the ceiling or elsewhere. Briefly dragging your eyes over the display cases as you strolled up towards the employee, you spotted quite a few watches, of course, as well as necklaces, rings, earrings, and small trinkets. But nothing that quite stuck out to you as what you were looking for.

The witch perked up as you came to a stop in front of her, setting her tiny tools down on the small rag alongside the watch pieces. “Hi! Welcome in. Is there something I can help you with?”

“This is a magical kind of shop, right?” You asked curiously. Apothecaries usually stuck out as such, but having a witch and a couple things that glowed didn’t guarantee anything.

“Yep! This place is ran by my coven!” She told you proudly. “We make everything in here by hand in the back, fine tune the mechanics and the magic ourselves. Are you looking for any particular kind of magic thing?”

“Yes, well, sort of…” You trailed off sheepishly. “I’m kind of gift shopping right now.”

“What’s the occasion?”

After a split-second internal debate, you figured this witch had probably dealt with weirder, and you would definitely need her insight and experience when it came to the magical properties of all of the options in front of you.

“My boyfriend is giving me his mating bite in a few days, but I don’t want to show up empty-handed, you know?” You scratched at the back of your neck. “Like, it’s not an engagement-level thing for us, but it’s still big, and I want to be able to give him something too…”

She didn’t seem thrown off in the slightest, instead seeming to ponder this for a moment, tapping her chin, before her features lit up, and she slid over to the other end of the display case. You followed her down.

“Now, I’m guessing you already know about moonstone—” She explained, pulling out a small display of rings. “Helps their shifts.”

You nodded as you looked over the many rings inlaid with opalescent stones like the one on Jeno’s necklace. “Yeah. And, I mean, his aren’t that bad. Just sort of… disorienting and confusing. Though I hate how sickly he gets the day or so after.”

The witch gave you an intrigued look. “He’s… half-werewolf?”

Darting your eyes back up to her, you wondered which part of what you just said had given it away. The less intense shift? The ‘sickly’ bit?

“And half-human?” She took your silence as an apparent cue to finish her guess.

You slowly nodded.

Immediately, the rings were whisked away from under your nose. She was practically alight with excitement as she flitted over to a completely different display case, grabbing just one singular piece from there and bringing it back over to you. It was another ring, a thick silver band of one width, with no obvious gem settings or other such features.

“So, you wouldn’t really be worried about the shift itself, then. Or, at least not the pain part, which is really what the moonstone helps werewolves with. Easing the transition into and during the shift.” The employee rambled enthusiastically. “The symptoms that he really has a problem with are about getting back into balance after. Since he’s half-human, his body has to work a lot harder to return to homeostasis after an ordeal like a werewolf shift.”

“He’s said something about that before. Homeostasis.”

“Then what you really want is something like this—” She offered the ring out for you to take, depositing it onto your palm. You curiously looked it over closer. “Instead of moonstone, like most things designed for werewolves, this has concentrated moonflower essence in the chamber that makes up most of the band.”

You tilted the ring and could in fact see a small amount of mostly clear, but shimmery iridescent cobalt blue liquid shift around in the light. The container that held the liquid must have been incredibly thin to fit along the ring whilst adding negligible bulk.

Moonflower was of course familiar to you from Magical Botany Club. While the plant itself wasn’t magical, it had a slew of magical applications, and could be distilled down to a magical essence. Much like moonstone, which also wasn’t in and of itself magical, it had an effect on magical beings that were also tied to the moon, most notably, werewolves. Moonflower paste was a common ingredient in traditional werewolf medicine, and even in modern pharmaceuticals, many medications with different formulations for werewolves—or formulated to treat diseases that only werewolves got—often had ingredients derived from the moonflower. In addition to healing properties, the smell tended to have a calming effect on them as well, both in and out of their shifts (unlike moonstone, which exclusively aided their shifts).

You had a moonflower plant in your own apartment, which had been useless for any werewolf purposes as of late with Sungchan never coming over, but hopefully it wouldn’t be that way for long. It had been slightly altered so that it would be suited to growing indoors; moonflower was typically a vine, which was difficult to keep in a one-bedroom apartment with limited balcony space, so after a little bit of help from Jaemin, your moonflower grew as a cute little potted bush instead.

But there was still one more feature on the ring that hadn’t been explained to you. A single, silver, almost-circle on one side of the outside of the ring, entirely flush with the top of the container that held the moonflower essence. The outline of the rest of the circle was there, but it wasn’t quite filled in all the way, a small crescent of darkness keeping the silver from being whole.

“And this?” You gestured to the symbol.

“Tracks the lunar cycle. Waxing gibbous, we’re just a couple days away from the full moon. He probably instinctually knows what phase of the moon it is, but it doesn’t hurt to have an extra reminder.”

Turning the ring over in your hand again, you found yourself nodding and smiling. “Yeah. This is perfect.”

“And you said it’s happening in a few days? So after the full moon, right?”

“Oh, uhm, yes.”

“We could totally make another by then, if you wanted a matching set,” she offered.

“Really? So quick?”

“A lot of the initial process is the R&D,” the witch explained with a laugh. “But we already know how to make this one, it’ll be easy. Promise.”

You thought this over for a moment. After telling so many people that it wasn’t marriage or engagement, getting matching rings… But the whole point of exchanging mating bites in the first place was to match. Well, almost, since no two werewolves would have the same bite. To coordinate. To give each other your own version of the same thing. Your own version of the same thing.

“Do you think you could make it without the chamber with the moonflower essence, actually?” You asked. “Like, still with the lunar tracker. Just the main band and the little part that tracks the lunar cycle.”

She lit up. “Absolutely! Should be even quicker, actually. Probably have that done by the end of business tomorrow, morning after tomorrow at the latest.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah! Say the word and I’ll start as soon as you leave.”

“Yes, please!”

Sungchan hadn’t let go of you once since you arrived at his apartment the evening that you were to be receiving his bite. Either with an arm around your waist, pressed up against your back, or holding your hand. Shotaro had already vacated the premises by the time you’d gotten there, a half-excuse of him staying at Jisung and Chenle’s place tonight being given by the werewolf when you asked.

The two of you ate dinner first. He wanted to feed you, making sure you had eaten and were hydrated before. You were finally taking your class on werewolves this looming fall semester, and had already bought and read ahead in the textbook for it. Specifically, you’d lost count of the amount of times that you’d read and re-read the sections on mating bites, mating bite rituals, and anything else that you could imagine would be relevant to your current predicament.

For mated werewolf couples in packs who were going through the actual ritual, the first step was to usually share a meal consisting of raw meat—fresh kill. Neither you nor Sungchan could or would actually eat that, so you just had a hearty serving of your favorite takeout orders.

Sungchan didn’t even let you sit in your own chair, having insistently pulled you into his lap right at their kitchen table, lifting bite after bite of food to your mouth, always sure to follow it up with your slowly draining glass of water. You were mindful of him, too, making sure he didn’t ignore his half-werewolf appetite in his concern over you.

“‘M full, Sung…” You murmured, gently covering his hand with yours to maneuver the food towards his mouth instead.

He frowned thoughtfully, not parting his lips even as you bumped the spoon against them, looking like a very serious toddler who wasn’t enjoying the game of airplane being played at the moment. “You sure?”

“Yeah, promise.” You nodded with a smile. “It was delicious, and I’m all done. You took good care of me, Sung. Can you let me finish taking care of you, now?”

Your boyfriend’s features softened at that, and he parted his mouth, letting you feed him the spoonful. He happily chewed and swallowed, looking especially blissed out as you gently scratched his scalp with your free hand. In between continuing to feed Sungchan, you finished off your water, and made sure he drank his as well.

Finally, he too declared that he was done eating. Curled up in your boyfriend’s embrace, with a full belly and a full heart, you could’ve almost thought that this was any normal night; nearly forgotten what was going to come next. Nearly.

Sungchan took you to his room next, which wasn’t really necessary, since you had the whole apartment to yourselves. He held you to him with an arm around your waist as he shut the door behind you two. You raised an eyebrow when you heard the door lock.

He buried his face in your neck, wrapping both arms around you now as he half-growled, “Smells like Shotaro out there…”

“Locking the door to keep the smells out…” You hummed in amusement, leaning your head on his shoulder and resting your weight back against him. You decided not to outright point out the flaw in logic there, nor the fact that the two of you could’ve also done this at your place, where there was no smells of Shotaro or anybody else, just you. But of course, you figured it needed to be here because it smelled like Sungchan. It had been so long since Sungchan had been to your home that you were doubtful even a full werewolf would be able to catch a trace of him.

He lifted his head and breathed in like he was about to say something, but you just pulled his arms tighter around you and reassured him, “It’s perfect, Sung. Our own little space. Just you and me.”

Dropping his cheek back down to your shoulder, Sungchan let out a long but shaky breath. Putting your hands over his, your slotted your fingers with your boyfriend’s.

“Sung? Baby? Everything okay?” You asked.

“I just can’t believe we’re doing this…”

“Hey, if you’re not ready for this, we can stop. If you don’t want to do it, that’s okay.”

“No, I want to,” he said, a hard edge to his voice. He coughed, his voice softening again but sounding a little strained as he continued, “Really. I mean… I can’t believe I’m doing this with you. I seriously thought I’d royally fucked things up forever. Multiple times.”

“Well, you didn’t,” you told him strongly. “Now, can I go first?”

“You… go first?” He repeated, confusion coloring his voice so clearly. Apparently, he’d forgotten that you’d be doing more than just getting bitten tonight.

“Aw, I would love to, thanks, Sung,” you tittered jokingly, patting his cheek. “Close your eyes, please?”

He chuckled, and a beat later, announced, “Okay, they’re closed.”

You craned your neck just the slightest to be able to peer at him out of the corner of your vision, seeing that he was in fact squeezing his eyes shut tightly. Reaching into your pocket, you retrieved the small pouch that you’d picked up from the coven’s shop this morning. You shook out the two rings inside into your palm, and put yours on your left middle finger first, a simple silver band with the lunar indicator welded into it. It looked almost like a full moon, but you could see just the faintest strip of black showing that it was actually beginning to wane. Next, you gently put the other on Sungchan’s right ring finger, his with a faint shimmer of the moonflower essence.

Holding the side of his head to press a soft kiss to his cheek, you declared, “Done. You can open your eyes.”

He did so, immediately holding up his hand to inspect what you’d done to it. As he looked over the new jewelry, you explained, “It has moonflower essence, all around the band. And the moon design on it will actually change with the phases of the real moon.”

“Thank you, Y/N. It’s beautiful,” he picked up your left hand, bringing it up towards his face that was still hooked over your shoulder—presumably to kiss the back of it—but stopped short as he seemed to have noticed your new accessory as well. His fingers turned your silver band until he could get a good look at the lunar tracker that matched his.

“I got one too,” you added, skin turning warmer and starting to prickle the longer he went without saying anything. “It’s a lot prettier than those phone apps that track the lunar cycle, right?”

Then Sungchan was turning you around by the hips. He grabbed your face with two hands to kiss you, and you got on your tiptoes to wrap your arms around his neck, eagerly kissing him back. You could feel the cool band of his new ring pressing against your cheek, warming up with every passing second from yours and Sungchan’s bodies.

Breaking the kiss, he reached behind his neck for your left hand with his right, bringing them both down to rest over his chest. He pressed your palm against him firmly, and you could feel his heart beating under your touch.

“I love you so much, Y/N,” he said quietly, earnestly, his voice cracking over your name. “So much… that it doesn’t feel real sometimes.”

“What do you mean, Sung?”

“Like, one person shouldn’t be able to have this much love in their body. Or at least, I shouldn’t.”

“What?” You let out a breathy chuckle. “That’s what so beautiful about love, there can only be more of it, it’s infinite. Of course you’re capable of so much love. How could you think anything else?”

“I used to never understand how my mom could choose to fall in love with a human. To doom her family—me—to our life. No safety or identity that comes with a pack. Even after I realized I had fallen for you, I-I was afraid I was so… messed up from thinking like that my whole life that I wasn’t going to be able to love you like you deserved. Like something might’ve been broken in me.”

“Sung…” You touched under his eye with your free hand, where a tear had fallen. “You’re not broken. You’ve never done anything but love me with your whole heart, I know that. You’ve been so good to me, always.”

“I know,” he nodded zealously, accompanied by a sniffle. “I know now, that I’m not broken. That I can have all this overflowing love in me, and it’s so awesome, but also kind of terrifying?”

You chuckled lightly at that. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I love you so much I get a little scared too, because I’ve never loved someone like I love you. And we haven’t even been properly dating for that long, so if I already love you this much, then how much more am I going to love you in six months? A year? Two? Five? Ten?”

He snapped his head up from where he’d been gazing down at your hands, eyes locking on yours. You smiled back at him weakly. The urge to stuff your words back in your mouth was there, but you knew you couldn’t. It was the truth, that you could picture yourself with Sungchan that far ahead in your life. For the rest of it, if you were going to be that honest, but you bit your tongue before you got there.

The two of you had unintentionally moved onto the next part of the werewolf mating ritual: moonlit confessionals. The light of the nearly full moon shone down on the two of you in front of one of his bedroom windows. Your textbook hadn’t been terribly explicit on the exact content of the words exchanged at this point, just that it was an opportunity for the couple to truly bare their souls to each other, make sure there was nothing hidden that would make the other not want to go through with the rest of the ritual.

“After my last relationship… ended like it did, I thought I might be a little broken, too,” you pushed on with your confession. “I was afraid that in my next relationship, I’d just see cheating everywhere. I was honestly a little relieved when our first date blew up, because I thought that if I dated someone again, I’d treat them like a criminal. But never once has it ever crossed my mind with you, never once have I ever doubted you, have I ever felt anything less than absolutely loved and adored.”

“I do, absolutely love and adore you,” he replied. “And I’m so glad you brought up the future, because I think about it, too. Like, all the time. When I imagine my life after college, or what my life is going to be like in five or ten years… I don’t know much, but I always imagine that you’re there. Like, I don’t know what I want to be, other than happy, with you.”

You couldn’t take it anymore, grabbing him by the neck to yank his mouth down to yours. Pulling him with you towards the bed, you stopped when you felt your legs back up against it.

“Do it, Sung. Bite me,” you murmured against his lips.

He let out a low, throaty groan at your words, tipping his head back as he took a couple deep breaths. You pressed a few more open-mouth kisses to his Adam’s apple and collarbones. Sungchan made another sound that was between a sigh and a grunt.

“We should be sitting down for this,” he stated, though he made no move to follow through on his words.

You removed your lips from his skin to happily plop down into the center of his mattress. The front of you was a bit cold since you were no longer pressed up against him, though you had a feeling that wasn’t going to be for very long.

Sungchan sat down facing you, scooping you up into his arms. You easily settled into his lap, your legs finding familiar places on either side of his hips. Fondly brushing some hair off his forehead, you would’ve been rather content to just stare down at your Sung bathed in moonlight for the next several minutes, so handsome and all yours. But you had something you needed to do tonight.

Grabbing the hem of the sweatshirt you were wearing—Sungchan’s, of course—you shucked it over your head and off onto the floor. That left you just in a tank top with nearly negligible straps. You could see your boyfriend’s eyes zero in on the bare expanse of skin from your shoulder to your neck that you’d just exposed, where his bite was supposed to go.

“I had my turn,” you said, slipping the thin strap off of the shoulder he was staring at, and tilting your head to open up as much space as possible, make it as clear of an invitation as possible. “Now it’s yours. Go on, baby. I trust you.”

Sungchan didn’t say anything more, but he did grab both of your hands by the wrist—his grip surprisingly gentle—to wrap your arms around his waist. You splayed your hands out over his lower back under his shirt, indulging yourself in his warmth, and smoothing a thumb over his skin. He then wrapped his around you to hold you even closer, if that was possible, and you watched him open his mouth, his white teeth catching the pale moonlight, glinting, and looking much sharper than normal— reminding you of how they looked during his shifts.

Then those teeth were biting you, sinking into your muscle.

Renjun had described what being bitten by a vampire was like to you, once. He had a bucket list for that sort of thing—magical encounters. He said it was a small pinch, barely more than the pressure of a needle, then it was all pleasure from thereafter. Vampire venom, of course, was meant to do that so that those they were biting felt so good so they wouldn’t resist while the vampire drank as much as they pleased from them.

Werewolves were predators in an entirely different sense, with the teeth to match. Theirs were meant to grab prey, hold them in their jaws no matter how much they struggled, and rip flesh from bone. As much damage as possible in one go, so that if said prey happened to escape, they wouldn’t be able to get very far with their injuries.

It was visceral pain, the moment Sungchan bit you. You couldn’t hear the noise that you made—only aware that you made one as you felt the gurgle of something in the back of your throat—through the white noise that exploded behind your eyes the instant his teeth hit bone. You were glad he’d directed you to put your arms around him just moments earlier, as your nails were now firmly embedded in the skin of his lower back—you were sure those would’ve been drawing your own blood in your palms if they hadn’t been there.

A memory suddenly flashed in your mind. You were seven, in your backyard with your dad, watching two squirrels chase each other across the grass. Then your neighbor’s dog came out of nowhere—maybe slipped his collar—and got one in his mouth. Your dad couldn’t get his hand over your eyes quick enough. You didn’t want to pet Mr. Lee’s dog when you saw him a couple days later, despite how well he sat, the adorable way his tongue lolled out from between his razor-sharp canines, and how fast his tail wagged.

The whole thing probably lasted just a couple seconds, but to you it felt like minutes, as every one of your heartbeats pounded through you, ricocheted around in your skull and grey matter. Could Sungchan feel that? Feel your pulse in his mouth? Was he scraping at it with his canines? Just one wrong move away from tearing open something vital?

You trusted him, of course, or you wouldn’t have asked him to do this. Not let him; but suggested, encouraged, requested, told him to. Your fingernails dug into his back even harder at the idea, as much to anchor yourself and provide an outlet as to hold him to you as well. Surely you had to be breaking skin at this point.

You had the urge to bite down on something too. It was a need that came from deep in your jaw. Like when people were given something to bite on for painful procedures in old medical dramas. Or maybe reciprocity.

This go around, you kept your teeth to yourself, though, sinking them into your bottom lip. That pain didn’t even register past the supernova radiating out from your shoulder.

Sungchan finally pulled his teeth out from your flesh, and the rest of your senses snapped back into focus. Your eyes fluttered open—when did you close them?—back to Sungchan’s bedroom, your fingers slowly unfurled from where they’d dug into his back, and you could hear him talking to you as he gently inspected the bite wound.

You brought your hands back around in front of you. Your eyes widened minutely as you realized that there was bright red under a couple of your fingernails. And it wasn’t yours. The beds of your nails were perfectly intact, meaning that you really had broken his skin.

“Oh God, Y/N, the blood. I’m so sorry.” Sungchan muttered under his breath, reaching for something on his nightstand.

For half a second, you thought he meant his, and you were about to apologize as you were still staring down at your hands mostly in awe. But then you actually saw his face for the first time as he turned back around, clutching a damp hand towel.

There was a red tint to his lips, and you realized that wasyour blood. Electricity jolted up your spine before the thought had even fully formed.

…he won’t even draw blood. So much for that, Mr. Jung.

His tongue darted out to instinctively investigate the wetness on his mouth, and a sudden thrill shuddered through you as you watched. You decided not to ask how it tasted to him, despite the question certainly popping into your mind.

You pressed a kiss to his cheekbone instead, so far back it was nearly in his hairline. “I’m okay, Sung. I’m okay.”

Without a word, he started gently cleaning up the bite wound, and you had half a mind to ask for another towel for his back, though you knew that would be futile until he got you situated. So, you sat patiently, keeping your head craned to the side to give him plenty of room, and watched his intent face as he worked.

“Sung?”

He sighed, a sound that let you know he was already beginning his mental descent through the seven circles of werewolf hell. “I know, I know, I’m sorry, I’m so—”

“Can I bite you next time?” You asked simply.

The towel stilled over your bite.

“You… next time… bite… me?” His eyes glassed over as his mouth stumbled to even form around the individual words.

“I know I won’t leave a mark like you but… so I can have something to do?” You used the hand of your unbitten shoulder to trace a line from his ear down his jugular, under his collar, to his shoulder, then back to his collarbone. You took your hand back as you went to joke, “Unless you’re expecting extravagant and meaningful gifts every time?”

“No, no. I mean yes! I mean—” Sungchan took a second to shake his head and blink, clearing his mind. “I don’t expect gifts every time. And yes, you can bite me next time. I didn’t think you would be up for a next time after I… well, after all this.”

He gestured vaguely to the wound that he’d gone back to tending to. A quick glance at it out of the corner of your eye showed you that it had already stopped bleeding and was starting to mend itself. At least Mr. Jung was right about that part.

Even through the acute worry over the unexpected severity of the bite, you could tell that Sungchan was already more clear-headed and overall relaxed, the constant nervous tension in his body gone, replaced just by a determined set of his shoulders, and momentary furrow of his brow as he cleaned up the bite. Brushing his hair off his forehead, you trailed your hand down to cup his cheek fondly. “Sungchan, this is the most yourself I’ve seen you in a long time. Yes, I’m going to keep your bite.”

Just the bright, tender smile on Sungchan’s face—the recognition of being loved and reflecting it back to you—would’ve been more than enough for you to do this again, whether or not it helped the scent anxiety. You could always work on another solution for that. But this you wouldn’t take away for the world.

He set the towel aside again, and you grabbed his hands now that they were free, messing with the brand-new ring adorning one of his fingers.

“Besides, even if I can’t leave a mark like yours next time, I can still mark you up,” you mused quietly, almost as if it were to yourself, except for the fact that you had a werewolf practically chest-to-chest with you. And you knew very well that you did. “They just won’t last as long.”

“Why wait until next time?” He suggested, and you heard the long inhale he took after. You wondered if you smelled any different to him already, or if he just needed to breathe.

You looked up from your hands to him with a smirk. “I like the way you think.”

Sungchan captured your lips in a kiss that tasted of hunger, and love, and metal— your blood was still around his mouth. And you smiled into it before doing as promised and dropping your mouth to the column of his throat, well above his collar, and letting your teeth graze his skin. You could feel his gasp rush in under your lips as his hands pulled your hips firmly down against his.

You decided that Jeno could be a ‘puppy’ all he wanted. You had a wolf, and you were more than happy with that.

“I think I made it out more marked up than you, you know,” Sungchan called out to you from the bathroom the next morning.

“Really?” You replied just as loudly, amusement in your tone as you stretched leisurely in his sheets.

“Shotaro’s going to be concerned for my wellbeing at this rate.”

Sitting up and scooting towards the corner of his bed closest to the mirror, you checked out your own reflection as you imagined he was currently doing, your fingers trailing over the dark bite mark now set into your skin. There was no scab or blood, just the faintest ring of raised skin and distinct outline of teeth. Rolling out your shoulder, you winced as a dull pain radiated out from the bite. Dropping the arm back down, you continued staring at the mark, a certain giddiness fluttering around in your stomach. You’d have this for… who knows how long. The rest of your life, maybe.

Clearing your throat and your mind, you responded to Sungchan with a disbelieving snort, “No he’s not.”

“No, he’s not,” he agreed with a sigh as he walked back into his bedroom just in a pair of sweatpants. Which let you get a great view of the countless blue and purple hickies, love bites, long red scratches, and faded remains of crescent-shaped nail marks that littered his neck, chest, shoulders, and back. You bit down on your bottom lip, a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment welling up in your chest. Sungchan fixed you with a shit-eating grin, putting his hands on his hips. “But my parents will be when we go over for dinner next week.”

“We’re going over for dinner next week?!” You yelped, covering your mouth in horror, panic, and mortification. A lot of the worst of those bruises were well above the collar of all of his shirts. “Why did you let me—”

“I’m kidding,” he cut you off with a chuckle, lumbering over towards the bed to flop down beside you on the mattress.

You smacked his arm as you hissed, “I’m going to kill you, Jung Sungchan! Don’t do that to me!”

“Ouch, full name.” He pouted.

“God, I was about to preemptively die of embarrassment!”

“So it’ll be fine for them to see that,” he pointed to your shoulder, “but not these?” He gestured from his own neck down.

“Different situational and cultural contexts!”

He nodded slowly, “Oh, right, of course...”

“You’re half-human, Sungchan, don’t pull that ‘I’m-just-a-simple-werewolf’ act on me!”

“I upset you. I’m sorry,” he apologized, grabbing your hand and kissing the back of it.

“You better be, Sungchan.”

“I am, baby, I am.” He gave your hand a half dozen more fervent, rapid-fire smooches. “Now are you done calling me that?”

“What? Your name?” You scoffed.

“You know what I mean, baby...”

“So we don’t have dinner with your parents next week?”

“Nope. Two weeks.”

You shook your head and sighed. “And so you live to see another day, Sung.”

“I’m half-werewolf, I would’ve been all healed up by next week, you know,” he pointed out, sitting up behind you and pressing a couple lingering kisses to your shoulder with your new mating bite.

“I know, I know.”

He continued trailing sweet kisses up your neck and jaw. “Which means I’ll also be all healed in two weeks if you were to give me some more…”

“I don’t know, you just played a very mean trick on me, Sung,” you teased, crossing your arms over your chest as if you were genuinely deliberating not giving in and absolutely devouring this man right now.

“I know,” he murmured between kisses, gently holding your chin with one hand to turn your head back towards him. “I’m the worst.”

“You are,” you breathed out against his lips.

“So now that we agree on that…”

“I feel like I’m going to throw up.” You jabbed the crosswalk button repeatedly.

“It’s going to be fine, Y/N,” Sungchan reassured you, lacing his fingers with yours. “I’ve already met your parents before and it was fine.”

“Yeah, once, for like two minutes, as my friend.” You pointed out, banging the button with the side of your fist when it still hadn’t changed.

You were of course talking about a random Sunday afternoon way back in the spring semester, before you and Sungchan had started dating. He had come over that day to help you put together your new coffee table that you’d finally gotten around to buying. Except, upon starting the assembling, the two of you had realized that neither of you had one of the tools required for it. Thankfully, your dad did, and offered to bring it by since he and your mom were about to head out to run errands anyway. Cue some very brief, very awkward introductions between your parents and Sungchan when they’d brought the promised tool. You weren’t counting, but you would’ve bet money that you had called him your friend at least ten times during that less-than-five-minute conversation, with so much stress and nervous emphasis on the word that you wouldn’t have been surprised if your parents had left your apartment that day already thinking that the two of you were dating.

But now you were actually supposed to be introducing him to them as your boyfriend, and you felt like you were going to throw up and pass out and die before you even got there.

Sungchan wordlessly let go of your hand to smoothly step between you and the crosswalk button, picking up your other hand to hold.

“Come on, you said it yourself that they were impressed with me after that two-minute conversation,” he reminded you. “Imagine how great of an impression I’ll leave after two hours.”

“All I said was that my dad told me later that he was surprised that you were a werewolf because you were so calm,” you corrected him. “He’s used to all my friends from high school who had the bouncing-off-the-fucking-walls energy like Jeno.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Which, by the way, I’ve already told them that you’re not in a pack or anything like that, but pretty much all they know about werewolves is from my classmates and friends from when I was in high school. So… apologies in advance for any assumptions or comparisons they make.”

“Right, the two packs you went to school with.”

“Yeah, them. I told them you’re not in a pack, and don’t have any of that going on. It actually made my mom relax a lot more. I think all that stuff kind of scares her.”

“What? Afraid that I’d whisk you away with my big werewolf muscles to my werewolf pack and she’d never hear from her poor little human daughter ever again?”

You burst out into an incredulous laugh. “You have got to stop talking about yourself like that or I’m seriously going to hurt your feelings one of these days, baby.”

“By saying what? It’s not like I’m lying?”

“Your ego is as stupid big as your stupid big werewolf muscles.”

“Ha!” He cheered out victoriously. “So you admit it.”

“Wasn’t falling in love supposed to rot your brain? Make you more docile or whatever? I think it’s just made you even worse…” You tutted, shaking your head.

“How could I not be on an ego trip? I mean, have you seen my girlfriend?” He retorted. “She’s crazy beautiful, and smart, and funny, and so sweet. I’d be jealous of me if I wasn’t me.”

You rolled your eyes, but squeezed his hand tighter. “Alright, you sap. Maybe the ego trip is warranted. But seriously, don’t talk about yourself like that in front of my parents or I’ll die of secondhand embarrassment. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

So far lunch was going okay. Your mom had invited the two of you over for a late Sunday lunch, which always meant sandwiches and lemonade in your house. And it was going okay, aside from the initial reaction you’d gotten when they’d opened the front door. You could still hear your mother’s shocked gasp and ‘Oh my God…’ muttered under her breath as her eyes were glued onto your neck. More specifically, you knew she was staring at your new mating bite. Or, the half of it that she could see— you weren’t exactly hiding it, so you’d picked your t-shirt today only for comfort in the lingering end-of-August-cusp-of-September heat. It was just over three weeks since Sungchan had given you his bite, a couple days shy of the upcoming full moon, and yeah maybe you should visit your parents more often. But in your defense, you’d been a bit busy between getting the bite in the first place, and the new semester starting.

Your father didn’t have much better of a reaction than your mother, eyes going wide behind his thick, frameless lenses before his jaw clenched. There was still a certain tension in his muscles that jumped every time he saw Sungchan touch you, whether it was a brush of arms, holding your hand, or an innocent squeeze of your knee as he stood up to head to the bathroom that he’d just been gestured towards.

Picking your glass of lemonade back up after Sungchan had left the room, you took only a sip before your mom was reaching across the table to gently take your hand in hers.

“Hey, sweetie…” She said softly but with a certain worried tenseness in her tone that made your stomach drop.

You tried to mimic the front she was putting up, smiling back at her brightly and innocently, “Hey, Mom?”

“Listen... We are so happy for you, and we love Sungchan, we really do.”

“Okay, then why does it feel like this is about to go somewhere that I’m not going to like?”

“Don’t you think that the two of you might just be moving a little fast?”

Entirely dropping all sunny pretenses, you narrowed your eyes at her suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“The-the bite,” she explained with a wince, pointing to her own shoulder.

“That’s sort of like marriage for them, right?” Your dad cut in gruffly.

Despite it being phrased like a question, his tone made it sound much more like an accusation, like he already knew he was right and was just letting you know that he knew the truth—or at least what he thought the truth was. It reminded you of when you’d get in trouble as a kid and he’d ask you if you knew how the vase in the living room got broken despite very much already having a good idea himself. Giving you the opportunity to fess up before he punished you even more severely for the initial bad deed and then lying about it on top of that. But you hadn’t done anything wrong this time.

“Sort of, not really, it depends. In some packs, I guess. But Sung’s not in a pack, you know that,” you reminded them firmly, straightening up in your seat.

Your mom jumped back in, “Right, but still, don’t you think he kind of rushed you into—”

“It was my idea,” you cut her off before she could even finish articulating that thought. You knew you’d get all the way pissed off if she did. It was already taking a lot to dampen your anger now and keep this at a civil conversation. It’s just because they didn’t understand. You had to keep telling yourself that, and do your best to explain, calmly, and make them understand. Not everybody had three years of Sociology and Magical Creatures Studies under their belt like you. Your mom had been a stay-at-home mom all your life, and your dad was just a few years away from retirement, having worked in a human-dominated field for his whole career. An architect.

Those same sharp eyes that would pore over building designs late at night in his home office while you sat in his lap and did your own colorful sketches in crayon—and eventually fell asleep in his arms—were now regarding you with a clear distrust. “Darling, really, it—”

“Look, when we first started dating, Sung was having a really hard time with scent anxiety,” you once again spoke over him authoritatively. “All the usual scenting stuff, it wasn’t working. He was really stressed, and anxious, and just… worried sick all the time about me like spontaneously combusting or something if we were apart for even a second. Me taking his bite was the best solution. And now, the beginning of the semester has gone off without a hitch. Classes, my Magical Botany Club, his astronomy club, his senior thesis meetings, my research mentorship project... I don’t know if we would’ve been able to do all of this apart, clear-headed like… literally a month ago. And yes, I brought it up to him. I’m fine, I promise. This is what I want, he’s what I want.”

The two of them exchanged perturbed, skeptical glances, before your mom nodded, and your father let out a resigned sigh.

“Alright, sweetheart. Like we said, we like Sungchan. We just don’t want you two doing anything that you might regret. Either of you.”

“I know, Dad. But we’ve got this. Seriously, it’s… really good with him,” you promised him, a giddy smile coming to your features with your last words.

“We’re happy to hear that, sweetie,” your mom patted your hand.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I don’t want to know anything else about how it happens, but— Does it hurt? Like, right now, does it hurt you?”

“Oh, no, Mom, it’s not painful to the touch or sore or anything,” you reassured her, carefully skirting around the how and instead focusing on the now, pressing on the bite mark to demonstrate that it wasn’t tender like a bruise.

“Good, good, I’m glad.”

The sound of the bathroom door opening echoed down the hall to you, and you turned around to smile at Sungchan over your shoulder as he started back towards you all.

“Well, I think it’s time for the tart I’ve got in the fridge, huh?” Your mom beamed at everyone, standing up from the kitchen table.

“That could’ve gone worse,” you declared as soon as your parents’ front door shut behind the two of you, leaving you and Sungchan on the sidewalk. There wasn’t much in the way of leftovers aside from the berry tart, which your mom sent you off with so that your father wouldn’t eat it all.

“You think so?” Sungchan asked warily. “Because I uh… I did hear what you all were talking about when I was in the bathroom.”

“Yeah, I thought you might’ve.” You nodded, squeezing his hand. “I’m sorry about all that, Sung. I think they get it now. And really, it was my fault for not at least giving them a heads-up about the bite, it didn’t even cross my mind. We just caught them off-guard.”

Sungchan suddenly stopped the two of you on the empty sidewalk. He cupped your cheek in his hand, running a thumb over your cheekbone, then down your jaw, the side of your neck, until he stopped right over where you knew the mating bite was. His thumb once again stroked over your skin, tracing the shape of the bite and pushing aside your collar when needed.

“Hearing you say that this is what you want, I’m what you want… made me really happy,” he declared simply, eyes still locked on the mark.

“It’s true,” you replied.

A bright, giddy smile spread across his face. “I know. And I knew it as soon as I heard you say it, too.”

You grinned back up at him. “That makes me really happy to hear, Sung. I always want you to know how much I love you.”

He leaned in nearer, and you closed your eyes anticipating a kiss, but instead he just dropped a fond peck to your nose before standing up straight. “I think it’s starting to finally uh, get through my thick skull.”

“Finally,” you echoed with a giggle. “Alright, your place?”

“I actually wanted to ask… Can we go to your place tonight?”

“Finally going to give poor Taro some peace?”

“That, yeah. But I wasn’t even thinking about him to be honest. I just… I want to.”

“Okay, Sung. Come on.” You tugged him down the street in the direction of your apartment.

Sungchan had been to your place on several occasions as your friend and your boyfriend, and yet you were drawing a blank for exactly the last time he had been there. Maybe your third date? Or, technically your fourth date, but you and Sungchan had unanimously agreed to not count that first awkward blind date that the guys set you up on as your official first date. Regardless, it’d been… a while since he’d been over. You kicked your shoes off by the door and didn’t bother to turn the lights on as you deposited the leftover tart in the fridge before beginning your nightly plant-tending. There were a few that needed to be misted still, then you could fully relax. You did the majority of your plant care-taking duties during the actual day, there was just the odd handful that needed a couple good spritzes.

Sungchan watched you patiently as you did so just in the moonlight coming in through the sheers you had over a window. Then, once the spray bottle was put back down, you led the way into your bedroom with maybe a little bit of a skip in your step. While you weren’t a werewolf, you were understanding how nice it felt to have your person in a space that you felt safe and warm and good in again. Like everything was going to be okay forever, maybe.

“You want to wear one of my hoodies?” You joked, rifling through your drawers for some pajamas for yourself.

“You have anything that’d fit?” Sungchan perked up from where he was laying on your bed to ask. He’d already located his few pieces of clothing still stored away here, meanwhile you were struggling as it turns out you very much needed to do a laundry day.

“Try that.” You tossed one at him before turning back around to the dresser. After a few moments, you hadn’t heard anything from behind you, though. “Sung? Love? Everything okay back there?” You looked over your shoulder to find a very cozy-looking werewolf in your extra, extra large hoodie—which just fit him regularly. But it was the eyes-closed, soft, happy smile on his face as he had the hood up around his head, his hair strewn about messily, and he held the ends of the sleeves up to his nose that made you stop in your tracks to just take him in.

His eyes snapped open, and he dropped his hands almost sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, all good. It fits. Thanks, baby.”

“Of course.” You nodded, feeling a fond smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

You quickly got into your own pajamas for the night and climbed into bed as well. As you reached over to turn off your lamp, Sungchan stopped your hand.

“Are you going to sleep right now?” He asked.

“Well, no,” you said, an eyebrow raised as you watched his eyes flick between your hand and your neck.

“Can we leave the lights on for just a little longer? You can turn them off as soon as you need to sleep. I just… So I can see it?” He let go of your hand and instead graced a finger over your bite mark.

You dropped your hand, nodding. “Sure, Sung.”

He smiled brightly at you. “Thank you.”

With the added light, you decided to do some reading, and Sungchan kept busy alternating between his phone, and folding and unfolding the same origami heart on your bedside table next to him. But you could feel him look over at you every so often, and you knew he was getting used to the still-new image of you with his mating bite. As you came to the close of a chapter, you tucked your bookmark—the film strip of you two from Valentine’s Day at the boba shop—back in and set the book aside.

“Sung?”

“Mm?”

Now that you’d gotten his attention, you wordlessly opened your arms, and he immediately launched himself into them. You let out a punched-out giggle as you suddenly had an arm- and lapful of werewolf. He settled in with his head in the crook of your neck and shoulder, his lips right against your bite again, his arms wrapped around your waist, and one of his legs slung over you, caging you in. You rested your cheek on the crown of his head, threading the fingers of one hand in his hair as you rubbed your other hand up and down his back. The metal of your lunar ring glinted from among his soft brown locks. Waning crescent.

“Can I turn the light off now, love? I don’t think you can see it from this angle, right?” You requested humorously.

“Hm?” Sungchan made a low, slow, questioning noise in the back of his throat, and you knew he hadn’t even processed your ask.

“Light. Off?”

“Mm, yeah, mkay.”

You could feel him nod against you.

Reaching over towards your lamp was a bit difficult, but you were finally able to stretch your fingers enough to turn it off, plunging your room into darkness. Shifting to relax a bit lower into your pillows, you returned your hand to your boyfriend’s back.

“You’re cuddly tonight,” you commented. Cuddly, not clingy like before the bite. You didn’t feel guilty for reading earlier, he’d been content to do his own thing in the meantime, and you’d been the one to initiate the cuddling now. He’d just been very enthusiastic.

“Don’t you know, Miss MCS Major?”

“How long have we known each other, and you don’t know my major?”

“‘Miss Interdisciplinary Major with a concentration in Magical Creatures Studies’ is a bit long, don’t you think?”

“It’s correct.”

“Miss MCS Student?”

“That’s… acceptable.”

“Anyway, don’t you know about werewolf mating bites, Miss MCS Student?”

“Only whatever was covered in my Intro course, the sociocultural importance of them in packs. We haven’t covered that in my class on werewolves yet. And unfortunately, Dr. Kwon’s Interspecies Marriage class didn’t fit in my schedule last year.”

“Scent swapping. After a werewolf couple exchanges bites, they swap scents until they eventually just have one new one.”

“Ah, so it’s my turn to scent you.”

“Something like that.” Sungchan shrugged. “I know that’s the scientific explanation, like, the magianthropological one or whatever. But really… I just know that being here right now feels right. Like I was never meant to do anything else. Like I could go to class, or go hang out with friends, or something. But after, this is where I’m supposed to be. With you.”

“Home.” You replied simply. “You feel like home.”

“Yeah. You’re my home.”

Unable to come up with anything to say near intelligible, you pressed a long kiss to the top of his head before nuzzling your cheek back into his hair. His arms tightened around you minutely, holding you just that much closer to him.

“And you can’t just start calling me ‘love’ and expect me to just do nothing,” he added teasingly.

“Sung.”

“Yeah?”

The darkness made it so that you couldn’t see Sungchan as the two of you laid together, but every place that you touched felt much more alive, so much more real, connected. “I love you.”

He grabbed one of your hands, just to hold it. You let him.

“I love you, too.” His words didn’t hang in the air, they laid over you like a warm blanket, wound and weaved through your mind like your favorite song, and wrapped around you like a familiar hug. You stayed silent as you basked in them, letting out a soft, content hum as you cradled his head closer to your chest.

“I think I really understand her now,” Sungchan spoke up after some time.

You were used to his non-sequiturs by now. “Who?”

“My mom… Who you love isn’t always a choice, but where you go from there is. The choices you make with that love is up to you.” His hand tightened around yours.

“I can’t wait to be there to make more choices with you, Sung,” you murmured, running a thumb over the back of his knuckles.

Entering Half Moon Bakery with a skip in your step, Sungchan stopped you just past the front door. The two of you had been out and about running various errands all day, and had finally popped into your friends’ workplace for a little breather.

“I’ll be right back.” Sungchan pecked your forehead.

“I’ll go order.” You nodded, watching him disappear around the corner that led to the restrooms.

As you walked up to the counter, you offered the familiar wolf behind the counter a big smile. “Hey Jeno!”

“Hey, Y/N!” He grinned back. “So what can I get—”

He was cut off by a clanging from the kitchens behind him that made you jump out of your skin. The werewolf whipped around, concern etched on his features. He looked to you apologetically, “Sorry, I need to—”

“Go check on her,” you agreed, not liking the distinct lack of cursing that had accompanied the raucous noise. “I wanted to pick something new today anyway, so I’ll need some time.”

“Thanks, be right back!” And with that, he darted into the back.

You did in fact meander over to the display case of pastries, bending at the waist to peer at your options. Humming along to the song playing over the speakers, when you heard footsteps coming up behind you, you figured that it was Sungchan.

“Back so soon, love?” You asked with humor in your voice, standing up straight and turning around. All warmth that was in your chest froze and turned to dread when you saw who was actually behind you.

“Y/N. Been a while since you called me that.” You hadn’t seen your ex in over a year. Not since a week after you’d found out he’d been cheating on you throughout the entirety of your short-lived relationship, when he’d come to pick up what few things he had at your place. But somehow he was at your friends’ bakery now.

“I never did.” You reminded him through gritted teeth. “And clearly I didn’t mean to now.”

Pivoting back around, you crossed your arms and stared straight ahead at the menu board behind the counter.

“Back to your old type, huh?” He was peeling back the collar of your blouse to reveal all of your mating bite.

You snapped around, slapping his hand away. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Humans weren’t good enough, so you’re back on the werewolf dick, of course.”

You couldn’t stand to be in here for another second with him sneering at you like this. He wasn’t worth it. You could leave, go around the corner and text Sungchan and tell him where you are and what happened. The two of you could just go somewhere else for the afternoon.

“I’m not going to justify myself to someone like you, so if you’ll excuse me—” You tried to walk past him, but he stepped in front of you, blocking your path.

He seized your wrist. “Y/N, come on—”

“Let go of her.” Jeno had appeared at your side, stepping in between you and pulling your ex’s hand off of you.

“Oh, Jeno,” you breathed his name out as a sigh of relief, almost absent-mindedly, as you withdrew your hand back to your chest.

The human was unfazed, though, a sick delight lighting up his eyes as he looked Jeno up and down. “You must be the lucky dogboy. I should tell you, for your sake, she has a type, if you know what I mean. Dated two werewolves before me, and she broke up with me because I just couldn’t satisfy her like she was used to.”

“You’re disgusting,” you hissed.

“She broke up with you because you’re a cheating scumbag, actually.” Sungchan was back from the bathrooms, and strode up behind your ex, a deep frown already etched onto his features.

“That’s the lucky wolf whose girlfriend you just manhandled.” Jeno pointed up at him.

Sungchan clearly hadn’t witnessed anything, as his eyebrows raised minutely at the word ‘manhandled’ before his frown became a hard glare and he pushed your ex back against the wall by the shoulder. “If you grab her again, you lose the hand and the arm it’s attached to.”

The human looked around Sungchan at you with wide eyes. You nodded firmly in agreement with what your boyfriend had just said. Sounded plenty reasonable to you.

“Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back, we don’t want scumbags for customers,” Jeno growled, folding his arms over his chest.

The human had to wrench his shoulder out from Sungchan’s grip, giving the lot of you a final glare before storming out of the bakery. When you could finally no longer see him, you let out a shaky breath, and Sungchan immediately came over to wrap his arms around you. There was a vein protruding on his forehead that you weren’t used to seeing, and his jaw was still clenched tightly.

“Thanks, Sung.” You pressed yourself into his side, all too happy to be back in his familiar warmth. You weren’t going to forget about your friend that had come to your aid first, though. “You too, Jeno.”

“Yeah, thank you, Jeno.” Sungchan clapped the other werewolf on the back sincerely. “On one hand I’m so sorry I wasn’t here, Y/N, but on the other… I’m kind of glad I wasn’t because—”

“You might’ve actually broken his hand if you had been. I know, I know.” Jeno interrupted him humorously, despite how not humorous that outcome would’ve been. Satisfactory in the moment, yes, but ultimately not worth the criminal charges he could’ve pressed against Sungchan. “Try some werewolf meditation apps.”

“They have those?”

“You’ve never had to look into those before. Ha! Mr. Zen Werewolf taking advice on werewolf meditation apps from me! Oh, hold on, she’s going to get a kick out of this one, I’ve got to go tell her.” Jeno pointed to the kitchen over his shoulder with a thumb, turning around and pushing a door open, laughing the whole way back.

As Jeno relayed this hilarious revelation to his girlfriend, Sungchan led you over to a small loveseat in the corner of the bakery, settling the two of you down on it. Judging by the dual cackling laughter now coming from the kitchens, it was going to be a while before you’d be able to get your pastries.

“I know I can’t prevent everything bad ever from happening, but…” Sungchan laced his right hand with your left and rubbed slow circles into your skin with his thumb. “I hope you’ll always let me be there with you after.”

You rested your head on his shoulder, gazing at your lunar rings displaying matching half moons. “Always, Sung. We made a deal, remember?”

“Of course,” he said, and you could hear the smile in his voice before he pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

⤷ blog masterlist  ⤷ anthology masterlist

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Same as it ever was 4

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as neglect, bullying, manipulation, cheating, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Between your home life and work, you just can’t catch a break. Especially after you draw the ire of your boss.

Characters: Lloyd Hansen ft. Pete Brenner

Note: Oh my, we be sad gurls and bois.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

When Pete rumbles with snores, you move to the couch, hoping for what little sleep you can summon. You can't lay there beside him knowing what you know. You can't steam in the spite of knowing that he can sleep just soundly while sneaking around.

Two wrongs can never make right. You're not absolved. Far from it. You're mad. At him. At yourself. At life.

As you drift in and out, the apathy comes. You can't care. If you let yourself feel, you'll fall apart. You don't have that choice. Someone has to hold it together for the kids.

You get up first, like most mornings. You're restlessly impatient to get the day started if only to get away from that house. From the husband who isn't much of one.

Simone and Malik sit at the table eating cereal as you check your phone. You're on track so far. As if fate is throwing you a soft ball, the morning is going smoother than ever.

You get the kids packed and in the car. Every step is taken on habit alone. You walk them to the school doors and wish them a good day. Then you go back to your car and idle in silence. You're empty, you have nothing left.

You make yourself pull out and join the snailish roll of traffic through the school zone. Your drive to work is over before you know it as you stay locked in a trance. Before you just went through the motions, now it's like you're a ghost, floating aimlessly from one place to the next.

You enter the office, the walls a blur in your vision as you find your way blindly to your desk. Your head is pounding. Amid your early morning scramble, your desperation for distraction, to think of anything but reality, you hadn't even had a coffee. Your entire being throbs from the caffeine withdrawal.

You cup your forehead as you boot your computer. Eventually you'll get up and grab a cup of the weak break room brew. You lean heavily on the armrest of the chair and wiggle your mouse. 

For once, you're thankful to be at work. No fighting kids, no laundry, no scoundrel husband. But you're there and it's just as hard to live with yourself. 

"Morning, sunshine," Mr. Hansen's booming tone has you careening back in your chair as he comes to lean on the corner of your desk, "aren’t you bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Long night, huh? Husband finally loosen you up a bit."

You give him the daggers. That look that says 'enough'. Your motherly chagrin blazing at full force. He winks and laughs as he taps the end of your nose.

"You're real cute when you're pissed off, you know that?" He puts a hand on his hip, smoothing his index and thumb of his other across his mustache.

"Mr. Hansen," your voice is gravelly with dry fatigue, "is there something I can do for you?"

"Well, I can think of a certain wakemeup," he snickers, "but I'm thinking that you're not really into it. Still, you look like you could use it."

You huff and turn your chair to glare up at him. Can't he bother anyone else? He had his fun, he humiliated you, he made you hate yourself. So what else does he want?

"If you don't mind," you push your chair back and stand, "I'm going to get some coffee."

"Oh, sounds fun," he shoves away from the desk and trails after you, surprising you as he stretches and arm across your shoulders, "this company shit, it's garbage. How about I make you my own personal brew? I got a keurig in my office, just got some French Vanilla–"

"No thank you," you grumble and pull away from him.

You enter the kitchen first as he continues his incessant pursuit. He likes Malik when he wants to tell you about his legoworld. You go to the machine and find the carafe empty. You rinse it and fill the tank.

"You're mad about yesterday," he says as he leans on the counter, "if you're into snuggling, you coulda stuck around–"

"No," you growl as you measure out the coffee grounds.

"I let you go take care of the crotch goblin so I thought we'd be square–"

"Mr. Hansen, it's not you," you close the lid and flip the switch, "really."

"Ah, got it, it's the hubby. He's not taking care of his marital duties, huh?"

"Please, sir, it's not… it's not that," you falter as the lie sticks on your tongue. "Tired, need coffee."

"You look like you need sleep," he shifts closer as you stare at the slow trickle of coffee, "tell you what," he lowers his voice, "you come in my office, give me a good tug and I'll let you sleep in a meeting room. How's that? I'll make sure you get your eight hours."

You open the cupboard, taking out your mug from the bunch of mismatched porcelain, and set it on the counter. You can't even look at him. Not only because he repulses you but he reminds you of how pathetic you truly are.

"I'm good," you insist, "thank you, sir."

He scoffs, "I'm giving you something you're not getting elsewhere. Action and sleep," he runs his knuckles up your sleeve, "beggars can't be choosers, can they?"

You look at him. You're so fucking exhausted that your eyes are too dry to eke out a single tear. It's the only thing keeping you from tipping over the edge.

He smirks and looks at your blouse, reaching to pinch one of the front buttons, "look at that, all put together."

You glance down at the misaligned buttons. You don't even care. You're a mess. You're old and used up and unwanted. Even he only wants to get off, it doesn't matter who does it.  At the end of the day, he'll be just as happy to do it himself.

You're speechless. It's nothing like shock. It's exasperation. Are all men really like this? Is this what Pete does? Is she some girl at the company?

"Forget it," you take your empty mug and spin in your low orthotics.

You stride out and stumble to your desk. You can do this. You just have to get through the day. And then what?

Get the kids, go home, cook dinner, do homework, bath time, bed for them, clean the endless mess…

Tomorrow? The same thing, over and over, until what? Until when? When do you admit defeat?

Hansen struts out of the breakroom. You look up as you see him sipping from a mug; your mug. He meets your gaze as he drinks deeper and passes by.

You wonder the same thing about him; when will he give up? 

🗄️

You feel yourself slumping lower and lower. Your eyelids are scratchy and burning as you fight to keep them open. You cup your chin in your hand, elbow planted on your desk as the emails blur before you. You can do this… 

In a minute, you’ll get up and get a coffee, undisturbed, and really start working. You won’t fall asleep. How could you? Right here in your office chair. On the best nights, you can barely sleep in your own bed. Lately, it’s only been bad nights.

Once you find the energy, you’ll get up. You swear you will. It’s all you have to look forward to. That cup of coffee. You can smell it. You know it’s burnt by now, stale and bitter, but your stomach growls for it.

A few more minutes.

You hear snorts, strange noises that seem to rumble from within you. The clacking of keys and soft clicks continue, almost forming a rhythm as your screen ripples to bars of colours. You feel a weight over you and a sudden shift.

You hit the floor, bouncing on your ass as your seat hits your shoulder. You look up as you awake, only realising then that you dozed off. You blink at your coworkers before focusing on the figure glaring down at you. Mr. Hansen has a hand in his pocket and a foot on the bottom of your chair. Shit.

“Working hard,” he muses tritely.

“I-I’m sorry,” you stutter, disoriented. You can’t believe you fell asleep. You hope this is just a dream, if so. “I… I didn’t–”

“Get up,” he demands.

You scramble to get to your feet. You reach for the chair and he kicks it further away. You’re overly aware of your audience. No one will look directly at you in fear that they might draw Hansen’s attention, but it’s obvious by the lack of typing that they are very aware of the scene.

“I’m very sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to. I was– I’ll stay awake. You don’t have to worry.”

“Go home,” he says curtly.

“Home? No, I can make it through the day. It was a mistake.”

“Go. Home.” He repeats pointedly, “this isn’t a hotel.”

“Please,” you murmur, “please, Mr. Hansen,” you clutch your hands together, trying not to speak too loud, embarrassed as your voice cracks, “I–”

“Don’t make me call security,” he warns as he steps back on one heel, his posture victorious. He arches a brow in challenge. You’re certain he’d love to see that, you dragged out like an intruder. “Come back Monday, well-rested, and HR will deal with your disciplinary report.”

“What?” You gulp. In all your time there, you’d never been written up. Not once.

“Keep digging that hole.”

“Okay, okay,” you go to your desk and open the drawer to pull your bag out. You hook it on your shoulder and turn around, nearing him as you reach for the coat hung on the back of your chair. He watches you with a smug smirk, “I’ll be back Monday.”

“We’ll see.”

His ominous words put you on edge. You recoil and stare at him. What does he mean by that? You’re not stupid enough to ask. You put your head down and march out, burning with embarrassment as you pass your rapt audience.

“Hey,” Hansen claps his hands, “back to work.”

🗄️

You barely make it home. You set an alarm as you get in the front door and collapse on the couch. You don’t care that it’s lumpy and uncomfortable, you don’t care about anything. You forget all your worries for the blackness that clogs your mind.

As quickly as you close your eyes, your ringer goes off. You wake with a groan and roll over, shoulders cramped and stiff as you reach for your phone. Two o’clock already. Your head pulses with the dregs of fatigue. You feel marginally better.

You fill a travel mug and head out to pick up the kids. Along the way, you can’t help but shrink behind the wheel as the morning pricks in your mind. You don’t expect things to go well on Monday.

You pass a Burger King and slow down. You don’t have the money for a Whopper. No, that’s not what you’re thinking. It’s not spending you’re planning on.

You pull in and get out. You enter and approach the counter, sheepish as a twentysomething greets you from the other side.  You smile as you come forward.

“How can I help you ma’am?” He asks, hands on the side of the till.

“Oh, uh, I was… I was looking for an application,” you eke out. “For a job.”

He nods, you see the surprise flick in his lashes, “oh, well, we don’t have physical applications anymore but…” he reaches over to a stack of small flyers beside the till, “if you scan this QR code it will take you right to careers page.”

“Um, right, yeah, makes sense,” you take the slip as he offers it, “thank you.”

“You lookin’ to order?” He prompts with a strained smile.

“No, sorry, I gotta go get my kids,” you fold the flier and turn away, “have a good one.”

You head back to your car. You drop into the driver seat and curse. Fuck, your hips are killing you. You don’t imagine doing weekends standing behind a till will do much for that but you don’t have much of a choice. Even with the second job, you doubt you’ll be able to pay for the babysitter to cover it. What a stupid idea.

You shove the flier into your purse and back out from between the lines. You check the time as you set out to the school. You arrive just as the bell rings and the kids are let out into the yard. 

You find Malik with the other grade ones as Simone seeks you out on her own, too cool to hang around with the other grade sixes. She can be a bit of a loner but not in a sad way. She can intimidate even you.

“Hey, how was school?” You ask as you take them to the car, “did you do anything fun?”

Malik tells you about the popsicle stick houses they made as you buckle him into his car seat and Simone does up her seat belt on her own. You nod and smile, humouring your son’s slightly lisping story.

“What about you, Simone?” You ask as you look over at her.

“I just read. I’m almost done number four,” she shows the cover of her latest fantasy series, “but they wouldn’t let me stay in the library during recess.”

“Good, you need the fresh air,” you tease, “speaking of, I was thinking we could go for a hike this weekend. How does that sound?”

“A hike?” She grimaces, “is dad coming?”

“Err, we’ll see,” you shrug, “I spend all day in the office, I’d like to get out before the winter gets here.”

“I’ll go if dad does,” Simone opens her book, “it won’t be any fun without him.”

“Daddy, daddy,” Malik claps his hands, “I love daddy!”

“I’ll ask him,” you nod and keep a frown from tugging at your lips. 

You stand straight and gently close the back door. You round to the driver’s door and get it, quiet as you turn the engine. You’re not even good enough for your own kids.

[mypimpademia]

— Realistic Random Headcanons

Ft. Bakugo and Izuku

Synopsis: Random headcanons (general and romantic) for Bakugo and Izuku that I feel like make more sense based on their canon characters

TW: Swearing, topics of mental health (depression and anxiety nothing super dark though)

Note: Credit to @4kh for helping me with these :) btw these are just my personal interpretations of the characters and what I think makes sense following their canons instead of fanon (I also use their fanon personas a lot but again these are what I feel like would actually make more sense!)

— BAKUGO

⇶ Realistically, I feel like Katsuki would be aroace

⇶ At first, it comes off as him simply being too goal driven and motivated to make space in his life for romance

⇶ But truthfully, all his life he simply never related to how his peers would trip over their feet because of a crush

⇶ Sure, he found people pretty or handsome, but he could never find it in him to become even the slightest bit romantically invested

⇶ He tried to, just to feel what others around him felt for even a moment, but It never worked

⇶ At first, he chopped it up to simply not finding the right person. But as he got older and as he went through high school still never having any sort of attraction to anyone, he accepted that romantic attraction was simply something he wasn’t into

⇶ Struggles with depression and anxiety

⇶ It all started when he got to UA. Constantly having your life under threat, feeling like you ended the career of your idol, not feeling good enough, and more, take a toll on you.

⇶ Katsuki’s depression is not at all visible, you have to really know him to tell. He puts on a tough guy act and does what he needs to do, but he feels like a zombie

⇶ He’d much rather rot away in bed most days than even think about training, but he knows it’ll do him no good

⇶ Since he grew up with people always telling him how strong he is, he tries to gaslight himself into thinking he’s not depressed. He knows he is, but as long as he’s going about life like all is good and well, he’s not (to him at least)

⇶ His anxiety stems from getting kidnapped and having his life personally threatened on multiple occasions from such a young age

⇶ He’s always looking over his shoulder, afraid that someone is going to come out and make an attempt on his life

⇶ Katsuki would talk about it to someone, but he’s scared that getting too close to people would also put their lives in danger, and the thought of letting people know that he’s secretly weak physically pains him

⇶ As he gets older, he realizes how fucked up it all was that those things were happening to not just him, but his classmates as well. And yet, they were still expected to go back to class and act as of all was well after almost being killed not even 24 hours prior

⇶ Holds a lot of resentment towards Nezu and other higher ups, he wishes they would have at least put them through therapy after everything.

⇶ However, he doesn’t have any bad blood with Aizawa or All Might or any of his teachers over it because he understands that certain things were out of even their power, and that if they could’ve they would’ve. Some of them gave their lives protecting students, they shouldn’t be at blame

⇶ It’s not secret that Katsuki has an aggressive nature, but he is a very caring and compassionate person, and he tries to make an effort to show it even if it come off a bit harsh

⇶ Calls his friends dumb, extras, and says he hates them, but thankfully, many of them know that he doesn’t really mean it

⇶ And if they don’t know, they will eventually because his actions speak much louder than his words

⇶ Katsuki remembers birthdays, special events, always comes through when invited to things, gives thoughtful gifts, and more

⇶ He takes on all love languages (accept words of affirmation, that’ll take him some time) when giving affection towards others

⇶ The love language that takes all for him is physical touch

⇶ But unfortunately, he’s very adverse to being touched because of trauma, and only makes physical contact with family and close friends

⇶ When he does give an occasional hug, he makes it last and you’ll know it’s special (he gives really good hugs too)

⇶ It seems far fetched, but Katsuki actually doesn’t like to yell

⇶ Yes, he yells a lot, a majority of the time in fact

⇶ But it’s always over really dumb or unnecessary things, and that’s the entire point.

⇶ When Katsuki is serious about something, or genuinely angry, he hardly even raises his voice

⇶ He’s smarter than that, and knows it’ll only aggravate the situation

⇶ Very self aware, and because of that, he knows he can have a temper! Always takes a moment to himself when something upsets him, and then comes back later to talk about it properly so he can avoid blowing up at the other person

⇶ This is especially the case if it’s someone close to him, Katsuki would hate to damage a good relationship over something that can be resolved

⇶ If the other person keeps pressuring him as he’s trying to take time for himself, then yes, he will raise his voice. But it’s more firm than anything, and he does it to get them to give him space

⇶ If they keep pushing, or he just very in the heat of the moment, he will start yelling

⇶ Katsuki doesn’t like to go to bed angry either

⇶ Always make sure that his issue with someone else is resolved as quickly as possible, because if it’s not, it most likely never will be

⇶ If he’s in the wrong, he’ll acknowledges it and apologizes… in his own way

⇶ Normally, his apologies consist of him being overly attentive towards the person over the next few days until he feels like they aren’t upset with him anymore and he no longer feels guilty

⇶ On the surface level, Katsuki is your average arrogant, ambitious, hot head, but there’s a lot more to his simple facade

— MIDORIYA

⇶ Such a lover boy and hopeless romantic when it comes to relationships

⇶ Everyone knows he gets crushes easily, but a lot of them are just for the sake of slicing up his life, he doesn’t actually want a relationship with that person

⇶ Admires a lot of people from afar because of this, and he’ll gush over people he’s never even spoken a word to

⇶ It sounds corny, but he really doesn’t care about anything physically, he looks for personality

⇶ Sees no point in being attracted to someone just because they have a pretty face if their personality is awful

⇶ Likes people who kind of act like him, sweet, caring, motivated, a bit outgoing. and has similar interests

⇶ If you don’t act like him, he gravitates towards people who may contrast his personality too

⇶ You still have to be nice or at least have basic decency, but if you’re more reserved, and prefer to keep to yourself instead of being around people, he‘lil still like you

⇶ When Izuku is in a relationship, he’s a very good boyfriend

⇶ He’s attentive, always knowing what you need and what you like. He doesn’t forget dates, birthdays, or other important things

⇶ But he’ll need that energy in return or else he’ll lose interest in the relationship

⇶ Izuku has struggled with both depression and anxiety his entire life

⇶ He was always an anxious kid, and at first, Inko chopped it up to him just being a bit shy or having mood swings

⇶ But eventually, he was diagnosed with anxiety at a very very young age

⇶ It’s manageable, most days, thankfully, because his determination to do better for himself outweighs it

⇶ But his bad days are bad, to the point where they’re so debilitating that he can’t do anything but lay in bed all day in an attempt to be calm and not trigger an anxiety attack

⇶ Took medication for it at some point, but got really bad side effects from it and now chooses to just deal with it on his own

⇶ Izuku was diagnosed with depression a few years after he was diagnosed with anxiety

⇶ It developed shortly after his quirk didn’t develop, and he was being relentlessly bullied at school for being quirkless, and then coming home to see hero’s like All Might do great things while he was literally and figuratively powerless

⇶ His depression only got worse as he grew up and was still getting bullied for being quirkless

⇶ Somehow, Izuku doesn’t resent Bakugo or any of his bullies, and really doesn’t even think of them much as he gets older

⇶ For Bakugo, he doesn’t necessarily forgive him, but he learns to put it in the past for as long as Bakugo can acknowledge that what he did was wrong and can’t be taken back

⇶ As for his other bullies, he believes they’ll get whatever they deserve. He thinks they’re assholes, sure, but they were dumb kids at the time so he puts that behind him too

⇶ During the summer he spent training with All Might to inherit One For All, his mental health got better than he ever thought it would

⇶ Inko had no clue what was happening that entire time, but she could see a different light in her sons eyes and seeing him happy made her cry every night for the entire summer

⇶ Unfortunately, his mental health once again tanked when he was at UA due to all the villain attacks and the way his life was constantly being threatened more than anyone else’s

⇶ He was so exhausted all the time, and would have one or more anxiety attacks on a daily basis

⇶ Izuku is fairly emotional as is, even around others, but he keeps his deeper issues private and takes a moment to himself when even feels like he’s imploding

⇶ Wants to talk about it with someone, he really does, but he doesn’t even know where he’d begin and he doesn’t want to dump all that on anyone

⇶ Inko did put him through therapy as a kid, but he was in and out of it for various reasons, but the main one was money

⇶ Therapy is expensive, and Inko is a single mother. She put him through therapy when she could but there were times were she just couldn’t make it happen as badly as she wanted to get her son help

⇶ Once he got to UA and was very obviously doing much worse, she offered to start paying for therapy again and he completely refused

⇶ He’s always felt bad that she had to spend so much money trying to figure things out with him. Why he had no quirk, his depression, his anxiety, and therapy, he didn’t want her doing all that for him even though she felt obliged has his mother

⇶ At that point, Izuku felt like the responsibility landed on the school to make sure their students were being properly taken care of, mentally and physically, with everything they were going through during their time there

⇶ Doesn’t resent anyone for not doing anything, but he definitely wishes it was handled much better for the sake of everyone

⇶ But if you’re his s/o he will lean on you for support. He won’t tell you everything, because he doesn’t want to put all of that weight on you, but he will vent a little and cry to you

⇶ You can use him as a shoulder to lean on as well of course, and don’t think that you can’t come to him just because he’s dealing with his own things. If anything, it makes him feel better that you trust him enough to support you when you’re vulnerable

⇶ Izuku is a giver.

⇶ He gives, gives, gives, and gives without thinking about himself

⇶ Loves to give his friends little gifts, always coming back from the store with their favorite snack because he saw it on the shelf or a trinket that reminded him of them

⇶ Because he pays so much attention to detail, his gifts are always good

⇶ Insanely good at birthday gifts, if you ever don’t know what to get someone he’s the one you need to call

⇶ He will never get you a gift you don’t like, and if he somehow does, he’ll immediately replace it with w something you do like

⇶ Won’t even get the metal of your jewelry wrong, who do you think he is?

⇶ If you’re his s/o, you’ll be spoiled to death

⇶ He always pays for everything and never even lets you worry about how much it is

⇶ If you ever find out the price of something he bought you, and proceed to ask why he spent so much money on you, he’ll get upset and ask why you don’t want him spending money on you especially if it’s by choice

⇶ Gift giving and acts of service are his main love languages, so he gets very offended if you question him. It’s like asking if he even loves you, and he loves you to death.

⇶ On the other hand, Izuku gets very uncomfortable when people spend any amount of money on him or do things for him

⇶ Doesn’t even like to get birthday gifts or have people throw him parties, because he knows that means people will be spending money on him

⇶ It comes from growing up with a single mother who made just enough for them to live a decent life, he’ll always appreciate the gesture, but it will never not make him uncomfortable.

⇶ This is especially the case if you’re dating him. His birthday and holidays are the only time you’re allowed to spend your money on him, and even then you can’t spend an excessive amount

⇶ Izuku WILL get angry if you do, he won’t yell at you or anything, but he’ll huff about how you shouldn’t waste your money on him for the rest of the day

⇶ Izuku is a sweet boy, really. But as bubbly as he is even he needs someone to depend on, and in turn he’ll give you his all

—

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—

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[lothcatthree]

1. !!!! TELL ME ABOUT PASTRY CHEF CODY !!! Finally he has some peace.

AHHH sorry this took a few days, i was inundated with other WIP's (i'll be answering the other ones soon, too)

@insertmeaningfulusername and @merlyn-bane my darlings, were also interested in this one <3

basically, obi-wan is an exceptionally tired 30yo high school teacher and he begins frequenting a coffee/pastry shop run by cody and rex. ahsoka and anakin are younger adopted siblings (still working out the whole family dynamic). obi-wan gets flustered every time he talks to cody and ahsoka and rex finds it exceedingly hilarious.

this will be a classic strangers to friends to lovers fic and is meant to be fun and wholesome :)

here's a snippet of their meeting ft. gay disaster obi-wan (got a little carried away with it)

“Can I get you anything?”

Obi-Wan is vaguely aware of a voice speaking to him from the counter, but it’s helplessly bouncing around in his empty skull like a ping-pong ball. Any rational thought he had has been sucked out the airlock of his mouth as he’s cut off mid-sentence once he spots the man just behind the register, leaning over a table as he works.

The first thing that Obi-Wan notices is hands. Bronzed long fingers and structured tendons jumping as they knead a slab of dough and Obi-Wan suddenly wonders why he feels warm in the neck. There’s flour all over the man’s knuckles, up his wrists, dirtying the hem of the black sleeves. 

Obi-Wan helplessly watches as the man rolls up his sleeves and grimaces in effort, entirely engrossed with breaking down this piece of dough and, subsequently, Obi-Wan. Rolling up the sleeves would be one thing (and it really is one thing), but there’s miles of black ink swirling around two muscular forearms.

Obi-Wan’s eyes follow the arms up to find broad shoulders and a face with smooth skin, a handsome nose, a jagged scar, and fuck, those eyes. 

He’s just dropped his gaze to the man’s lips when he realizes, far too late, that they've moved.

A sharp elbow jabs into his side and he looks down at the perpetrator.

“What do you want?” Ahsoka asks him with an edge of teenaged irritation in her voice, but her eyes are slightly widened in concern.

Right. He’s supposed to order something.

Something that’s not the devastatingly beautiful man with devastatingly beautiful hands.

Still struggling to get his thoughts into order and feeling an awful blush overtake his pale skin, Obi-Wan stutters.

“Uh..”

“He wants a cup of earl grey and...,” Ahsoka trails off for a moment, scanning the pastry case, “A cinnamon roll.”

Obi-Wan would snort if he still weren’t so flustered and working on averting his gaze from the men behind the counter. The cinnamon roll is, in fact, not for him and entirely for her.

He finally looks up from the way he was burning a hole into the wooden counter and meets the eyes of the man working the register. This one is similarly pretty, though with blonde hair buzzed short and bare arms. Obi-Wan sends a silent thank you for the lack of tattoos, or else he’d be embarrassing himself all over again.

“It’ll be $7.36,” the man tells him and fuck if that isn’t an accent. 

Obi-Wan begins to pull his wallet out of his pocket and distantly hopes the one behind the counter doesn’t have the same one because then Obi-Wan is sure he’d-

“Just charge ‘em for the tea, Rex. I don’t know how good the new recipe is for the roll,” the man at the table pipes up behind- Rex- with, indeed, the same accent and a deep, raspy voice. Obi-Wan promptly drops his wallet.

He curses under his breath and swoops down to grab it, feeling the redness on his skin take on a new, fiery shade. Obi-Wan opens the worn brown leather wallet and pulls out his debit card, thrusting it forward to Rex at a speed that’s certainly not normal.

“It’s alright, I can pay for it,” Obi-Wan clears his throat when his voice comes out weak.

Rex looks at him with a slight furrow to his brows, then he turns around to look at the other man. Obi-Wan follows his gaze and when he locks eyes with the pastry chef (what shade of brown is that and why does Obi-Wan want to bathe in it?), he swallows again.

“Really, it’s ok. These ones are for testing,” the man replies, offering a warm smile. Obi-Wan can’t stop from dropping his eyes to the soft-looking lips as the man shifts his gaze from Obi-Wan to Ahsoka, “As long as you tell me what’s wrong with it, yeah? I have a feeling you’re a professional.”

Obi-Wan turns to look at her and he’s half-shocked when her signature pubescent scowl is replaced with a genuine smile that she usually reserves for Obi-Wan or Anakin.

“I will,” Ahsoka nods and bounces on her heels.

Obi-Wan fondly smiles at her and resists the urge to ruffle the top of her hair (last time he did that, he received a bite mark on his hand that took a week to heal).

Rex clears his throat and says with a polite smile, “Alright, Cody says it’s $3.25, then.”

Cody. CodyCodyCody. 

Obi-Wan hands him his card and darts his eyes to Cody just behind Rex’s shoulders.

“Thank you, Cody,” Obi-Wan says with a small smile, trying the name out on his tongue.

Cody gives him another dazzling grin that makes Obi-Wan’s stomach flip before he goes back to aggressively kneading the dough. Obi-Wan feels his mouth dry up again as he takes his card and receipt from Rex, allowing Ahsoka to not-so-lightly shove him away from the counter and towards a table.

"What is wrong with you?" Ahsoka mutters under her breath as she herds him into a chair.

Obi-Wan sets his bag on the table and helplessly looks over his shoulder to watch Cody begin separating the dough into chunks.

"A lot, I think."

[ryus3i]

WALKING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND ft. Itoshi Rin, Shidou Ryusei and Seishiro Nagi x gn reader separately

Cw; cursing, lots of fluff

An; first blue lock work lemme know how I did :)

ITOSHI RIN “You know if you wanted to hold my hand you could have just said so” you tease after Rin had laced your hands with his and shoved it into the pocket of his coat. He quickly turns his head to the side now facing the road, Rin insists he walks on the side closest to the road. Just in case you try to do something stupid and end up under a car. 

“Shut up, I want to keep you warm” Rin confesses whilst giving your hand a little squeeze. It wasn’t often that he would confess his thoughts to you, he was more of an action type of guy. So the soft blush that loomed over his cheeks wasn’t a surprise at all. 

“Thanks, Rinnie, you’re very sweet you know, '' you say, stopping to place a kiss on Rin’s pink cheeks.

Without saying a word he continues to tug you along the path to your house. This time pulling you closer and keeping his gaze towards the ground avoiding your loving gaze and hiding the small smile that stretches across his face. 

SHIDOU RYUSEI 

“Finally you’re done, it’s so fucking cold,” Ryusei says as he pulls you into his arms. “Shidou I told you not to wait here, you’re not even wearing a jacket” you scold as you rub circles into his back sharing some of your warmth from the heated book club room where you previously were. 

“I know babe, but can’t let you walk home alone when it’s dark out, who’s gonna protect you from the creeps on the streets”. 

“I’ll have you know I’m fully capable of walking myself home and defending myself from creeps” 

“Yeah right, you’d just run away, I know you’re scared of walking alone in the dark”, your annoying but cute boyfriend says, grabbing your hands and rubbing them with his. 

“I’m leaving, I’ll walk myself home,” you say, taking a few steps ahead of Shidou.

“Okay okay, I’m sorry,” he says catching up to you. “Let’s get you home before your parents start to worry”

“Yeah let’s go Shidou,” you say, linking your arm with his. 

SEISHIRO NAGI

You and a sleepy Seishiro walk home in silence after a long day of school and his practice. At this rate, the only thing keeping your boyfriend awake were the bright lights of food stands and small shops around you.

“Shiro, don’t fall asleep baby, we’re almost home. You can sleep all you want when we get there” you say.

“K” he replies as he leans his head on your shoulder slowing you down even more. Choosing to ignore him you continue towards your house enjoying the peaceful silence.

The silence is broken by a simple question from Seishiro. “Baby, do you think you could carry me home?” he asks. 

“No Shiro, I'm weak baby and the house is right there,” you say, refusing Seishiros pleas for you to carry him across the street where your house was. 

“Fine but you have to cuddle with me” he demands as you two cross the street.

“Ok, you big baby”.

[not-your-bro]

do you have any ud hcs? It could be anything idc

ooh, free rein! sure sure. josh + chris are def the characters i most frequently rotate in my mind, so some stuff about them off the top of my head...

josh

film studies major. i must admit i don't adhere to the psych major he's given in canon, though director/producer roles aren't my first choice for him either. he goes all-in on tangible stuff for his prank, so i put him in the practical effects arena.

artist in his spare time, but big surprise he's cagey about it. like, chris sees josh's sketchbook in josh's room all the time, but he's never actually looked inside.

with both movie sfx + art, josh is practical > digital, and he only dips into digital effects or art when he absolutely needs to. i just think he's a tactile sort of guy who prefers to make things with his hands, so creating on a screen alone doesn't give him the same satisfaction.

on social media in that he has accounts, but they're sporadically active at best. he can be slow to respond to texts/dms and his responses can be short, which gives off the impression that he's disengaged or bored. he isn't, he just doesn't want to be on his phone.

this is a longstanding hc of mine that i've absolutely mentioned before, but: designed hannah's butterfly tattoo! didn't really understand why, he was like you know your tattoo artist can do one for you, right. but she insisted, and he obliged.

gay as fuck. realized young, came out young, very comfortable. as demonstrated by the fact that, much to everyone's annoyance, he wears shirts that say shit like 'employee of the month at the dick sucking factory' in public.

chris

ok, so i've reached the point where the chris in my mind looks different enough that i get a little jumpscared when i see him in-game LMAO. i hc him both taller and heavier. he's gotta be at least 6 ft. and a chris hartley who's thin is no chris hartley at all. not to me.

does not come from money, like lower middle class. i have two totally different hcs about his family that both feel real to me: one is that he's an only child, his parents divorced when he was a kid (old enough to understand, but not quite a teenager), and he lives with his mom. the other is that his parents are not divorced, and he has a big family - lots of siblings. i've been going with the former in my fic lately, but both work for me. the constant is that his family's economic situation is more precarious than most people in the friend group, and family trips with (and funded by) the washingtons were his primary vacations.

has adhd. i find 'always on his phone bc he just loooves technology' less interesting than 'always on his phone bc he has existing attention problems.' this went undiagnosed for a while, and his performance in school suffered for it.

speaking of, he is not all-around school smart. like, emily may have strengths and weaknesses (even if she'd never admit them), but she can swing As across the board. chris cannot. he's getting good grades in classes that interest him or cater to his solution-oriented brain, but he's terrible in any class where there's no right answer. english, art - he does not get it. love him to death but his media literacy is Bad

bi as fuck, but it was a journey. thought he was straight for a long time, dismissing any attraction to men as a 'who hasn't had gay thoughts' kind of thing. i think it took him a while to come to terms with it bc he had a lot of internalized shit to work through. if a friend came out as bi, he'd have been like cool 👍 but him? surely not! he got there eventually though.

wowee this is long. as a lil bonus hc for another character, i'll add that i don't think jess went to college - i think she went to a hair/beauty school. she loves what a social job it is, getting to chit chat with clients all day, and like josh, she does best when she's working with her hands.

[ilygetou]

LITTLE DARK AGE. FT. IZUKU MIDORIYA.

₊˚ପ⊹P4IR1NG: villain! izuku midoriya x fem! reader. ₊˚ପ⊹.

₊˚ପ⊹ $YNOPSIS: where your boyfriend izuku midoriya, leaves you without saying a single word to you, as if you’ve never existed in his life, but that all happened in middle so you should have moved on & now your ex boyfriend is one of the most famous criminals in your city, so you should have move on, right? you can’t stay in love with a wanted man forever, your chances of seeing him & getting back together is zero. until one day izuku was at your apartment, wanting to fix things with you in hope of getting back together. ₊˚ପ⊹

₊˚ପ⊹C/W: non con –> dub con, cunnilingus, oral (m! receiving), face/throat fucking, overstimulation, mentions of pregnancy, breeding kink, smoking cigarettes, forced breeding, kinda of baby trapping, non con breeding (?), kinda of dumbification, v slight praise, use of pet names (princess & sweetheart), neck kisses, virgin! reader, virginity loss, mentions of blood, izuku acts nice in the end. ₊˚ପ⊹.

₊˚ପ⊹N0TE: this is actually a rewrite from my old blog, i rewrote the whole smut scenes + added more because it was very poorly written, the scenes that didn’t contain smut were kinda of left alone so you may find some errors! ₊˚ପ⊹.

Almost 4 years have passed and you still can't believe that the guy you used to date is now one of the most dangerous and wanted criminals. It’s kinda funny though because when you guys were dating he kept saying that he will be the next number one hero but that didn’t work out.

You remember how he always used to say stuff like “I’m gonna become a hero and protect you y/n!” or stuff like “Me and you will become one of the best heroes and show kacchan that he's wrong about us being weak!”

kastsuki used to always make fun of izuku, he never left him alone, always bullying him at any given moment. he also used to make fun of you for dating izuku, but that didn’t bother you since you liked izuku, you loved izuku so much back then that you didn’t care about what others thought of you.

But izuku left you. He left you without saying goodbye. He didn’t leave you a note. He didn’t leave you anything. He just left you without saying a word to you, as if you never have existed in his life.

A part of you wished he came back but the other part didn’t want to see his face. Every time he appeared on the news you would turn off your tv, not wanting those cheerful memories of yours and his to come flooding back.

You tried so hard to move on but you just couldn’t, sero has confessed to you a few months ago but you rejected him.

Katsuki, Katsuki confessed to you, he told you that he had feelings for you ever since middle school.

You were obviously shocked, if he had feelings for you since middle school then why bully you? he used to make fun of every little detail about you, stuff that even you haven’t noticed about your appearance but have katsuki do. “If you always have loved me then why did you always make fun of me?” you questioned.

“Y/n you know I’m not like that anymore” It’s true ever since izuku left you he was always been there for you he was always there to comfort you, every time you needed him he was always there. he never left your side, you have no right to bring up the horrible past, he has already apologized multiple times and it’s not like his apologies weren’t sincere, they were you could tell they were but still here you are bringing the past back.

“still doesn’t excuse the fact you always made me feel like shit, you loved me but would always bully me, you did so many horrible stuff to me and i always kept silent about them,” you couldn’t control what you were saying right now, it’s like all the emotions you’ve been keeping are coming out, Katsuki stayed silent for a few seconds, “You know I’m not like that anymore, and I already apologized.”

That’s also true, he did apologize more than once and you forgave him you really did, but dating your ex’s enemy? it feels like your betraying izuku even though you guys aren’t together anymore but it just feels so wrong.

Katsuki was now telling you how he felt about you, venting out all his feelings while you stayed silent, “stop...” you muttered, not daring to look katsuki in the eye. “what?” katsuki said confusion in his tone, “stop, i don’t wanna hear it, katsuki” you raise your voice a little this time.

“y/n what’s w— don’t tell me you still didn’t move on from that green haired scum” you gulp down your salvia, “oh come on, you really think he would come back for you? he left you without even saying goodbye he’s probably been sleeping and dating other women since he left you, he probably left you because you were getting in his way of dating other people.” katsuki spat to which you widened your eyes at, he was just expressing his feelings towards you, what happened to that?

“That’s not t-true” your voice was breaking, you suddenly had this urge to cry, “it it though, do you not keep track of his social media? don’t you see his posts with other women? he’s always swarmed by beautiful slutty girls” His lying he has to be lying. “Stop talking…please” this was all too much for you. You tried to walk away but katsuki stopped you by grabbing your wrist “Y/n just listen to me for a second.”

You yank his hand away “shut up katsuki, leave me alone” katsuki watched you walk away groaning in frustration.

You went back home. You sat on your couch for hours straight trying to process everything that happened today.

after a while you heard a knock on your door, you didn’t bother to open the door or ask who it is, you just simply ignored it.

until the knocks started getting louder and harder, you got annoyed and unlocked the door “What?” you asked in an annoyed tone, still not looking at the person in front of you.

“not gonna let me in?”

that voice. you recognized it very well. Izuku. That’s his voice. You tried to close the door but izuku stopped it with his leg.

“Come on y/n that’s a bit rude to do, don’t you think?” izuku coos, “n-no..!” you slowly start to back away, as izuku invited himself in while you were frozen in your place.

“leave!” izuku scoffs, “Come on y/n, you’re not even gonna let me explain?” izuku seated himself on one the couches, spreading his legs and placing a hand on his thigh as he took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips, he lit the cigarette, “explain?? explain what! you left me!” izuku looked back at you as his head thrown back, exhaling, blowing out sweet smoke into the cold air of your apartment.

you kept a distance between you and izuku, he’s a wanted man after all, god knows what he might do to you.

“i know y/n, and I regret it, truly regert it. i wanted to fix things with you maybe even get back together?” izuku utters, as he gave you a small smile. “after 4 years?? izuku i couldn’t move on from you! You ruined me izuku, i got attached to you so easily and you just left me without saying a word!” izuku looks at you for a second and then chuckled.

taking another puff from the cigarette before speaking up again; “i ruined you? it’s not my fault you got attached to me, you were the one who came to me, you were the one who confessed your feelings towards me, you were the one who was so obsessed with me and never left me alone, you see y/n? i didn’t do anything, your heartbreak was caused by you.”

tears started to swell up your eyes, you were speechless, too shocked to react or say anything.

“shut up...” you mummer, izuku shakes his head in disappoinment, “no, you should realize that it was not my fault you were just too much to handle y/n, but i left for some other reason, that i can’t reveal.” izuku took another puff before blowing all the smoke on your face, causing you start coughing as he just stood there and watched.

“w-what the fuck! leave izuku...i don’t want you here” izuku frowned, “you’re still too difficult to deal with.” no that’s not the izuku you knew, the izuku you knew was always nice and cheerful not mean and gloomy. “the izuku i know would never say stuff like that.”

izuku let’s out a long tired sigh, before getting closer to you, “people change y/n,” He says playing with a strand of your hair, you yank his hand away “shut up” here we go again. izuku ignores you “so, who are you going out with now? is it kacchan? i’ve seen you guys talking a few hours ago” izuku let’s out a chuckle, watching as a frown forms on your eyebrows, biting your lips from anger. is he dumb? you told him that you couldn’t move on.

“I said shut up, midoriya.”

izuku stops in his tracks for a second, raising a brow before smirking, “oh? midoriya? well, that’s new.”

izuku was getting closer to your face, before bending down to get closer to your height, “i’ve missed those lips” he mutters, brushing his fingers on your lips. You gulp nervously. he was getting real close, “what do you want? don’t t-touch me” your voice cracks as you were close to melting due to izukus touch.

izuku hums before connecting his lips with yours, your eyes suddenly widened but you still found yourself kissing back as if you didn’t have any control over your body anymore. the kiss slowly turned into a heated make out session before you can pull away izuku already has you pinned on your bed.

“w-we c—” before you can continue your sentence izuku has interrupted you by sucking on your neck, sucking so hard, as a moan accidentally slipped past your lips causing you to cover your mouth with your hand.

while izuku was sucking on your neck his hand found themselves under your shirt playing with your nipples, your nipples hardening from his sudden touch, “what? your nipples already got hard and i’ve barely touched them” izuku lets out a chuckle. he moves his lips from your neck to your hardened nipples licking them and sucking on them.

you slightly tried to struggle but izuku was much bigger and stronger than you not budging even though you were hitting him on his back, “s-stop...don’t want this, please!” your pleadings fell into deaf ears, “your body says otherwise, princess” izuku starts rubbing his fingers on your soaked panties, massaging your pussy lips from above the thin fabric.

“m’ taking these off, m’kay?” izuku didn’t wait for your response as he already begun to slide your panties down your legs, “fuck — you’re so wet,” he coos before moving his head closer to your cunt, izuku starts sliding his tongue in-between your folds, tasting your juices before izuku sinks his tongue into your fluttering hole causing you to let out a moan of his name.

izuku started lapping his tongue at a rapid speed, you kept whining and whimpering, babbling about how good it feels, your slick coating his chin yet he didn’t seem to care since all his focus was being fixated on your cunt.

you had your hands on izukus hair, gripping his green locks as you felt yourself getting closer, lewd sounds falling from your lips as izuku continued working his tongue, his spit mixed with your juices, his tongue warm inside your hole.

“ah! i-izuku ’m cumming!” izuku slowly pulled his tongue out before a rush of white liquid sprung all over his face, your eyes rolling to the back of your head as you came all over the green haired man’s face.

panting & letting out heavy, shaky breathes, trying to calm down from your orgasm. As izuku stared at you with a smile on his face, your cum dripping down his chin, your eyes travelled downwards, to where izuku’s bulge rested. his cock rock hard, you can see his dick print so clearly from above his pants.

“need some help here, sweetheart, made you cum all over my face, this is the least i’m asking for” you stared at izuku in disbelief & shock, why were you going to help? the orgasm he got out of you was forced.

as if your body was moving on its own, you found yourself crawling in-between izuku’s legs, spreading them before you slowly tug his pants down, freeing his hardened dick.

his tip already leaking with pre-cum, giving it a few kitten kisses before placing his tip on your wet tongue, before you could do anything else izuku suddenly gripped your hair & shoved his cock deep down your throat, he starts thrusting his length in & out of your mouth, your plump glossy lips wrapped around his lips as he continued abusing your throat.

tears were rolling down your cheeks as your cheeks were also turning a light shade of red, izuku threw his head back, his orgasm slowly approaching.

“oh shit...’m close!” with a loud groan, izuku came deep down your throat, his cum staining your throat with the color white.

izuku pulled out, his dick still hard.

“we’re not done yet, princess” you widened your eyes & started shaking your head, “no...c-can’t anymore..” you stuttered, to which izuku responded with a kiss on your cheeks, “too bad” he coos before pinning you back to the bed, pushing your legs to your chest.

you once again tried to struggle, but with no success. izuku started sliding his length against your folds, gathering your slick with his cock & spreading them across your cunt.

with no warning, izuku slammed his hips against yours, causing you to let out a loud yell of his name as you felt his thick cock stretching you out.

“you’re a virgin, aren’t you? have you been waiting for me to come back & take your virginity? did you know that this would happen? you’re so cute” he whispers, the tightness of your cunt causing izuku to let out a low moan, your blood dripping from the side of your thighs & coating izukus length.

he starts with rough thrusts, thrusting quickly into your sobbing cunt as small mewls & cries left you. crying out izukus name as he continued his ruthless pace, the feeling of being stretched & being split open from his grith never left you, biting your lips to stop any sounds from slipping.

“hey y/n...g’nna cum inside, k’ay?” you shook your head in disapproval & started slurring a bunch of “no’s”, “this won’t do y/n, have to breed you to make you mine, have to pump you full of my seeds & put a baby in you” the thought of breeding you & getting you pregnant, your tummy swelled up & big, the thought has izukus stomach flipping into knots, pace increasing, mercilessly.

“no izuku! don’t want to!” your begging & pleading weren’t helping as izuku ignored you, his balls heavy, full of his cum that were ready to be released inside your sopping cunt.

you tears stained cheeks & drool dripping down your chin made you look so pretty, having izuku let out small praises, “so so pretty, would look even prettier with my cum inside you, don’t you think?” you quickly replied with a “no” not wanting his cum inside you but the pleasure was eating you alive. soon your head went blank, not thinking about anything, just babbling nonsense.

“oh shit — cumming” izuku chanted, pushing his cock deeper until it hit your womb, your walls grabbing on his twitching length, before he emptied his load inside your womb.

pumping his thick seeds into your womb as you let out loud needy moans, izuku continued thrusting into you, planning to let out a 2nd load of his cum.

“need to fill you up more, one isn’t enough, don’t you think?” before you could process anything you just kept nodding your head desperate to reach your orgasm.

deep heavy groans leaving izuku as his cock was working it’s way in & out of your cunt, you were letting out needy moans of izukus name, begging him to let you cum. his pace slowly turning slow, gently thrusting into you.

with no further warning from you, you let out a loud cry before cumming all over izukus grith.

izuku continuing his slow pace, not stopping even after you have already came, “no more izuku! p-please!” izuku pulled you into a kiss to get you to shut up, jolting his hips against yours as his 2nd orgasm was already approaching him.

little shockwaves of overstimulation hit you, letting out mewls & sobs as izukus dick hit that one particular sweet spot, pinching your clit which had you cum one more time around izukus length. “shit — cumming before me? not fair princess,” izuku coos before fastening his thrusts, your head went numb, the only thing heard from you were loud moans of overstimulation.

your legs were shaking, before izuku gripped your thighs, letting out a muffled moan before his cock twitched inside you once again, “oh —! fuck!” a low grunts left izuku as he released inside you once more, warm & slimy strings of cum spurting inside your cunt.

a sob left you at the realization of izuku filling you up with his thick, mily liquid.

pulling out of your abused entrance, none of izukus cum was dripping out causing him to smirk, “there, nice & full” his words fell into deaf ears as you were already passed out on your bed, exhaustion & tiredness written all over your face.

izuku let out a shaky sigh, tugging his dick back into his pants that had little stains of your blood on them, before laying down beside you. completely ignoring the mess between your legs.

“will you give me one more chance, y/n?” izuku mummers before burying his face into the crook of your neck.

[valentine-writes]

Could you write something about hanahaki disease with Johnathon ohnn? (Could end in angst or fluff either is good :3) no rush ofc, i love your work!!!

choking on flowers.

「 tws + notes: open ended ending, implications/mentions of death (but no Actual Death), unedited, OOC, interpretation of hanahaki may be slightly diff (i haven't heard of this trope thing in a hot min ngl so im not the Greatest With This), pre-collider even though his holes generating flowers is a silly thought which i giggled abt while writing this, present/past tenses are fucked up cuz i changed formatting halfway, angst?? 」

「 gn!reader, (unrequited) romantic relationship </3 」

↳ ft. johnathan/johnathon ohnn

author's note: THANK U SMMM!! (∩^o^)⊃━☆ lowkey 4got thiz thing existed lolz,, and while hanahaki aus are no longer My Thing, i wud b lying if i told u i didn't eat hanahaki ficz up in middle school ＞︿＜!! sooo,, here we go!!! hopefully this is ok,, many apologies for how short it iz aauwgwhwh

this is the third time you've called him today, trying to reach out. the first two times, he had thought he was strong enough to ignore you.

he was wrong. the minute his phone rang out that third time, he practically scrambled over to it just to answer. pathetic.

"you haven't been at work for what,,, almost two weeks now?"

the concern in your voice makes johnathan want to keel over dead instantly– not like he's far from it anyways. he pulls his phone away as he lets out a weak cough. you barely hear it from your end of the call.

"...sick." is all he manages to rasp out, his sore throat preventing him from speaking further. even if he could manage to talk more, he wouldn't know what else to say. how would he tell you? the call ends prematurely. you know you're not going to get more out of him, and he knows that it's better to keep you in the dark about his situation.

to tell you about how his unrequited feelings have manifested into something much more than both of you can handle was completely and absolutely out of the question. how was he supposed to explain he had been coughing up your favourite flowers? johnathan would rather let it kill him.

not only was he humiliated by the sheer intensity of his yearning– he knew you'd end up feeling guilty about it. yet, a part of his heart ached, wishing that he was selfish enough to tell you. maybe seeing you cry over him would give him some semblance of love.

that was an awful thought. he promptly pushed it aside. he'd never want to make you cry.

he could only laugh at how frustrating his situation is. it was inescapable, his fate inevitable and ever nearing– and no one to tell.

he had never felt so alone.

at least i'll have flowers for my funeral, he thought in the deafening silence of his home, finding the energy to let out a weak chuckle over the thought.

–

a few days after the call, his phone buzzed, receiving a text from you:

i'm coming over'

straightforward, at least.

'what if you get sick?' he messages back, trying to generate excuses to keep you away.

you reply swiftly, before he can come up with anything else, unswayed by the idea of potentially catching his illness which, unbeknownst to you, wasn't really transferable anyways. 'we'll wear masks then. omw.'

lovely. you were stubborn as ever. at least you gave him a heads up.

he noticed you made no attempt to keep your distance from him as you dropped off his little care package.

all neatly put into a little basket was some fresh fruit you had insisted he needed, as you rambled over the importance of vitamin c and immune health, a sweet little card filled with "get better soon"s filled by his coworkers at alchemax most of which he knew probably didn't really care all that much, a few packages of cough drops you had been a sweetheart to actually choose ones which had bearable flavours, a blanket, a few snacks, and... flowers.

if you had known exactly what illness, he doubted this choice would have been made. he stared at them silently, finding some sort of humor in the mortifying irony.

-

you said an awkward goodbye at his door, about to turn around and head off– before hesitating for a second.

"johnathan?" the way you looked at him, eyes filled with tenderness and worry– maybe it wasn't so bad after all, for you to be the death of him.

"...yeah?"

you didn't say anything further, instead, choosing to communicate through impulsively squeezing him into a tight hug.

you pull away just as quick as it had happened, yet the warmth of your embrace lingered a little longer, even as you headed out the door. something about you caring so much made it hurt more.

johnathan wondered why you even cared, why you were so persistent about looking out for him– knowing that he'd end up watching you slip away from him again, leaving an ache in his heart nothing could remedy.

he couldn't blame you. not sweet, kind, thoughtful you. he was the idiot, the careless fool who yearned for something he couldn't have.

maybe in another life, he thought to himself.

[leafcabbage]

hi! for the last almost two years, i've been writing a benchtrio-centric dream SMP college student government au! at this point, that feels a little weak for all that it is, since it covers a LOT more than student government.

the setup: ranboo is an assistant to the Somnium Peninsula University's student government (Board and Senate) and in their first year at the university. tommy and tubbo are both on the senate, as are a variety of the other dsmp characters. tommy and tubbo meet ranboo, and almost immediately begin a friendship with them, but ranboo is full of trauma and dealing with a lot of shit on the side, making things a little rocky for them.

but wait, there's more! you've got queer characters, characters with disabilities, acknowledgement of the shitty side of american universities, heavily researched medical issues, and a story of found family and learning that there can be more to life than what's been thrown at you.

if any of this interests you, check out dead relatives and daddy issues for 642,214 words (and counting!) of hurt/comfort and mild projection from the author (did you know i work in student government? because i work in student gover-)

testimonies:

"i enjoy the updates on how fucked up ranboo is" - @pigeonhome

"thrown my phone and dislocated my thumb for drdi . 10/10 will definitely read again" - @crowsnesthoot

"Made me cry like every two chapters /pos - in all seriousness so well written with so much research, the dialogue feels in character and the characters feel so real, 10/10" - @approximately12lbs-of-ducks

"genuinely changed my life for the better!" - @hannahkthesciencegay

"read the first fic in the series over the course of two days and it only took that long because i has school i was that hooked it’s an amazing and well written story that has made me feel so many emotions i cannot recommend it enough 1000000/10" - @spacey-rambles

"Characters feel like real people and situations feel like real situations, its obvious the amount of thought and care Kale Leafcabbage puts into this fic <3" - @inessen-kryo

"fard" - @mrhotdog95

"Drdi actually stands for 'Damnboy Read Dis Immediately'! i promise you won't lose sleep over this fic! (<- lying but it's worth it)" - @potatocupcakeval

"cool fic by a cool guy" - @synech-doche

[twistedroseytoesy]

Could I request Vil and Scarabia with a necromancer reader?

Of course! This is a fun idea! Love me a good dnd necromancer! Going to have them be a normal human with some cool powers.

Description

an unfortunate accident happened when you had been casting an ancient spell that you had found in a lich's tome. A mispronounced word or a missing ingredient maybe, but now you found yourself being pulled out of a floating coffin by a strange cat monster. You easily used held person on the creature and learned where you were transported to. uou enjoy the different magic system in this world and how they too have limits. This blot is a fascinating topic for you. You learn of idias connection to it and are fascinated by the non human/cursed folks of the school. Your magic is very different but luckily you still had your spell book so you could participate in just about everything anyone else could. Despite your magic the mirror could not place you saying your magic was similar to a void a deep darkness that requires its own house. Many are wary of you and your dark aura and the rumors of you raising the dead to do your errands.

scarabia

Kalim: this ray of sunshine balances out your dark aura. You two are opposites get work together surprisingly well. He teaches you lighter forms of magic and tries to help you stay away from darker more deadly magics if he can. His whole mentality is that you’re really cool and that “I can fix them” meme. He truely believes your cool zombie powers could be used for good if people whose bodies you are using said it was fine. Poor sweet soul just doesn’t understand. If you ever introduce him to any zombies/skeletons of yours he will be a bit scared but try to find a silver lining. During the whole scarabia book you could tell something wasn’t right with him and when you were locked away you summoned a zombie to your aid. When Jamil overblot end you were able to add to your little army with some extra skeletons you found under the sand.

Jamil: please stay away. As interesting as your magic is to him he does not trust you in the slightest. Does wish to know how to summon his own minions at some point but rather not using those who have already passed. That’s a bit too gruesome for his liking. Tries to keep kalim away from you. Also keeps you at least 6 ft away from himself when possible. During the whole scarabia incident he tried to mind control you and your minions. It only worked for a few seconds. Found that really annoying. When you created your own little army of skeletons to fight him he laughed at it. But the skeletons were able to hold him back quite a bit for the others to hit him enough. Was a bit awkward afterward. But eventually during the SDC you two connect over more scary or feared types of magic usage. He tries to share some of his hypnosis abilities with you and you share some spells from your book with him. Now closeish friends and the banter between you two is crazy. If anyone dares to mess with kalim, let just say that mc is found with a relatively new zombie minion.

with special guest

vil: as a master of poisons he understands how some magics are frowned upon due to their power being too much and far to scary for the public. He doesn’t like how ugly your minions are and gives some tips here and there. If your minions are skeletons he would recommend you paint them to make them work somewhat with your aesthetic. Gets you lots of dark clothing and such. Also bossed around your minions when in your house for the SDC. Rather impressed that once you found out about his poisoning ability you always had your minions try your food to ensure nothing bad happened to you. During Vil’s overblot he melted your minions and saw you truly pissed for the first time. Saw that you weren’t powerless without your minions. Once he’s been defeated he and you connected over some darker magical subjects and you both are incredibly strong despite how weak you are compared to your magic abilities he hopes give you some tips. He also demands you always clean yourself after you make new minions. Also clean them and he provides some clothes for the more zombie like ones. he is fairly proud of what you can do.

[shion-yu]

Cabin Pressure

My entry for the spot "New Things" for @hurtcomfort-bingo. 5,366 words, one part, no TWs. Introducing OCs Ryo (toyhouse) and Alex, Shu's adult son. Ft. sick Ryo while away on a work conference with a rival and air travel.

Even though good grades had never been his forte, Ryo had gotten through veterinary school with flying colors. He had an innocent charm that made people gravitate towards him and he'd quickly become the favorite of all his professors. They loved his cheerful energy, his genuine enthusiasm and his kind heart, so he had a job the day he graduated. His classmate, Nathan - valedictorian and class grump - started at the same clinic with him. Ryo was happy to know a face at work already; Nathan was fed up with Ryo before they even began their new jobs.

Their relationship was a love-hate one, although who did the loving and who did the hating was unbalanced. They were the definite Ying and Yang of the clinic, but it surprisingly worked despite their bickering. The two worked skillfully together, each one's strengths making up for the other's weaknesses.

Because they had been in the same class it was assumed they were friendly and work decided it'd be a great idea to send their two new veterinarians to a conference together - with plane tickets next to each other both ways and a hotel room they'd have to share. Neither new DVM had ever been to a conference and they were both very excited - but not necessarily about going together. Nathan, at least, made no attempts to hide his distaste about having to share this experience with Ryo. He didn't want to cause drama at his new job though, so he didn't complain, at least not directly.

On the morning of their departure, Nathan's mother drove him to the airport and bid her goodbyes. As he stood in line for security, Nathan spotted Ryo from afar clearly having an impassioned parting with his boyfriend. Nathan couldn't remember the boyfriend’s name, but he'd seen the blonde guy a few times at various events before and knew he rarely smiled. He seemed very different from Ryo, but opposites attracted. Not him and Ryo though; they were too opposite. Nathan was sure they'd never really be friends.

Ryo took no notice of his audience and after kissing Alex yet again and making him promise he'd take care of himself - "I left healthy meals in the fridge for you, so they better be gone by the time I'm home!" - he waved a final goodbye and got in line for security. Nathan attempted to blend in with the crowd as inconspicuosly as possible, but his bothersome and startlingly white-haired colleague was impossible to avoid once they boarded the plane. Nathan grit his teeth and replied stiffly to Ryo's all-too-cheerful greeting. The conference was only three days long, but because it was out of state they'd be gone for four nights. Nathan wasn’t sure if he was going to survive being paired with Ryo that long without letting him have a piece of his mind, but he bit his tongue for now.

His resolve didn't last long. While the flight was uneventful and so was finding their hotel room, Nathan couldn't hold back any longer when Ryo video chatted his boyfriend and became completely insufferable, oozing affection and sappiness that made Nathan want to puke. It was all "baby" this and "love" that, punctuated by frequent giggles and kisses.

"Jesus, get a room! A different room!" Nathan burst out shamelessly, looking pissed as all get out. He'd lasted longer than he'd expected actually, about twenty minutes into the sickly sweet conversation.

Ryo looked up from his call, surprised at first and then giving Nathan an annoyingly smirk. "Don't tell me you're stuck in the 50s, Nathan," he said.

Nathan huffed. "Not at all. Seriously. You're just annoying as hell."

Ryo glanced back at the call where Alex, who knew only vaguely of Nathan's distaste for his boyfriend, had a confused and concerned look on his face. "Don't worry," Ryo smiled. "He's probably just tired." He ignored the tidbit next to him of 'Yeah, of your yapping.' "I'll call you tomorrow baby. I love you so much, like super much. I wish you were next to me. Okay, bye." He winked and with a quick little air kiss, ended the call.

"You sound like a hung up little girl," Nathan muttered. "Still in your honeymoon phase?"

Ryo chuckled. He didn't take it personally and he was in a good mood from checking on Alex. "No. We've been dating for like... Nine years?" Nathan looked surprised at this answer, which only amused Ryo further. The truth was, he knew why Nathan disliked him and in a slightly mischievous way thought it was funny to poke the beast.

"Well, you could at least go in the hallway if you're gonna talk that long every night," Nathan huffed and turned over. "I'm going to sleep."

"Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite," Ryo chimed.

"That's not even funny," Nathan muttered. He heard Ryo laugh before the lights were turned off. It was going to be a long five days, he thought before he fell asleep.

The first day of the conference went by smoothly. Both Ryo and Nathan really enjoyed themselves, Nathan making an active effort to sit as far away as possible from his former classmate so he didn't have to hear that painfully cheerful laugh any more than he had to. Ryo texted his boyfriend a few times throughout the day just to let him know when he was on a break or lunch, but for the most part he was unavailable by phone until after they'd finished dinner and he was back in their hotel room.

They were both pretty tired at the end of the day, despite how well it went. So Ryo didn't go into the hall because he knew it was be short - he just called Alex on video call and smiled when his boyfriend picked up. At least he used earbuds this time, though. "Hi, my sweet boyfriend." He could feel the other side of the room grow colder and stifled a laugh. "How was your day? I'm sorry I couldn't call earlier. It's really busy all day, and the other days look the same," he explained.

"I'm good. Busy, too," Alex said. Ryo nodded along and whole he didn't actually notice himself doing it, he was absently rubbing his temple to ease a small headache that spread down the side of his slightly pale face. He assumed he was just tired and that it was nothing even worth mentioning. He was far more happy to see his boyfriend's face and get visual confirmation that Alex was doing fine, anyways. Ryo hadn't expected otherwise, but he had valid reasons to worry about Alex being on his own. Sure, Shu was on the other side of town if anything happened, but still.

"The cats asked where the hell ya are," Alex said. "And since you spoil them, I had to get up with 'em at 6am, so thanks for that. Do you like your conference so far?"

"I do! I learned some really interesting things and met some cool people,” Ryo said.

"And Nathan? Is he being any nicer?"

Ryo glanced over at Nathan who was using his phone with his jaw clenched hard. "Nicer, no, but not meaner either. He's not really mean, just a grump. Apparently I'm too loud and smiley is all," Ryo finished with a flourish of a smile. Nathan seemed to be ignoring him clearly talking about him in favor of playing some game. Ryo chuckled, but then that turned into a surprising little sneeze that he didn't have time to hide from the camera. He sniffled, wiping his nose sheepishly. "Excuse me," he said to Alex.

"Bless you," Alex said. "You okay?"

"Thanks, I’m fine," Ryo said. He rubbed his watering eyes. "A bit tired." He yawned which then turned into a second sneeze, rougher than the first one. "Ugh, sorry. The air was really dry on the plane," he explained. "Anyways, I'm heading to bed." Plus if he talked for too long Nathan might kill him. "I'll call you tomorrow night. I love you," he said sweetly and then hung up. Nathan didn't make any comments. Ryo prepared for bed and then fell asleep very quickly. It was good to get some rest after such a busy day.

The second day of the conference went much like the first. Ryo was charming and friendly with everyone and made several connections, which was ultimately what this conference was about. He gave his best smile and a few people even told him they liked his hair. Ryo was used to his hair being his most memorable and defining feature. He figured it helped him stand out - in a good way (hopefully).

The only problem was, Ryo's headache from yesterday seemed not to have gone away with sleep. In fact, it actually felt like it had worsened and his right ear was aching. He rubbed it absently throughout the day, trying to get the pain to go away but to no avail. By the time the day was over, his throat had started to feel scratchy too. Thinking he really didn't want to get sick right now, Ryo decided to chalk it up to dry air and cabin pressure on the flight here. That was common, right? When they were back in the hotel he did purchase some Tylenol and emergen-c from the lobby store, which he downed with the optimistic hope that he’d feel fine tomorrow.

By the time he called Alex, Ryo was ready for bed and so chanced video calling his boyfriend from the room yet again with the expectation that things would be short. Nathan glared at him and smacked his teeth in disapproval from where he was sitting on the other bed. Ryo chuckled and greeted Alex happily when he picked up after only two rings. "Hi baby," Ryo said in a voice that was only a little scratchy, but noticeable to his boyfriend who he talked to every day. "Are you doing okay? Did you eat?"

"I'm fine. I just ate. You sound hoarse," Alex said.

"I'm assuming you ate one of the meals I made for you, not junk food, right?" Ryo asked for his own reassurance. Gosh, he thought, when did he become such a mother hen? He cleared his throat with a grimace and touched his fingertips to the tender area lightly. "My throat's a little sore but I don't think I'll lose my voice," he said optimistically. "I have too much to say!"

"Way too much," Nathan piped in loudly.

Alex frowned. "Want me to beat him up?"

"Shh, don't bother poor Nathan, he's just mad he doesn't have a boyfriend as good as you," Ryo giggled.

"What?! Am not!" That only made Ryo laugh more. Unfortunately this irritated his already sore throat and he ended up falling into a small coughing fit. It didn't sound terrible, but it also didn't sound great. He tried to hide how uncomfortable it was for him and shifted his position on the bed. His body was aching like he'd taken a long walk today, even though he hadn't.

"Maybe you should skip tomorrow. Are you okay?" Alex asked in concern.

Ryo waved one hand in the air casually when he was done coughing. He ears and head were throbbing in time with his body. "Yeah, totally," he said, but he was only partially confident by now. "It's the last day and well... Don't worry about me." He grabbed a tissue off the nightstand and blew his nose loudly. A surprisingly considerable quantity of snot came out. Not the best sign, he thought to himself grimly. "I'll call you tomorrow night. Only tonight and tomorrow and then I'll be with you," he smiled fondly. He looked seriously exhausted though. "Come pick me up, okay?" It was only words, because of course he knew Alex would pick him up.

The morning of the last day of the conference, Ryo's minor aches and pains had turned into a full blown fever overnight. He'd tossed uncomfortably and moaned fitfully in his sleep. It hadn't kept Nathan up, but he'd fallen asleep after Ryo and definately noticed it. Nathan told himself he had no business worrying about anyone else, especially his annoying coworker. However in the morning when they got up and Ryo looked dramatically rougher than yesterday, Nathan couldn't help but feel his stomach pang with pity. He wasn't a total monster after all.

Nathan cleared his throat and asked as casually as possible, "Hey, are you okay?" He hoped his voice maintained a quality of carelessness.

Ryo was slow in responding to him, which was unusual since Ryo always seemed to be able to come up with the peppiest thing to get under his skin in seconds. He was downing a handful of Tylenol when Nathan asked and swallowed before answering. Nathan noticed Ryo winced as he did so, as if it pained him. "Just a little cold," Ryo croaked, putting one thumb up in Nathan's direction. "I'm flattered you care though." Nathan rolled his eyes and decided if Ryo was well enough to still be cheeky, then he was well enough that he didn't need to be worried about.

"You better not get me sick too," Nathan huffed.

"I'll wear a mask," Ryo reassured him. The painful sounding coughs that followed convinced Nathan that it was probably too late anyways. But he told himself that Ryo didn't need someone to fuss over him and if he did, it wouldn't be Nathan of all people.

Ryo was not the focus of Nathan's thoughts for the rest of the day, given they sat separately. He did hear someone coughing and sneezing a lot across the room, but didn't quite connect it to the fact that it was Ryo until he saw his roommate at lunch looking, well, god awful. His face was flushed red and despite continuing to interact with other people, he looked completely exhausted. At least he’d bothered to put on a mask now.

Ryo didn't just look bad, he felt bad. He was still telling himself it was just a little cold, but the headache, earache and now fever seemed to be persistent despite the Tylenol he was consistently drugging himself with. It was the last day though, which was important for getting peoples' contact information and sealing connections, so he pushed himself despite getting progressively colder and achier throughout the day. He fielded off any texts from Alex asking how he was doing with some particularly cheerful emojis and forced himself not to drag his feet. By dinner - which was a big event because of it being the last night - Ryo had zero appetite and the thought of eating seemed repulsive. But he went anyways, trying to stifle his coughs and sneezes with some success and ignoring the mix of worried and annoyed glances he was getting. Afterward dinner, almost everybody was going to the hotel bar. Ryo didn't feel up to more, let alone drinking, but again it seemed important and so he forced himself to go and ordered a shot of fireball in the hopes that it'd warm him from the inside out.

He decided to call Alex before he forgot and it became too late. He sequestered himself into a quieter corner of the hall, pulling the mask down to his chin. No video though, it was too chaotic and anyways, Alex didn’t need to see how rough he looked now. Alex picked up quickly. "Hi baby,” Ryo said. “Everyone is going to the bar now, so by the time we're done I bet you'll be asleep. So I wanted to say goodnight and I can't wait to see you tomorrow!" His feeble voice left little to the imagination even without a video.

"You sound sick as hell," Alex said right away. "Go to bed."

Ryo chuckled hoarsely. It didn't sound very encouraging. "Maybe I have a little cold," he admitted before he could stop himself. It seemed fireball on a mostly empty stomach was hitting his already woozy head harder than he'd expected. He pulled the phone away from his warm cheek and muffled a sneeze that was much more painful than the ones yesterday. He resisted the urge to groan and pinched the bridge of his nose as if it would ease the pain in his head. "I'll sleep on the couch when I get home and wear a mask, so don't hug me too tight," he instructed Alex. His heart hurt a little saying those words because all he wanted was to be in his boyfriend's arms at the moment.

"Are you stupid? I'm going to take care of you,” Alex snorted, direct as always.

Ryo sighed, which made him cough for a moment. "Okay, well, still. Keep your distance," Ryo said. "I'm still happy to see you tomorrow though. Bye baby. Love you." He hung up before Alex could nag him any more.

Ryo managed to drink another beer and suffer through a few more fruitful interactions between he genuinely felt like he was going to pass out. Everything seemed to be floating by him as if he were on a cruise and he was quite surprised when Nathan slid next to him, eyed him critically, and then shook his head. "You definately should not be drinking," he heard his hotel roommate say critically. "Go to bed. You look terrible."

Ryo raised a tired eyebrow but shook his head, too worn to come up with a witty response other than, "Gee thanks. I'm fine." He said this with the conviction only someone with Ryo's specific brand of idiocy could muster. "It’s just a cold."

Nathan snorted. "You said that this morning, but you clearly have a fever." To Ryo's surprise Nathan placed the back of his hand against his cheek to feel how hot it was. He tried to hold back the small groan that escaped his lips, but the cool feeling of another person's skin just felt so good. God he missed Alex. "You're burning up." Ryo’s eyes fluttered open and was disappointed when Alex wasn't the person sitting across from him. Still, the look of genuine concern on Nathan's face gave him enough energy to push Nathan's hand away with a tight smile.

"I'm-"

"If you say you're fine again, I'm seriously going to punch you," Nathan snapped. Ryo shut up. He stayed silent, though now in shock as Nathan grabbed his wrist and pulled him off the bar stool. He was then forcibly led to the elevator, stumbling with dizziness. He opened his mouth to complain, but the glare from Nathan was enough to keep him quiet until they got to their room and Nathan sat him on the bed with his hands on Ryo's shoulders. "Sleep, you moron," Nathan insisted angrily.

Ryo was way too tired to argue and at this point, had no energy to call Alex again. Alex was on his mind though, and he couldn't help but smile to himself thinking about how he'd be reunited with his boyfriend tomorrow. Regardless, he wasn't aware that his phone had now died, leaving any call attempts Alex may or may not have made for the rest of the evening to go directly to voicemail and his texts to go unread.

Ryo fell asleep quickly. Vaguely, he remembered someone trying to wake him up around one in the morning, shaking his shoulder and saying something quite loudly. He whined and shut his eyes tightly to ward off the light that had been turned on. He heard whoever it was sigh and then a cold washcloth was placed on his forehead. He moaned and tried to pull the thing off, but the frustrated other party growled and forced if back into place.

"Jesus, how does he deal with you every day? Nine years... How the hell?" Some level of recognition regarding the scenario processed in Ryo's brain and even so sick, he couldn't help but laugh. "If you're conscious enough to laugh at me then you're fine," he heard Nathan huff, which only made him chuckle more until he was stopped by his own harsh coughing. The deep voice grew gentler and he felt a hand on his back rubbing circles until the coughing died down. "Just go back to sleep. We'll be home tomorrow."

The night felt like it lasted so much longer than it did. By morning Nathan was exhausted and agitated from having to play nurse all night. He scowled as he had to physically support Ryo into the rideshare they took to the airport. Ryo's fever, despite Nathan's reluctant tending overnight (prompted by a series of pained moans and violent shaking that even Nathan hadn't been able to ignore), had not gone down at all. In fact it seemed to be even higher. Nathan would rather drop Ryo off at a hospital to be their problem, but they were in an unfamiliar place with a flight to catch. He just needed to drag Ryo home and hand him over to his boyfriend, Nathan told himself a little desperately.

When they exited the cab, Nathan hoisted Ryo out of the car, throwing one of Ryo's arms around his shoulders for support. Ryo could walk at least, but he seemed totally out of it and unaware of what was happening. Nathan was kind of glad for that though, because he wouldn't have been able to bear the humiliation of Ryo being fully conscious during all of this. He half dragged Ryo through security and luckily Ryo wasn't stopped with the suspicion of being drunk, although Nathan wasn't sure how. Maybe Ryo's charm extended so far it could even trick TSA, Nathan thought dryly. The same routine applied as he got Ryo onto the plane and buckled him in, muttering an embarassed, "Excuse me" as he did the all too intimate task for his rival.

Most of the flight went fine. Nathan kept Ryo medicated even though it didn't seem to do anything and tolerated Ryo slumping over to sleep on his shoulder. At least he wasn't saying annoying stuff, Nathan thought to himself. And thank God it was a direct flight.

It was when they began their descent that Ryo seemed to regain awareness for all the wrong reasons. At first he was just covering his ears with his hands, but then Nathan realized he was crying in pain. He touched Ryo's shoulder nervously and the pathetic look of desperation that he got in response seriously scared him.

"My head's gonna explode. It hurts so bad," Ryo whimpered, tears streaming down his blotchy face. Nathan didn't know what to do. He didn't have any experience in helping someone with this, but he knew if Ryo's head had hurt before it was probably unbearable now. He settled for resting one hand on Ryo's knee and squeezed. Ryo placed his hand over Nathan's and held on so tight it hurt.

The remaining descent was a nightmare for both of them. Ryo was doubled over in pain worse than anything he'd ever experienced before and Nathan was terrified that Ryo's ears were actually going to explode. Eventually though, they reached the runway. Nathan waited for everyone else to get off the plane first before he tried to get Ryo off, not wanting to draw attention from the other passengers.

"Ryo, get up," he said gruffly, trying to pull his schoolmate up by the armpit. He froze when Ryo clapped his hand over his mouth and looked at Nathan in panic. "Shit, are you gonna barf?" Ryo nodded frantically and Nathan didn't spare another second before yanking him up and aggressively throwing Ryo into the plane bathroom just in time. One of the stewardesses came to move them along with an inpatient expression which softened when she heard the noises from inside the toilet and let them be.

Nathan waited about five minutes before he knocked. "Ryo, we gotta get off," he said. "Are you alive?" No answer. Nathan waited another thirty seconds before he yanked the door open and saw Ryo looking deathly pale, barely supporting himself against the sink from falling on the floor. He looked at Nathan with teary, guilty eyes. There was vomit on his chin.

"Shouldn'ta drank last night," he rasped, like this was the reason behind the puking and not the unbearable head pain that had made him puke. Nathan made a distasteful face in response at both the vomit and the feeling of exasperation washing over him. They were almost at the finish line, he told himself. "Let's go. Your boyfriend is waiting," Nathan said. He grabbed one of the towels and wiped Ryo's chin off, throwing the paper into the toilet in disgust and then pulling Ryo down the aisle.

The promise of reuniting with his beloved seemed to give Ryo just enough energy to get off the plane and allow Nathan to drag him through the airport to arrivals, where he quickly spotted Alex waiting for Ryo. A wave of intense relief washed over Nathan. Alex immediately looked worried as soon as he saw Nathan supporting Ryo until Nathan basically shoved Ryo into Alex's arms.

"Here, he's yours. He's sick as hell and owes me big time," Nathan snapped. He honestly never wanted to see Ryo again. Except maybe to make sure he was alive, that'd be good. Then he stalked off to find his mom, ignoring any words of protest and leaving Alex alone to support his boyfriend and his raging temperature.

Ryo was pretty out of it and just happy to be reunited with Alex who had to half drag, half support him back to the car. Ryo stared at the high step up into the truck for a long moment as if the task of getting in were too hard for him to comprehend, but eventually he crawled in with a boost from Alex. He leaned back in the passenger seat, breathing hard and fast.

Alex began to drive, glancing up frequently at his miserable boyfriend. "Ryo, wake up," he said. "What hurts?"

"Hurts? Um... My ears... And head... And everything else." He gave a delirious chuckle.

Alex stopped at urgent care on the way home to get Ryo checked out. He was really worried - he hadn’t expected Ryo to be this sick. Plus, Ryo was better at doing this kind of stuff - the planning and caring and tending to. Ryo leaned against him and his hot cheek felt like it seared Alex's shoulder. They gave Roy a test for flu and strep, which came back positive for strep.

“It looks like a nasty sinus infection with a double ear infection, too,” the doctor told them. Ryo was leaning against Alex, trusting Alex to deal with it all now. It was such a relief to not have to push himself anymore. He knew Alex would take care of him. “He’s lucky his eardrums didn’t actually pop," the doctor added. Alex wasn’t sure why he had to say that and glared at him.

Ryo slept much of the next twenty four hours after the ordeal of getting home. The following day he was lying on the couch dazed and feverish with a blank look in his eyes. Sinus infections could be a funny thing. While rarely extremely serious, they often just seemed to stick around imparting misery as the main symptom. For Ryo this was true, especially when combined with the strep throat have gave him a fever that just didn't want to break despite Alex staying on top of medications. The stress on Ryo's body from travel and especially from the pressure of the plane had made things worse than they probably would have been under normal circumstances. His head felt fuzzy and heavy, and he seemed unable to get through many coherent thoughts before losing focus.

"Nathan took care of me, baby," Ryo mumbled as Alex stroked his hair. "He did a good job. I'll have to make it up to him somehow."

"You don't owe him anything," Alex said. Ryo's head was in his lap on the couch and he could feel how warm Ryo still was despite Tylenol. "It's not like you got sick on purpose."

"I guess not. I'll still buy him a gift card or something though. I'm pretty annoying." Alex didn't disagree with that. Ryo was excitable at best and unbearably loud at worst. He was a hard core introvert's nightmare and Alex himself had been intimidated and annoyed by him when they first met. He didn't think Nathan had to be that rude to Ryo though. Only Alex was allowed to be that rude to him.

That evening, Alex was in the kitchen warming up some light soup out of a can on the stove. Ryo had little to no appetite, but Alex insisted he had to eat something. It was reverse from their usual position, which amused Ryo because Ryo was always the one insisting that Alex eat something that didn't come out of a plastic wrapper. He had on a big sweater, wool socks and their two warmest blankets on top, yet he still felt cold. His face was terribly pale other than his flushed cheeks and he was sniffling pathetically every few seconds. In a way he still felt like he was on the plane - like there was some pressure coming from inside his head that threatened to burst out painfully everywhere: his eyes, his ears, his nose. He wanted to help Alex tidy the house after his days away, because of course Alex had fallen behind on the chores. But all he could do was lie there miserably.

Alex came over with the bowl of soup and sat at Ryo's feet, handing it to him. Or attempted to, but Ryo shook his head and kept his arms planted under his blanket pile. "You need to eat," Alex sighed in annoyance.

"I'm weak," Ryo whined dramatically. "Help me."

Alex rolled his eyes, but spoon fed Ryo the soup anyways. "Dont make eye contact with me," Alex snapped at him when Ryo made yet another laughably doe eyed baby face. "I'll spill it all over you."

"Then you'd have to clean it up," Ryo said confidently.

"Then you'd be covered in soup and you'd have to clean it up," Alex muttered.

"Alex, move, ahh-" Alex yanked a spoonful of soup away just in time to avoid letting Ryo spray it all over him from the force of several harsh sneezes. Ryo groaned in pain. "I'mb sorry," he rasped out. Sneezing was seriously painful given his raw throat and aching head.

"It's okay, I got out of the way in time," Alex reassured him. He glanced down at the bowl to find it half empty. "Are you full?"

"Yes," Ryo sniffled. "Ugh. This is the worst sinus infection I've ever had." He rubbed his forehead which was throbbing with sinus pressure.

"I'm sorry, Ry," Alex said sympathetically. He tried to think of anything else be could do, but he was hardly a natural born caretaker. Still, he racked his brain until he came up with something Shu had done for him once when he had strep throat that had been surprisingly comforting. "I could read to you. Might distract you."

"Really?" Ryo asked in surprise. Alex was rarely so tender. "That does sound nice, but... What's the catch?"

"There is no catch, asshole," Alex huffed. "Do you want there to be one? I obviously don't have to read to you if you don't want me to. Forget I asked." He was blushing and Ryo knew he had to run damage control before this became an argument.

"No! I want you to," Ryo reassured his short-tempered partner. "I was just surprised. Read to me, please. It sounds nice.”

Alex nodded and grabbed the book he’d been reading recently off the bedside table. He didn’t bother giving any context - he knew Ryo wouldn’t care and would soon fall asleep. He just read from where he was while petting Ryo’s head on his lap until he heard Ryo’s congested breath turn into even snores. He put the book down and leaned over to kiss Ryo his head hot temple. Ryo would bounce back from this in no time, Alex thought to himself. He wasn’t worried. But he would take care of his lover for as long as he needed to, no strings attached.