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#girl direction with smut fics
larrysballetslippers · 7 months
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Ribbons In Your Hair by Kikiberoski16 and erstequeen
@larrysballetslippers
Harry/Louis | 8.1k | Girl Direction | High school cheerleaders
“Oh, come on, ask her out already! You two are, like, the dream couple and she’s been flirting with you for months now, take a hint, Haz!” “You’re the only one who thinks that, Niall, and while I appreciate your support or whatever it is, I still think you’re wrong. She has not been flirting with me and if she liked me she would have said something. I don’t even know if she’s gay, she only ever hangs with the basketball crew.” Harry was getting stressed out again only thinking about this. When she finished her little rant and Niall didn’t say anything she dragged her eyes away from Louis putting away books in her locker and looked at her friend instead. She was met with a sympathetic expression. “Girl you are so blind I am surprised you can still walk straight.” Or, Harry is a high-school cheerleader and obsessed with the most beautiful girl in her grade who is obviously totally straight. Of course.
Lacy by Olivia Rodrigo. This fic is part of the @1dsongfest. Thank you Emmy for reading over the fic!
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notjustsmutficfest · 11 months
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writer sign ups for the not just smut fic fest round 2 begin today !!! :)
once again, this fic fest is inspired by the fic them butterflies by the lovely and talented @gaycousinlarry! the concept is "smut as a means to character development".
if you'd like a more in depth recap of what this fest is, you can check out the announcement post: here
rules:
this is a nsfw fest, therefore you must be 18 years of age or older to participate.
any fics submitted this round will not be moderated content wise; please use common sense & best judgment when it comes to things like tagging your fic correctly/appropriately. whether the next round's fic content will be moderated is completely dependent on how participants do these things.
there is no minimum word count for this fest.
this will not be an anonymous fest; you can absolutely post snippets of your fic as you're writing. tag this blog & use the hashtag to be reposted as well!
fics are allowed to have more than one author - if you want to write with one or more friends, go for it
this is a one direction fic fest, so you can write about any pairing - or ot3/ot4/ot5 - you'd like!
you can write about any & all forms and variations of one direction; this fest thrives on inclusivity, variation & exploration!
schedule:
sign ups begin today and will end november 22nd
deadline for submitting fics to the ao3 collection: march 22nd
posting begins: march 26th
*extensions can be granted for writers if need be, please contact me if you feel you need an extension and we can work something out!*
forms & links:
you can find a list of fic examples if you're unsure & looking for guidance: here
you can check out the prompt submission list: here
you can sign up to write for this fest: here
if anyone has any questions, please feel free to send me a message or ask on here! my main tumblr @alwaysxlarrie can also be used for communication if need be.
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myname-isnia · 8 hours
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I haven't had the chance to indulge in anything creative for a few days so now I feel like a tiger in a tiny cage constantly being harassed by dozens of different ideas from all sides
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hlplease · 1 year
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give yourself a hand, girl. by warmcuppatea
“I’m not sure that I can.” Louise shrugged, sinking into her chair.
“Can?”
“Can.”
“What?”
“Come.”
“Can come?”
“Yes, well, no.”
“No?!”
“Yes, no. Can we stop this weird word thing?”
---
Louise hasn't had an orgasm and thinks her clit is broken. Harry's determined to prove her wrong.
read it on ao3
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hoshigray · 5 months
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𝐅𝐮𝐜𝐤 𝐌𝐞 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫, 𝐒𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫! | t. fushiguro + k. nanami
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𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: Taking your daughter to a sleepover with her best buds is easy peasy; ending up staying over at said sleepover to have some fun of your own with the two single dads you're crushing on? Not so much...
𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: dilfs! Toji + Nanami x fem! reader - explicit content; minors DNI - modern setting; single parents au - implied you + Nanami are in early 30s; Toji is in late 30s - Tsumiki (age 10), Megumi, Yuuji and Nobara (8) - mutual pining/crushing - fluff then SMUT then fluff - kissing/making out - mutual masturbation (m! + f! receiving) - breast fondling + nipple play + sucking - Daddy kink - threesome - double penetration; anal and vaginal - spoon/sidesaddle dp + reverse cowgirl dp positions - clitoral play (swiping) - praise - breeding kink - cervix fucking - unprotected sex (psa: wrap the willy; don't be silly) - pet names (angel, baby, good girl, love, mama, sweetheart, sweetie) - Nobara is your daughter; Yuuji is Nanami's - mention of drool/spit and tears.
𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 9.8k (Christ almighty...)
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: based on this ask from one of my anons; so happy to be writing an actual fic after a month, yippeee!! and tysm for 7.7k, my loveliesss!!
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“Hahah, I win again!”
“No fair, I used the aerials like you taught me, what!?
“Yeah, but there’s no point using them if you’re just gonna let Itadori counter.”
“Shut up, Megumi! Hey, Yuuji, one more time!”
“Hey, keep it down, you three.” You warn the children who cause a ruckus in the living room from the dining table. 
There’s nothing wrong with hanging with friends or going to someone’s house to play. Children are highly encouraged to do so to form deeper relationships! It’s what you’d want for your child, your sweet daughter poking out of her public shyness now that she’s playing video games with two of her best friends at a playdate.
Your daughter, Nobara, heard your warning and swerved her head back to apologize. “Sorry, momma! Itadori’s just cheating!”
“No, I’m not!” The pink-haired boy sitting next to your brunette daughter on the living room floor retorts. “She just sucks at playing!”
“Why you…” The two kids glare and argue to themselves while another sits on the living room couch and sighs at the interaction before him. Megumi was his name, the raven-haired boy putting his attention back on the animal encyclopedia he was reading. 
You chuckle before speaking again, “Well, cheating or not, keep your voices down, okay? Tsumiki is trying to do her homework.”The kids nod and return to their fun on the television; the sounds of controller buttons mashing and clicking fill the absence of their voices, and you go back to what you were primarily doing. “Need any help there, Tsumiki?”
The fourth grader perks up from using her name, flashing a weary smile in your direction. “I’m trying to find these countries for my quiz on Monday, but where are Colombia and Guyana…?” The paper before the little girl exhibited a blank sheet with a map of the North and Southern American continents; a word bank is provided to the side with a list of countries. 
Getting up from your chair, you walk to the vacant side where Tsumiki is and sit alongside her. “Hmm, let’s look at this together…”
This wasn’t your home; it belonged to the father of Yuuji Itadori. Staying during your daughter’s playdates was a rarity, particularly in another parent’s house. Yet today is a Friday, and you didn’t really have much to do other than clean the apartment and maybe catch up on a show or two. Besides, it didn’t hurt to watch the kids play and laugh now and then.
Luckily, you aren’t the only parent here; two other parents are taking out of their day to monitor the kids with you! The only problem is that…they make your stay a bit difficult.
Footsteps are heard descending the hall from the bedrooms, and your eyes peer to find a man walking into the kitchen area. “How’s studying going?” Golden blonde hair was the first you see, followed by the pleasant look of his chocolate brown eyes. A slim-fit grey long-sleeved shirt hugs his frame well, accompanied by dark-fitted jeans and dress socks. Kento Nanami, Yuuji’s adoptive father, has entered the scene and has made your heart skip to an irregular tune.
Thankfully, saving you from making a fool, Tsumiki answers the man. “Good, Auntie Y/n is helping me remember countries of South America!” She says with a blinding smile. 
“Is that so?” Nanami opens a cupboard to pull out a glass to pour water. “You think you’ll be okay for the quiz?”
“Mmmm, if I remember five countries out of ten, I should be fine. I know more, thanks to Y/n!”
“Good,” your breath hitches when he walks to stand behind the chair you were sitting on. “And how are those three?” 
You cough before averting your gaze to the living room. “They’re fine,” you watch your daughter exclaim in glory after finally beating Yuuji in the video game. The salmon-haired child groans in defeat, standing up to switch with Megumi so the other can play. “Nobara loves playing with the boys; they make her competitive spirit wild. It’s funny because she’s usually quiet and soft-spoken around me and others. However, that doesn’t explain her track record with terrorizing the boys of the school…”
Nanami chortles at your observation, the sound almost hypnotizing you. “Children bring out a different side in each other, helps them grow.”
“Wise words—“  
Grrooorrr!
You both stop at the sound of a rumble, glancing at Tsumiki to see that it is her grumbling stomach. The child chews her quivering lip and hides her face by looking back at her homework. You giggle, “You hungry?” She nods slowly. “Me too, sweetie; the pizza should be here any minute.”
“That’s odd,” Nanami takes a sip from his glass. “He said the food would be done by the time he’s off work. It’s almost 7 o’clock, is there traffic on—“
KA-CHA! CLACK-CLINK!
“Yo, I’m here with the pizzas,” another voice, a lot lower and gruff than the blonde’s, enters the space. Your heart skips again, and you instinctively turn to find the source — you know who the source is. 
Giant steps draw near the kitchen area, keys rustle as he stuffs them inside his jeans pocket, and the other hand holds three pizza boxes. After putting the food on the kitchen island, the man scratches his onyx head and stretches. His loose-fit cotton sweatshirt slips for a peak of his abs to be seen, and your eyes pull back before they hook onto the tanned skin for too long. Green eyes capture yours, and a smirk uproots the scar on the right of his lips. “Hey, Y/n,” the way he says your name pulls you in. “Good thing I caught ya before you could leave.”
You gulp to wet a dry throat. “It’s good to see you, too, Toji.”
Toji Fushiguro, the father of Tsumiki and Megumi, strides from the island down to where you three are, ruffling his daughter’s brown hair as a greeting. “How’s homework goin’?”
She swats her father’s hand away, fixing her ponytail. “It’s okay, I’m just hungry now.”
On that note, you decided it was time for everyone to take a break and eat. “All right, kids, the pizza’s here; come over and eat!” Nobara wastes no time springing out of the couch and sprints for the dining chair next to Tsumiki after you stand to grab the paper plates. 
The boys don’t move, eyes glued to the screen and fingers moving across the controllers. Nanami tries to get their attention again, only for Yuuji to excuse themselves for a few minutes. The golden-haired father looks to the other before giving him a curt nod, a signal for Toji to walk to where the boys were sitting and turn off the television. They groan in unison before the black-haired man picks them up effortlessly and waltzs back to the dining table. “Time to eat, squirts.”
You have known Nanami for a long time, meeting him around when Nobara was still aged by months and could barely walk. Being a first-time parent is no easy task, especially since the man took Yuuji as his own after the death of the baby’s parents and grandfather when he was just a newborn. The transition from sober salaryman to committed fatherhood wasn’t an gradual one. But you know what they say: it takes a village, no matter how big or small. You found Nanami at the perfect time while you took care of Nobara, lending a helping hand to the single guardian whenever he needed advice or help looking after the pink-haired babe. He’d return the favor, of course, having you two spending and getting to know more about each other throughout the years. So, as the babies grew and became friends, so did you and him. 
Toji entered your life around the same time as well; a single father of two was just as [if not more] challenging as your scenario. Not to mention – the poor man had to work ungodly hours, sometimes calling up a friend to look after his kids. You felt for him, even Nanami, so you’d help him out as well whenever he needed it, whether it be picking up Tsumiki and dropping her off at daycare or rocking three-month-old Megumi to sleep and waiting for the father to return home safely deep in the night.
Without the hood of parenthood, you three wouldn’t have become such good friends. Although there have been rough moments, at least you had the two to share and relate with if necessary. You’re so thankful for both fathers being in your life, serving as dependable outlets as you three grow along with your children. And it’s an even bigger blessing watching the kids have become great friends — practically inseparable! Words cannot express the gratitude for Nanami and Toji, treasuring the men so much that you’d love to maintain this mutual relationship with them as long as possible.
Being friends is more than enough; however, a tiny piece of yourself wishes something more to come out of this friendship. Admitting that to yourself is enough to have your ears heat up in shame. Crushing on the two fathers like some school girl, how embarrassing…
But can you blame yourself? As you all sit down and eat around the dinner table, you find it hard to restrict your eyes from wandering to either side of the table where the men sit. 
Don’t get it twisted; you’ve always thought of the dads to be attractive men. However, the more time you’ve spent visiting and getting to know them, you’ve found that they’ve become more and more charming as the years go by. Now, it has gotten a lot worse.
Nanami is so entrancing to the eye — damn near looks as if he walked out of a movie set. His mocha eyes were so soft and perfect with his mellow tone. The charismatic blonde easily played with your heart with how attentive he was, making sure if you and Nobara ever needed anything or ever wanted someone to voice with. God, he was too good to be true, it was hard not to fall in love with him — you were honestly mesmerized the moment he first said your name. Now, solely seeing him is enough to make your ears hot and your heart race. Your admiration for him threatens to dwell into that of a childish crush — how mortifying! 
And Toji — fuck, that man. Aside from having a body literally sculpted like an Olympic athlete, the dark-haired man was somebody who knew how to wind you down. Maybe it was the baritone voice that always captured your attention or the mischievous jokes and flirts he’d throw your way; whatever it was, Toji knew how to draw you in. Sure, you were a little intimidated by him at the start, but that’s long been substituted with feelings of trust and mutual respect from seeing how much of a good father he tries to be for his children. Although, the more you hear his gruff laugh, see his smile pull the scar, or forest green eyes drilling holes into your very being, the more you want to slap yourself for thinking about him day by day!
Goddamn it! As you sit at this table chewing on your pizza slice with the others, all you can think about is how pathetic you must be for falling for the two heartthrobs of your life. It’s appalling how these two fathers have yet to snatch up somebody, knowing there would be lines of people wanting a piece of them. And you sigh heavily, thinking if there’s ever a possibility you’d be lucky enough to be on the receiving end with either.
Probably not…
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
“Annnnd BAM! UNO!”
“What?? You’re cheating!”
“Am not! You can put draw twos on plus fours!”
“Hah!? That’s not in the rules!”
“So? That’s how my mom plays.”
Why am I being brought into this… You shake your head as you observe the kids play their final card game before bed. All the children are dressed in their respective pajamas, sitting in a circle around couch pillows as they draw and place cards down. The sunset has long been set as the hour hand touches the eleventh number; the kids usually go to bed at eight or nine. But it’s the weekend and meant to be a sleepover, so one or two more hours of fun shouldn’t hurt anyone.
“UNO Out!!” Except for the heavy groans shared with Megumi and Yuuji as Nobara finishes the card game with an enthusiastic slam, turning around to give the older brunette a high five. “See, Tsumiki? I told you I can handle it!”
“Man, that’s not fair,” Yuuji throws his card pile to the floor in exasperation. “Wish I knew about that rule beforehand.”
Megumi does the same, “You should’ve made the rules clear before we played the game.”
“Wahh, keep complaining, loser,” Your daughter annoys the boy with a blown raspberry. “Fine, we can try again; if I win, I’ll have Yuuji's bed to myself and Tsumiki.”
“Not happening!” You and the salmon-haired child deny the winner’s request, and the girl only snickers mischievously while Tsumiki deals the cards. 
Saved by the sound of footsteps approaching from the hall, Nanami is now here to dismiss the bunch. “All right, kids, time for bed.” Every one of them mourned at the statement; Yuuji quickly requested five more minutes, only to be shut down by his father. “Nope. I’m done with my shower, so you four must get to bed — that was the deal.”
“Aww man…” The four begrudgingly get up from the living room floor after putting the cards away and setting the pillows back on the couches. Before they leave, they wish you a good night. “Goodnight, Mom!” Nobara comes rushing to you for you to kiss her cheek.
“Goodnight, sweetpea,” you let go of her so she could run back. “And you three — where are my kisses?” Yuuji and Tsumiki happily come for you to place a goodnight kiss on their cheek. All that’s left is the silent child of the bunch who, unfortunately, doesn’t slip past your eyes. “That means you too, Megumi. Or else I’ll chase you down and kiss you up a storm like last time, you hear?”
The black-haired one fights a smile creeping his face, slowly taking steps to where you sat and fidgets as you kiss his cheek. You wish the boy goodnight, and he follows the others down the hall to the bedroom after doing the same. 
“Fushiguro’s in the shower now.” Now that the children are gone, Nanami sits on the left side of the couch before dimming the ceiling lights. He turns on the television, “Seems like they’re having fun.”
“Mmm, they are,” you settle by the middle to be close to him. “I can’t believe they’re all so big now. Didn’t Yuuji just turn eight years old last month?”
“Mhmm, he’s now the same age as Nobara and Megumi,” he says with a smile. “For a little while, that is. He is the youngest, after all.”
“You’re right, poor thing.” You giggle with a stretch. “Nobara’s gonna be nine this August, and Megumi at the end of the year…”
“Hmm. We are old.”
That made you laugh hysterically as the delivery of the comment sounded so defeated yet true. It’s okay, though, since Nanami was laughing himself with a shaken head. “Don’t say it like that! They say you get sexier during your thirties.”
“Are you sure about that? My grandfather had photos from his thirties, and he was balding and getting chunkier before turning thirty-five.” More laughter seeps through your lips. “I don’t know, Y/n; not all of us can keep fit like Fushiguro; he still works out while halfway approaching forty.”
“Now, hold on, Nanamin,” you grin while pointing to Nanami, and you can see him try to fight a smile after using the nickname he supposedly doesn’t like. “You can’t say shit, either; you still look like a model coming straight out of a Men’s Vogue magazine!” That made him laugh more, the sound warming your heart. "You still got it, Kento; a real prince charming."
“Why thank you, Y/n,” he appreciates the compliment.
“Of course.” 
The silence following that felt unsettling and had you fidgeting with the bottom of your halter top. Five uncomfortable minutes of nothing but the lowered volume of the television to fill the space. Come on, Y/n, keep the conversation going. “So, almost ten years, huh? A whole decade.” You watch Nanami nod along through your peripheral. “I remember the first time I met you; you looked like you barely got any sleep for the past month.”
“Because I didn’t. I was hassling with back-to-back meetings, on the cusp of finding another job to take outside of being a salaryman, and then had little newborn Yuuji to come home and put to sleep after feeding. Thank God you could babysit for him with Nobara; I’m forever grateful.”
“Oh God, I remember when you came home so tired while I was rocking both to sleep. I think that was the first and only time I’ve ever seen you fall asleep on the couch; so tired you forgot to greet me!” 
“We don’t talk about that,” he scratches his ear. “That wasn’t so bad when we promised to watch over Megumi and Tsumiki during the weekend while Fushiguro went to take up so many jobs. He fell to his knees once he passed the threshold, and I had to walk him to his bed.” 
You tittered at the recollection — all the memories mentioned made you feel warm and glad, all the years coming back to you with a happy memory. “We’ve done good, though. We managed, and the kids are growing to be good friends.”
“Before you know it, maybe Nobara will come to you about liking the boys—“
“That isn’t happening; I asked her the question like three weeks ago, and she said if she and the boys were the last people on Earth, she’d kill herself.” Nanami gasped and stifled a laugh, but you could see his shoulders bounce. “A third grader — an eight-year-old – telling me she’d off herself rather than be with one of the boys. Talk about radical...At least she loves to hang with them; she loves those boys like they’re her little brothers.” 
The blonde hums to your words. “Them being close is a blessing. I guess that’s thanks to us, having each other’s backs all these years.” 
It’s your turn to nod to him. “True, and I’m just glad they like being with each other.”
“Same here; Yuuji likes being with you guys,” he throws his head back. “…Just like I do.”
You blink. “What do you mean?” Suddenly, you feel as though you shouldn’t have asked that question because the way Nanami turns his head to look at you nearly paralyzes you. Oh my God…
“I like being with you.” He says it tenderly, only for your ears to pick up. “You make me feel at peace when you’re around, and I’m not as close to anyone as I am with you. A decade of you being in my life has made it more serene and…fun. So, I like it when you’re with me.”
You didn’t breathe a single puff of air during his speech. The worst part was that these were Nanami’s words — they were genuine. You could feel it in his bronze gaze, your heart unable to control itself. 
And it doesn’t help that your eyes took in every detail of him; his hair, usually neat and styled, is now down and damp from the shower, strands of hair sticking to his forehead. His home wear comprised a loose sweatshirt and dark grey sweats, but you snuck a glance of his collarbone that peaks from the opening collar of his shirt. You move your gaze to the floor to stop yourself from looking any further, or else more fuel for indecent fantasies will be stored for later!
Fingers fiddle with each other as you chew on your lip. God, Y/n, just fucking say it! “I, uhh…I like being with you, too, Nanami.”
“Do you really have to go?” He scoots in. “You know I don’t mind you staying over.”
“I—ahem—I think, yeah…I wouldn’t want to intrude on you and Toji; I’m sure you two would wanna catch up on stuff. I’ll just come back and pick Nobara up in the morning before—”
You stop uttering more once you feel a sudden hand on your right shoulder. Turning to your left, you didn’t even realize Nanami scooting to be so close to you, his face a hand’s length away from yours. Once again, you have forgotten how to breathe. And when he places his left hand on your right that lies on your lap? You don’t move a centimeter.
“I want you to stay,” his tone low and sincere. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I like you being around me. I…” He brings your hand to his lips, and a soft kiss makes you gasp faintly. “I love it, actually.”
You gulped. There’s no way this is happening right now. There’s just no way! “Kento—“
“I mean it.” He kisses your knuckles again, his eyes locked in with yours. He chuckles, “You were right.”
“About…what?”
“As you grew older, you have changed quite a lot. You’re…Well, no, you’ve always been pretty. But, all these years, you’ve become a lot more beautiful,” he draws his face in closer. “Breathtaking,” you instinctively close your eyes when his nose brushes yours. “Sexier.”
Nanami’s lips land on yours on the final word, and you don’t move a muscle when he does so. They felt soft against yours, perfect for the mellow kiss. It doesn’t last long, only a few seconds. Yet you quivered as he withdrew, placing his forehead against yours as his hand weaved with your fingers. 
“Ken…” Fuck, this is too much. The hand on your shoulder exhibits no interest in getting off. “I can’t, I have to—“ he shushes you with another kiss. 
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” What the fuck!? Did he just use a pet name on you? “You know I can take care of you, right? Even for one night,” you tremble when he licks your bottom lip. “Stay for tonight, okay?”
“Kento..” He pauses when you hesitantly remove your right hand from his grasp, thinking you’d push him off. But then you bring both hands to cup his sunken cheeks, caressing him with your thumbs. “…More.”
He doesn’t wait a second, accepting your request and bringing his back on yours. Small pecks to the lips gradually become more arousing and tilted heads to achieve a better angle for entry. You moan to his mouth, and so does he. Tongues slowly become adventurous, twirling with each other and exploring the other’s mouth. It feels so good; you lean into Nanami’s hold with every kiss. And he happily accepts you as he gives you more. 
Jesus Christ, something straight out of a dream. And if it was, you only hope to indulge in it for a little longer. More, more—
“What do we have here?”
However, you can’t indulge if another person comes into the frey unsuspectedly. 
Two bodies retreat from each other, sitting awkwardly on the couch appropriately as Toji walks into the living room. Your lips shook with anxiousness, stealing a glimpse of Toji’s smirk as he walked to your right. You sneak a glance at Nanami, seeing the shade of pink rise on his skin lightly, and you cover your face to shield yourself. Fucking fuck, this is embarrassing!
“Don’t act all shy on me now, you two.” Toji’s weight dents the right side of the couch, extending his arm to be behind you. “Don’t be scared, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Did you check the kids?” Nanami fakes a cough.
“Out like a light,” he answers, creeping his hand from behind onto your shoulder. You shudder at his calloused touch and gruff laugh. “What’s goin’ on, Y/n?” You meekly turned to look at him. Same with Nanami, Toji’s dark hair was damp from the shower, substituting his day outfit with a blank tank top and grey sweatpants. It took everything in your power not to peek at his pecs or exposed biceps. 
You avert your eyes from his. “Nothing…” You saw his chest jerk from a scoff. 
“Wow, you two are really gonna act like some kids, huh.” His snark remark has you both flattening your lips in shame. “Act all quiet when somethin’ happened.”
He prompted you to question. “How much…did you see?”
“I saw the kiss — you looked like you were enjoyin’ it.” He purposely said that to make your cheeks hot, the brazen bastard. “But I heard Kent here say he means it when he likes havin’ ya ‘round.”
Nanami speaks up while scratching his brow. “Y/n was, uhh, just about to leave.”
Toji lifts a brow. “Leave? When the night is still young?” He subtly shakes you. “Why so soon, hmm? It’s the weekend; I just got outta the shower an’ hoped you’d be here a lil' while.” He spoke to you slowly. It was a dangerous approach with that husky voice. He squeezes your shoulder when you’re not answering. 
“I just….You and Nanami probably have some ‘guy stuff’ you wanna catch up on, and I don’t want to come in between that, you know?” It’s here you muster the courage to look at the raven-haired man. Big mistake; now he has your attention where he wants it.
“So considerate, huh,” his free hand comes to your cheek, and you’re frozen as he plays with the flesh of it. “I think you should stay, Y/n. What kind of friends would we be if we let you drive out late." 
It’s hard to remind your body to breathe when Toji is surveying you intimately. What the fuck—why is this happening all of a sudden!?? “You–Toji, it’s okay, I’ll—“
“Besides,” he teases you by rubbing your earlobe with his thumb and forefinger. “I like you bein’ here, too.” You’re too distracted from him bringing his face to your neck to kiss, evoking an unstable gasp. “Lookin’ all pretty fr’ me…”
“Toji…—Ahh!” You didn’t notice him slide his hands down to the chest area of your halter top, his large palms groping your breasts affectionately. His kneads are rough yet pleasing, having you whimpering for him. “Don’t touch so…Hahhh…”
“Bad girl,” he chuckles to your ear after placing a kiss on your cheek. “Over here lettin' Kent touch you and think you can leave without me havin’ you for a bit, especially when you were eyein' us up earlier today...” He kisses your lips to take in your silent squeaks from fondling your chest, and you mewl for him. “Daddy wants you, too, baby…Heh, so does Kent.”
You peer to your left to see the mentioned man, and you’re taken aback to see him close to your side again. Holy shit. You literally questioned about this earlier, wondering if you’d ever be on the receiving side of these two. You did NOT expect this answer to come out of the blue within a few hours! And now that it’s here, how could you leave now?! This is what you wanted. And – to your surprise – so did they. 
You swallow spit and lift your left leg to the couch. And Nanami notices the initiative, coming between your legs to kiss your lips again. Your back pressed against Toji’s chest, you’re caged between the two men who seek to pleasure you in this proximity. You moan to Nanami sucking on your tongue, coinciding with the satisfying kneads of your breasts. 
Suddenly, Nanami breaks the kiss with a groan, and Toji chortles close to your ear. Curious, your eyes venture down to find that Toji’s hand grasps the tent of the blonde’s sweatpants. “Enjoyin’ y’rself, huh, Kent?” Toji strokes his hand on the boner, evident through the clothes.
“Toji, st—Hnnn…!” You watch this, eyeing Nanami’s composure slip away as his cock is being touched. The older man willingly massages his friend’s dick, and you observe how he effortlessly makes the sand-headed man hornier with his hand alone. It makes you feel hot, sensing a throbbing sensation in between your thighs. So, you silently bring a hand to sneak inside the hem of your wide-leg jeans. 
But you don’t go unnoticed because Toji kisses your cheek. “Like what ya see, sweetie?” He rests his chin on your shoulder. “Want me to take care of you? Here,” he then takes your hand to swap with his, your fingers feeling the rough skin of Nanami’s cock as you hold it. “Make him feel good, ‘kay?” 
You couldn’t believe it — Nanami’s hot, living cock was in your grasp. And as you have begun to stroke him, the noises he made turned you on even more. His veins are felt in your very palm, and precum exuding from his urethra lubricates the pretty fingers around his length. You can’t help but imagine how it would feel to have him ease the aching pulses between your legs, how good it would feel to have his girth massage your insides.
But your crude thoughts are interrupted by Toji’s left hand skillfully unbuttoning and unzipping your jeans, slithering inside your panties, and meeting your wet cunt with his fingers. You jolt, but he’s right there to coo, “Relax, mama,” his free hand squeezes your chin to turn and face him. “Daddy’s gotcha…So fuckin’ beautiful,” Toji slams his lips into you for a steamier kiss, and you lose yourself.
Your hand on Nanami goes faster, eliciting extra precum to escape and stain the material of his sweats. Nanami leans forward to lick and suck the skin of your neck, forcing you to break the kiss with Toji to wail inaudibly while his fingers brush up on your soaked folds with unforgiving speed. Not to mention his bulge grinding against your back…
“Ahhnn, wait, guyss, we can’t—Mmmm…!” Toji kisses you again, grinning at your expression as he sucks and nibbles on your tongue. “We can’t do this…Not here…”
“Why?“ Nanami blows on your ear. “What’s wrong, love?”
CREEAAKK!!
That’s what’s wrong!
Like a flipped switch, all three adults unscrew themselves away from each other and sit back into their original positions. Nanami immediately pulls his pants back up, using a couch pillow to hide the situation that shouldn’t be present as he’s sitting in the living room. Toji follows suit, leaning on the couch arm. 
Sounds of tiny footsteps draw near, and they belong to none other than your daughter, who sleepily rubs her eyes coming into the space. You are the first thing she sees, “Momma? You’re still here?” 
“Mhmm,” you hoped you didn’t sound too off. “I’m just watching a movie with Uncle Toji and Kento. What are you doing up?”
“I thought I heard your voice,” Nobara walks to you and puts her head on your shoulder, and you voluntarily pick her up to have her sit on your lap. You smile; even though she’s growing day by day, she’s still your baby at heart. “Didn’t you say you’d leave after I go to bed?”
“Yeah, I was supposed to,” the two men sitting on either side of the couch say nothing. “And I can’t go now, seeing you’re still up.”
Nobara nuzzles into your neck. “Does that mean you’ll spend the night, too?” 
“Mmm, I wish I could, sweetpea,” you kiss her forehead. “But I didn’t bring any change of clothes or pajamas. I don’t even have my toothbrush – I’d be walking around with stinky breath.” You hear the girl giggle at your words.
What you just said gave the two fathers an idea, the men giving each other a look before saying anything. “I have some unused travel-size toothbrushes and toothpaste I’ve kept from business trips.” Nanami inquires; you put your foot in your mouth on that one.
Toji adds, “You can use the sweatshirt I wore today as PJs. I don’t mind.”  
Of course, you don’t.  Shaking your head, you knew what the two were insinuating. The adult language is too nuanced for your daughter to pick up on. It’s not like you’ve never slept over Nanami’s place before; you’ve done it dozens of times — even Toji’s! However, this time was different; you three have crossed a line you didn’t think was possible. What happened minutes ago was a mere taste of what could happen if you three decided to change this relationship into something more intimate. And now, after revealing the curiosity, the men were all in to see it through.
…And yet, you can’t say you don’t feel the same either. Are you kidding? You have goosebumps just thinking back on how close you three were, how their hands and lips felt on your skin, and their attention placed on nothing – on no one else – but you. It made your heart beat uncontrollably, knowing that your decade-long crush on them was being favored in more ways than one — like a dream come true!
“Mom?” Snapping back to reality, you peer to Nobara, who awaits your answer. With a smile, you boop her nose with a finger.
“Only if you go back to sleep, sweetpea.”
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
The hour hand had finally met the twelfth number, the midnight hour designating the quiet neighborhood into a calm slumber. Light posts automatically turn on to display the sidewalk, yet the darkness of the night serves as a blanket to cover the silent homes. 
Nanami’s home was simple — a one-floor house perfect for the blonde man and his son. Aside from the living room and kitchen, it had a hall that harbored the bedrooms, Yuuji’s guest bathroom, and closet. The children were all resting in Yuuji’s room, the first door to the left you’d meet when entering the hallway. Other than the master bedroom, there was no other room besides the living room couch for you to sleep in. 
Being by yourself is something Nanami wouldn’t want, and Toji would’ve primarily taken the couch since you had no plans of staying. But since that’s been changed, the two men took this opportunity to enjoy their sleepover with your company, using the master bedroom at the end of the hall to further themselves from the ears of the snoring kids. Tonight, you’d finally have your answer by being spoiled by your crushes all night.
“Dahhh, Toji, yer tongue…fingers…Ohhh!”
“Fuck, Y/n, you look so gorgeous…Here, kiss me, angel.”
“Mmmm, fuckin’ shit, y’ taste so good…Waited so long fr' this..."
You were practically stuck with them the moment they locked the door. After borrowing Nanami’s shower, your nude body was met with hungry hands and hot kisses, drowning your senses with their overwhelming presence. Three naked bodies lie on the bed, you with your back to the sheets and legs spread. To your right was Nanami, making out with you lovingly while a hand cups and massages a breast. Toji had his face nestled between your thighs, his tongue licking around your labia and fucking your vagina, inspiring you to cry for the blonde next to you. The older man also pleases you by fingering your asshole with lube, conditioning it for future use.
You melt into Nanami’s kiss, and soft tweaks on your nipple make you mewl into his lips more. But you withdraw to scream, “Ahhaaa! Kentoo, touch me more…”
“Hmm? What, baby?” He presses his lips to your cheek, kissing your chin to the outlet between your neck and shoulders. “You like it when I play with your chest?” A low snicker humors him from watching you nod, and he brings his mouth to your nipple to suck on. 
You grip the sheets, “Ohhh, hooo…! Tojiii, y’re gonna make me c—Uuuhh!”
He separates his mouth from your soapy folds, and your liquids stick to his chin. What an obscene sight with the grin he has on his face. “Yeah? Ya wanna cum on my mouth, mama?” Unlike Nanami, Toji doesn’t take a nod; he’s a bit of an asshat, so he licks your clitoris to tease. “Use them words, baby; wanna hear you say it fr’ me.”
“Y–Yesss, yes, I do,” a hushed howl after Toji sucks on your pearl and the other rubbing on your nipple to the roof of his mouth. “Pleaseee, I wanna cum…!”
“Heh, well, don’t go cummin’ on me just yet,” he kisses your slit before straightening up and pats your inner thigh. “All ready fr’ ya, Kent.”
Nanami then releases your nipple with a ‘pop’ and maneuvers to lay on his side. “Come here,” he asks,  resting your head on his arm and lifting your leg. You hum at the contact of his glans meeting your cunt, “So wet for me, huh?” He pushes his cock to the entrance, and you gasp at the tip inserted into your vagina. “Relax, angel,” he coos to you with a kiss on your nose, gauging your reaction as he slowly snugs your vagina with every inch of his cock. 
Your mouth goes agape at the stretch of you taking him in; the feeling of his cock feels too good and surreal. And the brush of his dick on your sweet spots has you squeak, same with him poking on your cervix. He throws in a few thrusts to start, but you didn’t expect that. No, fuck! He rubs on your walls at a precise angle, prompting your orgasm to come a bit too quickly to comprehend. So, you have to bite your lip to keep your scream hushed, letting the flutter of your cunt speak for you. 
And Nanami notices it, hissing at the contraction. “—Hnnm! Shit…Did you cum, sweetheart?”
“Oh, did they?” And here comes Toji, straddling both the bodies below him. He leans into your face, licking your ear. “Felt that good, huh, baby? We haven’t even started.” He kisses your forehead before uncurling back up and aligning his dick to your lubed anus. Then, he pushes the tip to be swallowed by your puckered hole, and you mumble small prayers as his fat length is pushed inside. “Shit, this tight ass…”
The older man begins to move into you, his shaft churning the inside of your ass. Nanami does the same, his cock scraping your insides synched with Toji’s rhythm. The movement has you immediately making noise beyond your control, wails bouncing around the space between you and the men. 
It isn’t long before the two find a groove; Toji pistons his cock with every pull of Nanami’s, and sounds of skin slapping lasciviously against each other are picked up by your ears. How could you not tighten more around the limbs inside you, especially when they scrape on against your tender wails so accurately? Especially after coming, your nerves have not yet recovered from the wave earlier. 
“Ohh! Hoooh fuuuck,” your back arches a bit, helping the sand-haired man to find a better angle to scratch the upper wall of your vagina. Your vision is screwed shut, making it easier to indulge in the sensation of their cocks ravaging your insides. 
Toji sees you from up top, his eyes traveling down to your ass and whistling at the sight of you taking his and the other’s dick. “Damn, ya feel so good, Y/n. Ass so tight, act like ya don’t wanna let go.”
God, why’d he have to say it like that? Your face was hot enough; did he want to make you melt on this bed? And Nanami doesn’t make it any better. “Heheh, they twitched,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, felt it, too…What’s goin’ on, sweetie?” Toji pulls his cock until his cockhead is on the verge of coming out, and he slams it back down to have you moan aloud. “Ya like bein’ fucked like this? Takin’ Daddy’s cock like a good girl…?”
“They’re gripping me again.”
“Ken, stoop!!” The fair-headed man laughs at your protest, your resilience still present even if it’s wiped away in seconds when Toji quickens his pace. “Nnhhh…! N-Not too fast, I’m sensit’veee—Ahhh!” 
“You say that, but your body says otherwise, love,” Kento brings a hand to your hip to massage. “—Nnnn! Jesus…wanna cum so bad…”
Oh, fuck, imagine: being filled to the brim by Nanami’s come? Being stuffed by both of them? It turned you on so bad. “—OhhhGod, please, cum inside me!”
Gold eyebrows furrow. “I can’t, baby; don’t got a condom on—“
“It’s okay, I want it…!” The thought of getting pregnant again should be the very last thing that should pop into your mind right now. And yet, being knocked up by these two has you craving Nanami’s release even more. “Pleaseeplease, I want you to fill me up…! Don’t hold back for me, Ken.” You can tell he’s still on the fence about it. But with a kiss on his nose and a soft hand on his cheek, you convince him otherwise.
“Wanna be the mother of my child so bad, huh?” He says with a chortle, “So beautiful…” Before he snaps his hips into you, Nanami brings you in for one more kiss and wraps his hand on your shoulder to keep you close. He ruts into you with purpose, making sure he’s balls-deep with every push and reaching the deepest he can. You howl at the brush of your cervix again, allowing him to use you to chase his climax.
“Oh? You got him going, now,” Toji comments from above with a smirk, still maintaining the pace with Nanami despite the younger male going erratic. Your screams go higher and higher, so you bring in a hand to cover up the noise. This was not the time to test how thick the bedroom walls were, despite the kids sleeping a closet and office away. 
Nanami groans into your lips; his length relentlessly rubs your silky texture. And when his orgasm does reach him, he grinds his pelvis, stirring his length so deep that you can’t help but writhe with him. You can feel his penis pulsate with every pump of his load inside you, satisfying your excitement as your hand massages his skull. He keeps you like this until his body has calmed down, sluggishly removing his pillowy lips from yours with a sigh. 
Chocolate brown orbs are fixated on yours, the hand on your hip coming up to wipe spit from your face. “God, you drive me crazy. Making me cum inside, one child’s not enough?”
You titter, “Well, wouldn’t hurt to have another, you think?…Mmmm,” you almost forget about Toji. The raven-haired man removes himself from your ass, his shaft still standing.
“Don’t forget ‘bout me, now,” he reminds you two of his presence, getting his frame off you both so you can move around. 
You stand with your knees between Nanami’s legs while he sits upright. “Come here,” he places his hands on your hips and leads you back onto his cock. This time, he’s the one entering your asshole, and you both moan at the union of your sexes. Once your ass meets the base of his pelvis, his arms wrap around your waist and carefully bring you down with him. Your back to his chest, his lips to your ear. “So tight and warm…Hmmm.”
This position is new to you – in fact, this was all new! You can’t remember the last time you had your body this close and intimate with another figure. It’s been so long – damn near bizarre - especially when your heat is transferring with the gold-haired man behind you. The aroused hums to your ears have you throb involuntarily; you could melt into his arms right about now.
That thought goes out the window when Toji’s weight has you looking in front of you, and your brain nearly shuts down at the sight of the older man coming in between your legs to lift them, his emerald eyes locked on yours. Jesus, fuck! You had to turn away – it was all too much! 
“Ah ahh, don’t go turnin’ ‘way from me,” he gives your legs for Nanami to hold from the back of your knees, and then he cups your cheeks and moves your face back to him. “Waited almost ten years to have you like this, so I wanna see all of you, mama.” Just when your face couldn’t get any more unreasonably hot, this handsome bastard just had to say that while fondling your chest! And it doesn’t help the other charming face is placing kisses on your neck. 
Toji uses this position to spread your folds; he can’t suppress the ardent smirk lifting his scar. “Kent did his thing on you, and ya still want more, huh?” You press your lips together when he slaps his glans on your leaky chasm. “Watch...” Your eyes follow down to the tip of his dick, vulgarly using the come seeping out of you as lube. You gasp sharply at the insertion, “Breathe fr’ me, baby,” he coaxes you through every inch of him, burrowing inside your inner channel that you almost forget to blink from the display. The girth of him has you wail beneath him, and you cry at the poke of your cervix again! Christ, you don’t know how long you can do this. 
“—Hnngh…! Fuck, good girl,” the dark-haired one praises, grinding his pelvis down to churn more friction inside you. “So good fr’ Daddy...”
Slow ruts to your chasm begin the second round, three bodies rocking within a mutual cadence. You throw your head back with shut eyelids concentrating on the two dicks that push to and fro from your holes and scrape your walls. And a choked scream leaves your frame at the jab of your cervix again. 
“Ohhhshiit,” eyebrows furrow with a chewed lip, and the two men begin to quicken the pace. “HooohGod! F’eel so good…Ahahhn!”
Toji puts his hands on the headboard as leverage, using his hips and the flex of his abdomen to take control. Fuck, seeing his nude physique so up close was too marvelous; it couldn’t be true — it shouldn’t be! 
And Nanami is no better while whispering to your ear. “Feeling good, Y/n?” He teases your lobe with a lick, “Gripping on us like crazy as if you’ve been waiting for this, hmm?” You try to protest, but all that comes out are sobs when he jerks his hips unexpectedly. He chuckles, “So cute…Hmm? Heh, you are feeling good, huh, love.”
Can you believe it? Being fucked by these two attractive men, and you’re fingering your clit in the midst of it all? Embarrassment rings your ears as your fingers swipe and grind around the neglected pearl. Toji and Nanami share a look for a split second, and then Nanami switches his hands with the other. Instead, an arm snakes around your waist to keep you on him, and the other silently moves yours aside to play with your clit. 
That only has you crying even harder. Pinches to your clit and kisses to your leg accompany the increased speed of their thrusts. Tears well up at every jolt of your body from the frequent jabs to your vaginal walls, scraping your G-spot so precisely. And the length in your butt keeps feeling so fucking good! Grazing your velvet texture that you can’t think straight.
“—Gaahhh! Mmmph!” Your hand finds Nanami’s wrist to hold on to as his middle and ring fingers swipe on your clitoris. You scream his name when he pitches it softly, “Kent—Ohhh! Shhtop, ish too much!!”
“Yeah, too much?” He toys with it gently. “But I don’t hear you telling me to stop…”
The two of them go at a sporadic pace, skin slapping onto yours harshly in sync. They nearly take your breath away, thanking God they have a hold on you before the momentum steers you away. “Hahah, ohhh, ohmyGod, guys,” Toji bends down to add more of his weight, making you howl from the angle of his fat cock. “I cannn’t; again, I’m about to cuuhmm agaiinn!!!”
“Really? You wanna cum, baby? Mmph! Fuck, this pussy…” He groans. “Gonna be a good girl and let Daddy finish here, yeah?” You nod, and Nanami pinches your clit again on Toji’s behalf. “Words, sweetie, words.”
“Yesss, Daddyyy!” 
“Gonna lay there and look cute while I knock ya up, right?” Again, the thought of having another baby should not have you excited. But again, there’s no way your head could be right during all of this. “Hmm? Want Daddy to give ya a baby?”
“Mmmm! Please, Daddyyy, fill me up…!” You were spouting out nonsense, but who cares? “Make me a mama again…Ohhh!”
And he does just that, pounding his shaft at you so harshly that it rocks your entire body, especially with how he brings your legs up to your chest to have your slit fully exposed for him. “Holy shit,” he bites his lip as he eyes your nude frame before him. “Look so fuckin’ sexy like this, Y/n.”
You couldn’t thank him for the compliment, your lips busy with Nanami’s as he takes you in for a steamy kiss. Both men drill their members into you in erratic unison, leaving you a squealing mess for the fair-headed one to deal with. His hands continue to tweak and grind on your clitoris, and your orgasm hits you before you can prepare yourself with a tear trickling down. 
And the flutter of your walls around their cocks eggs them onto waves of their own, groaning along with your cries as they piston you with the final ruts of their hips. Their pulsating lengths exert their loads inside your holes simultaneously, filling you up with their essence as their sweaty bodies heave and shudder. Nanami releases your clit from his grasp, the same with your lips. 
He hums pleasantly, his brown orbs hooded yet comforting. “Told you I love having you around me.”
“Bet y’re glad you stayed over,” Toji’s hand finds its way to your chin after putting your legs down. He scoffs when you bashfully nod, bringing you in for a kiss. “Did so well, mama…”
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
Mornings are typically a thing you share with your daughter in the comfort of your home. From the moment she came into your world to having her own room and bed, Nobara would always be the first thing you’d see when waking up. Coming into your room to greet you, pulling you out for something, or get dressed and ready for the day with you – it was a routine the two of you shared, a sacred thing to enjoy between parent and daughter. So, to wake up in a room different from yours or see a different face has been a rarity ever since she became your top priority.
This morning, though, was one of those rarities.
“Good morning, Y/n.”
Your eyes flickered open from birds chirping and the sun peaking from the bedroom curtains. Drowsy eyes scan around to see that you are not in your room, already being alerted that something had happened last night of the change of scenery. And when you look to see who lies beside you, it all hits you like a slap.
It was like a scene from a romance movie, waking up to Nanami’s stunning face that was highlighted by the sunlight. Fair blonde hair that matched the softness of his russet eyes and a kind smile to match. And your breath hitches when he brings a hand to caress your cheek. 
“Mornin’, Y/n.”
And, of course, he wasn’t the only one who’d be greeting you. You sheepishly turn around to see the other man looking at you, viridian orbs ready to meet your pretty face. The smile on his face pulls the scar on his lips, the man effortlessly shooting an arrow into your heart. 
Everything that occurred the night before flashes, and the heat returns to dance on your cheeks and ears. Waking up in a different bed with two handsome men is one thing. To wake up to your crushes greeting you good morning, all three of you nude and comfortable after a night of mutual passion? Oh, you had to be dreaming still.
And yet, you couldn’t look at either of them in the eyes, averting your gaze modestly. “…Good morning,” you say quietly, almost squeaking your heart out when they both move to be closer. They kiss you, embrace you, and give you attention as if your decade-long crush has finally been lifted for them to spoil you. It’s kind of suffocating in a way. But, God, it felt so good.
Eventually, you got up and threw on some clothes to make food for everyone, Nanami joining you after putting his sleepwear back on. Toji had to leave for a moment to grab stuff from the store, his daughter waking up to the sound of him slamming the front door close. Then came Megumi, then Yuuji, who greeted Nanami with a hug, and now Nobara. The children sit around the table and mingle while you and the blonde fix some blueberry waffles, eggs, and bacon.
“Isn’t that my dad’s shirt?” Megumi was the first to notice it, pointing to the sweatshirt that went with your loose jeans — the same sweatshirt that Toji wore yesterday.
You flatten your lips before coming up with an answer. “Yes…I had nothing to wear for sleeping over, so he gave me his shirt. He didn’t mind; he brought an extra one.”
“You stayed over, Auntie?” Yuuji inquired after taking a sip of his apple juice. “Where did you sleep?”
“On the couch.”
Brown brows scrunch together before Nobara asks, “But wasn’t Uncle Toji the one who’d sleep on the couch?” 
You open your mouth, but words fail to exit out. Sharing a glance with Nanami, who coughs while putting waffles on plates, he covers for you. “He slept in my bed with me.”
“You slept with my father?” Tsumiki interrogates, trying to stifle a laugh. “He snores a lot, so I’m sorry if you couldn’t sleep, Uncle Nanami.”
As if on cue, the front door opens and closes with the arrival of her father, walking to kiss Tsumiki’s cheek and ruffle Megumi’s hair before entering the kitchen. He pulls something out of the plastic grocery bag and hands it to you. Putting the mixing bowl down, you take what seems to be a box, and your eyes widen to Toji’s amusement. “I’d take those before leaving if I were you.” 
“Jesus Christ,” you put the box of birth control to the side with a flustered face. “Thank you…” And before you can process it, Toji sneaks a kiss on your cheek with you distracted. The older man cackles to himself when you slap his arm and push him off. Thankfully, none of the kids notice.
“Uncle Toji,” Nobara grabs the man’s attention. “Is it true you slept with Uncle Nanami?” 
The question takes him aback, but Toji’s quick on his feet to reply. “Yeah, I did. Your dad looks like a dead man when asleep, Yuyu.”
The pink-haired child nods along to the nickname. “Mhmm! Even when he comes home from work, he looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks, like some kind of vampire.” You snuck a glimpse at the sand-haired man, who rolled his eyes before bringing plates to put on the table. 
“Anyways,” he diverts the conversation to a different subject, placing a plate full of food in front of the boys. “Be ready for the zoo after breakfast, Yuuji. Didn’t you say you wanted to see the new tiger cubs?”
The Fushiguro siblings brighten with interest at the mention of the zoo, turning to their father, who instantly shuts them down with crossed arms. “Don’t even think about it. I’m already takin’ you two to the aquarium tomorrow; you want me to pay for more tickets for some animals?”
The joy in their eyes diminishes in seconds. “Cheapskate,” Megumi mumbled under his breath, earning a blueberry to be thrown at him by Toji. But the siblings smile when Nanami says that they can come along. 
“Momma,” you dreaded hearing your daughter’s voice during this conversation, hesitantly peering at the dark-haired girl after being given her breakfast. “Can I go, too?” 
Oh, goddamn it. “I’m sorry, baby, but I can’t keep going back and forth from the house and wherever. Besides, you have karate today.”
“I can skip!” Your mouth drops at her enthusiasm. “Besides, we can just sleep over again!”
This girl! “Nobara, you can’t just go making those decisions like this is your home. Did you ask Yuuji’s father if it was okay to stay another night?” You probably shouldn’t have said that, as the girl immediately asks the blonde father the exact question. And to your shock, he says they’re free to stay another night. You’re not helping! “You don’t even have an extra pair of clothes!”
And to make it worse, the onyx-haired man beside you says this, which makes you facepalm with a groan. “I can drive you two home and back. Saves ya some gas.”  You’re not helping either, and you’re just losing gas for my sake!
Mornings were supposed to be an easy thing to deal with. And yet here you are, dealing with a predicament. Shit like this is precisely why you don’t stay for too long during Nobara’s playdates and sleepovers; now you’re backed into a position where saying no seems futile. Nothing wrong with the children wanting to hang out more, but fuck does it throw the routine off. However, it wasn’t all bad. Because the whole point of this was for the little girl to have fun with her friends, who are you to be a Debby downer on her parade?
Plus…you’d get to hang out with Toji and Nanami for another day; that alone has your stomach running laps right now. Not only did you have your feelings reciprocated by the two men within a single night and then some, but you’re now invited to stay another day and enjoy the weekend in their company. You can sense their gazes on you, awaiting your answer – your approval to spoil and please you for one more night. And what makes your heart skip into flips is that there would probably be more days and nights to deepen this relationship between you three…
So, with a heavy sigh, you slide your hand down your face.
“…Can we at least go get some spare clothes first?”
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© 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐲2024 – reblogs + comments are appreciated wholeheartedly ☆ header art by rororogi morgera + dividers by @/cafekitsune.
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iggyywrites · 1 month
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Keep Up!
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Pairings: Wolverine/Logan Howlett x Fem!Reader
Summary: Logan knew moving in with Wade was going to be a bad idea….his next door neighbor doesn’t help with that either
Warnings: 18+ fic, fem!reader, angst, hurt/comfort, smut, age gap (reader is in her 20s), mentions of alcohol, male masturbation, Logan listens to reader getting fucked, daddy kink, Logan fingers reader, p in v penetration, creampie, making out, nipple play.
An: No one make fun of me for not being able to do Wade’s witty remarks justice, I am just a girl.
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Logan knew this wasn’t a good idea.
There was virtually no timeline that existed currently where living with Wade fucking Wilson was a good idea for Logan. He could barely handle speaking to him for thirty minutes, let alone sharing a living space with him.
However, behind the man’s rapid fire tongue that had a copious amount of shit talking to go with it, he was genuine, and as much as Logan hated to admit it…
He didn’t really have anyone in this timeline but Wade.
So, after quite a bit of groaning and grumbling under his own breath, he finally agreed to moving in with Wade, which didn’t take long at all, seeing as he came to this timeline against his will with nothing but his bright yellow hero suit on his body.
To Logan’s surprise, things weren’t terrible his first week there. Wade was annoying, that much was true and inevitable, however he had his own shit to do, which had him out of Logan’s hair most of the time, leaving him all on his own in the tiny two bedroom apartment.
Logan was starting to realize that maybe all of this wasn’t as bad as he cut it out to be. Things started to feel particularly good on the Friday night following the end of his first week there. Wade was nowhere to be found, he had the living room to himself and a nice bottle of whiskey to grant him the sweetest dreams (or lack there of) meaning he could simply enjoy his own company in the comfort of silence that was rare living with Wade. He sighed softly as he sat back, legs spread wide as he took a sip of his drink, sinking down into the couch in a pool of pure bliss-
A knock at the door ripped him away from all of that almost immediately.
He groaned softly, lifting his head as he turned to look at the door, brows furrowed for a moment as he silently threatened whoever it was behind it to knock it again. When they did, he turned his head in the opposite direction to face the clock on the wall, noticing that it was already going into the later hours of the night.
No one should be knocking their door this late.
By the third round of knocks to the door, Logan was fixing his posture, annoyance coursing through his veins at the disruption of his night. Whoever it was that was choosing to knock this many times on their door was in for it at this point.
However, Wade was beating him to it. The man swiftly slipped past Logan, pushing the older man back down into the couch, forcing Logan to fall back with a low groan, the gesture not helping with his growing annoyance.
“She’s here! She’s here!” Wade squealed out like an excited child, skipping and clapping his hands together as he made his way to the door.
“Who the fuck is that-“ Logan’s words were cut off but Wade practically hissing at the man as he whipped his head around to face him.
“Keep your fucking voice down! This is one of the only things I look forward to and I will not let Arthur Morgan ruin this for me. So shut your mouth, and drink your go-go juice, alright angel?” Wade seethed out as he gestured towards Logan’s bottle of whiskey before he turned around, tucking a strand of invisible hair behind his ear before he sighed softly, reaching forward and opening the door.
That’s when you walk in.
Behind the door is you. You’re pretty, young, bright smile plastered on your face, cheeks beaming with happiness as you bounce on your heels, snacks and drinks practically spilling from your arms as you struggle to hold them. Logan doesn’t stop himself from craning his neck forward to get a look at you, watching as you stare up at Wade like he’s your favorite person in the entire world.
Both you and Wade squeal in a way that sounds way too similar, and if Logan wasn’t so fucking confused right now he’d most definitely comment on it.
“There she is! Come to Daddy my little buttercup!” Wade groans as he lifts you up into his arms. A noise that’s a cross between a groan and a giggle leaves your lips as he squishes you to his chest, your eyes fluttering shut as you let him squeeze you tight.
“Wade! You’re…crushing me..” you wheeze out, all while having a bright smile on your face.
“Crushing ensues when you don’t visit me for two weeks. I was planning on shimmying my tight little ass down the air ducts to land straight into your bedroom so we can finish these last two episodes” Wade hummed our matter of factly, casually keeping you pressed against his chest as he kicked the door shut and carried you into the house before setting you down.
Logan’s watching the entire thing play out from the couch, eyebrows raised as he watches someone finally match the man’s hyperactive energy levels.
“I had a cold! I didn’t want to get you sick” you giggle out softly as you turn to face him as you walk into the apartment, still completely oblivious to the other man sitting on the couch.
“Princess have you taken a look at this mug? Influenza sees me and it runs” he grins at you whilst pointing at his face, which only earns a gentle nudge to his side with your elbow.
You finally turn towards the man on the couch, a look of surprise on your face as you take in his face, his form. It doesn’t take very long for you to come to the realization that whoever it is that’s been sitting here this entire time, is one of the most attractive men you’ve ever seen.
You never thought in your entire life that you’d see the Wolverine in person.
“Oh! How rude of me…I didn’t know you were busy Wade” Your voice is soft as you apologize, eyes wide and worried that you’d interrupted something you had no business stepping into. Logan can already see the way your sneaker clad feet are turning to leave, giving both him and Wade an apologetic smile.
“Oh no you don’t. You aren’t using that sweet little understanding bit with me. If Wolvie wants to join in on our weekly Vanderpump Rules watch party, then he can. If he doesn’t, then the honey badger can kick rocks” Wade bends down a bit, giving you an assuring nod as he places his hand on the small of your back.
Logan rolls his eyes as he throws back the rest of his whiskey. “I’m way ahead of you asshole” Logan grumbles out, annoyed with many things already.
“Hold on there beautiful, don’t be rude. Everything that is good and pure in the world is standing in the middle of our apartment and you aren’t going to introduce yourself?” Wade scoffs out in disbelief, his words making you roll your eyes as you give him another nudge.
“Wade it’s fine, he doesn’t have to-“ you try, seeing just how little patience the man had from the few words he’d given you since you walked in.
“My name is Logan, I live here now” he nodded, his words short and brief.
You hate yourself because him acting this way is only making you want him more.
You inhale deeply before you give him a soft smile, the snacks you’d brought still clutched close to your chest, fingers pressing against the crinkly material of the various packages as you nod.
“It’s nice to meet you Logan. My names (y/n). I hope to see you around the building more often” you beam, your response a bit too bubbly and excited for someone who’d been hit with the driest, most bland introduction from a man probably ever.
Logan watches you closely for a bit, eyes taking in your bright expression, your excited eyes that are practically shining with stars in them. You’re young, and eager and Logan knows exactly what kind of girl you are just by the way you’re smiling at him. He’d run into a million different versions of you at bars and clubs, out on the streets when he was on missions, anywhere that he was able to be perceived, he ran into someone like you.
That in and of itself lets Logan know that he needs to stay far away from you.
He gives you a nod before pushes himself off of the couch, lazily grabbing the bottle of whiskey as he begins walking out of the living room towards his bedroom.
He can already hear your feet stepping forward on the wooden floor, so he braces himself for what he knows what’s coming next.
“You’re more than welcome to stay! I know it’s corny but the show is actually very entertaining” you giggle out softly as you offer yours and Wade’s tradition to Logan as well.
“I’m good sweetheart” he mumbles out without even turning around, raising his hand up as he gives you a back handed wave, rounding the corner to his bedroom. “Was nice meeting you” he makes out before slamming his door shut, the noise making you flinch.
You frown softly as you turn to face Wade. “Was it something I said?” You whisper out, worried you might have offended the man
Wade rolls his eyes at his roommates reaction, turning towards you as he extends his hand out, his palm going nearly rigid as he gives you a stiff pat to the head. “We can’t all be as excited about life as you are, angel. Life sucked the fun out of that one before you probably learned how to drive” he sighed out before he pulled you over to the couch.
“Now! If I don’t have Lisa Vanderpump meddling in the love lives of her alcoholic lounge employees in the next five seconds I am going to blow this entire complex up. Let’s get to it sugar plum” he nodded to himself as he forces you down into the couch, grabbing his remote and getting right down to the festivities of that fine Friday night.
You however, had a particularly harder time than usual paying attention to the shitty reality tv show that you and Wade bonded over, and there was only one person to blame.
Logan.
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Logan is shocked to be the only one awake the next morning.
His head is pounding from all the whiskey he drank, and he knew he’d be nursing quite the hangover from it all. What he didn’t know however, was that Wade would be slumped in his bed much longer from a night with you than he was.
He’s alone in the kitchen for maybe two hours when Wade finally emerges from his bedroom, a long drawn out groan following as he massages his temples, eyes screwed tight due to the bright sun spilling in.
“Jesus fucking Christ….can’t anyone afford some fucking curtains here? I feel like I’m staring into Satan’s asshole” He groans out, eyes finally opening to watch the mountain of a man standing over a bowl of cereal in the kitchen.
“Why hello there sunshine, did the whiskey bottle tug you out of bed early this morning? You’re almost never conscious while the sun is still up” Logan rolls his eyes at his roommates words, bringing the bowl to his lips and slurping up the rest of the milk before he put the empty bowl into the sink behind him, large hand going down to wrap around his coffee mug.
“Look who’s talkin’….you and your friend seemed to have just as much fun as I did” he sighs out, voice gravely and rough.
Wade smiles brightly as he nods, making his way into the kitchen as he lets out a happy sigh. “A (y/n) hangover would bring you to your knees grandpa….although I have the feeling you might not be too opposed to that with how your filthy eyes were eating her up….shes cute isn’t she? Single too. If Vanessa hadn’t swept me off my feet and stolen my heart I would have been ten toes deep into her by now” Wade rambles out as he searches the pantry for something to fill his stomach with.
Logan isn’t shocked to hear that you’re single, and in the best way possible of course. You were very very attractive, however the way that you looked at him let him know everything he needed to know about you.
“I don’t think I asked. She’s not my type” Logan sighs out softly before taking a sip of his coffee.
That wasn’t true at all, not entirely at least. Logan found you attractive from the moment he laid eyes on you. Only an idiot could look at you and try to convince themselves that you weren’t a beautiful girl. However, Logan knew what kind of girl you were. You were a young girl who probably had some sort of fantasy to fuck a ‘dilf’ (as Wade called them) and you’d bat your pretty lashes and pout your lips to get Logan to melt for you, but that was only the half of it. You only wanted to fuck him, to have someone experienced work on your body just to leave and venture out on your own once you were done with him.
Logan was old and miserable and hard to deal with, all things that he was very aware of. Being with him was not a fucking cake walk, and he knew that those twinkles in your eyes when you saw him were all driven by raging hormones that would dissipate once you realized how much of a piece of shit he was.
Logan was too old for this, and he was too old for you.
“Not your type? Of course she’s your type! She’s everyone’s type. That’s like saying Beyoncé isn’t your type and I will not allow you to disrespect the queen…the bee hive is fucking scaring” Wade practically whimpered out before he let out a groan.
“Is it the age gap? Because if it is, they sell pills for that sweetie. It’s a normal part of life that we all go through! There’s nothing to be ashamed of and I’m sure she would understand-“ Wade’s words are cut off by Logan lifting up his hand, the sharp sound of his claws shooting through his knuckles filling the air, making Wade yelp and flinch.
“Keep talking and I swear to god I will cut your dick off every single day so that you don’t even get the chance to use those pills” Logan practically growls out.
“Relax! Jesus Christ you are violent. I’m starting to rethink giving you my spare room asshole” Wade breaths out before he sighs, lifting his hands up in defense before he speaks again.
“Look…all I’m saying, is that a bit of a crush is starting to brew, and she’s a sweet girl! I know for a fact that baby making factory is filled with dust and fucking cobwebs, don’t you think it’s time to get those gears runnin’ again?” Wade rolls his arm like a train as he puts on his best southern accent, which only further annoys Logan.
“She doesn’t even know me. She’ll get over it” Logan nods confidently, ignoring every word that leaves Wade’s mouth as he finishes his coffee, putting it in the sink where he put his cereal bowl earlier.
Wade groans in annoyance. “I am being such a good wing man right now, hooking you up with her? Most people’s friends hook them up with Freddy fucking Krueger and they still end up getting married. I’m giving you a real life fairy from a fucking Barbie movie and you’re turning her down??” Wade practically pleads with the man as he watches him starting to leave the kitchen.
“Hook her up with someone else. I’ll be back later” Logan groans out, not at all wanting to continue this conversation with his roommate any longer.
“Yeah fuck you too grandpa. I hope you get hit by a fucking bus on your way out” Wade groans out as he shovels a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, the man clearly taking offense to Logan not wanting to get to know you better.
“We’ll see if she lets you off this easy…” Wade mumbled under his breath, a soft smirk on his face.
Wade knew you better than anyone, and he knew that you were a whole different ball field of sweetness that Logan was most definitely not ready to handle.
And sweet you were.
By the end of the week, Logan was honestly starting to forget about you and the small cyclone you’d set off in his head ever since he’d seen you that night. He was busy with things around the neighborhood and trying his best to get used to the new world that he was living in. His plate was full and he had no time to think about the silly girl that lived next door to him.
However you didn’t let him forget for much longer.
Because come Friday night, your knuckle is rapping against the door like clock work, interrupting Logan’s alone time in the same way you had the week prior. It’s a silent gesture that it is his cue to leave and give you and Wade the living room for the night.
Logan just about catches a glimpse of you when Wade opens the door, and he notices very quickly how different you look from last time.
Last time, you’d opted for a pretty casual look. Wade had mentioned that you worked at a bar in the city, so he could only assume you came straight from there. Your denim shorts were cute, fit your ass well and he was sure you got many tips from those alone, and your purple halter top went well with your skin tone, but it was nothing fancy or out of the ordinary, just simply a girl in some clothes.
Now? Now you were putting in some effort.
The linen white dress you wore fit you snug at your middle, pushing out your tits a bit, hugging you in all the right places before falling down and flowing out right above your knees. You even went as far as to wear a bit of makeup, your eyelids sparkling a bit, lips glossy.
You’d put in all that effort, just for him.
“Jesus Christ…” Logan mumbled under his breath in disbelief, hating that you’d gone this far for him.
“Are you kidding me! I get your sweaty work clothes and he gets this?? You know he takes the animal thing seriously right? Pees to mark his territory and everything. I am much more pleasant, I promise” Wade complains as he leads you into the apartment, eyes falling down to the small container of cookies in your arms.
“Are these….fuck off. I have been begging you for weeks, and suddenly Jacob from twilight moves in and you’re making them??” Wade gasps out, face slowly turning up to look over at Logan as you giggle softly.
“I made them when you first moved in so I wanted to do the same for Logan…I hope you have a sweet tooth?” You questioned carefully, giving Logan a shy smile as you outstretch your arms to hand the cookies to him.
Wade is watching Logan like he’s your fucking guard dog, ready to pounce on the man the second he even tries to say something mean to an angelic soul like you.
It makes Logan sigh softly, eyes drifting down to the cookies before looking back up at you. “My doctor said I’m not allowed” he lies before bringing his glass of whiskey to his lips, acting as the biggest contradiction as he finishes the remnants of it before he picks up the bottle and turns around to leave.
“Don’t make any noise. I’m going to bed” he mumbles out once more before he slams his bedroom door much like he did the first time you arrived.
Wade groaned as he brought his hands up to pinch the bridge of his nose, quickly reaching out and placing a hand on your soft, exposed shoulder.
“Thank god. I was getting worried I wouldn’t have all of these to myself. Come on, Tom Sandoval doesn’t wait for anybody” he nods his head towards the tv, urging you to sit with him and distract you from how utterly stupid that lie was that Logan spit at you without a second thought.
Wade sighs as he notices the soft pout on your face, your fingers nervously toying with the ends of your dress as you struggle to relax, your head probably overflowing with every reason why Logan would hate you. He reaches out, tugging you closer to rest your head against his shoulder.
“Hey, he’s just a tough one to crack. He’ll come around soon peanut, I promise” he assured you before he shoved his hand into the bowl of cookies, pressing one to your lips.
“Now, say ahh. You deserve to eat one after all the hard work you did, little Betty Crocker” he teases you, making you giggle softly as you shoo his hand away before taking the cookie to eat yourself, finally relaxing into the couch as you let out a gentle sigh.
Logan really hoped that it would stop there, but it doesn’t.
He knows you aren’t stupid, everyone on the entire planet knows that the Wolverine doesn’t go to the fucking doctor. He could drink battery acid if he wanted to and he’d be fine, so him using the excuse of his doctor telling him he couldn’t eat sugar to not eat your food was a crock of shit, but he did it for two reasons.
One, because he didn’t want to have to accept anything from you, it would only had fuel to a fire that Logan knew he couldn’t put out once burnt too brightly. Two, was to kill any glamorizations you had for being with someone of his age. He was an old man, despite being a fucking killing machine, he was an old man. All he wanted to do was drink, smoke, fight a bit when the time called for it, and sleep, and he really could not fit a little girlfriend into that schedule, nor could he rob you of what you wanted and deserved with someone your own age instead of him.
Logan was starting to come to the conclusion that you probably weren’t as smart as he thought you were.
Because unfortunately, you don’t stop there.
For about an entire month, the weeks are filled with you constantly knocking on the door. It slowly goes from you bringing treats on your Friday nights with Logan, to you popping up on various days thought out the week instead.
Logan quickly learns that your love language is food, and you show that by constantly trying to feed him.
First it was the cookies, then you were knocking on his door way too early in the morning, beaming with a bright smile as you shoved a container of breakfast sandwiches into his naked chest.
“These are for you! I made enough for both you and Wade” you smile brightly, plump bottom lip tugged beneath your teeth as you give him a wave before he can deny the food or give it back.
After that, you were dropping off lunch for him. He wasn’t entirely sure how you were doing it, but you managed to always knock whenever Wade wasn’t around, most likely because the two of you were so close you had Wade’s schedule practically memorized, which meant that you were forcing Logan to interact with you whether he liked it or not.
“I’m off to work and I made too much! I hope you like spaghetti” you giggle softly before giving him another one of your signature waves, skipping off down the hallway to leave for work, once again leaving Logan dumbfounded as he stares down at the Tupperware of warm food in his hands.
It was getting to the point where you were practically keeping both him and Wade fed almost completely, rarely failing to share the food you’d made for yourself with them, and always sprinkling in some of your freshly baked pastries and desserts throughout all of that.
The worst part about it? Logan isn’t sure he’s ever had anything so tasty in his entire life.
You seriously knew what the hell you were doing behind a stove or at the oven, and it almost pissed Logan off to admit how much he appreciated the literal meal plan you’d set up for him.
As much as he likes it though, Logan could see exactly what accepting all of this was doing.
He saw it in the way that you’d linger longer and longer every time you dropped something off. What was once a shy little smile and a quick goodbye had now turned into you going into lengthy rants about work or the latest recipe you were stuck on, which Logan found himself always sticking around and listening to despite the fact that he rarely spoke.
That alone made your eyes twinkle, and he could hear how quickly it made your heart beat every time he leaned against the opposite side of the door from you, a soft sigh leaving his lips as he prepared himself for the words that would come out of your mouth on that day.
Logan gave an inch, and you took a mile, and that was the problem. Any attention he gave, he knew you’d take to the extreme, looking far too deep into the details of him being slightly less of an asshole that he usually was.
And on a night where Logan was laying in his bed, his mind replaying the countless times you’d stood at his door to give him food, using it all as an excuse to talk to him for a few minutes and get his attention on you, he knew it was time to cut you down from the root, and stop any dreams you had of the two of them ever amounting to anything more than next door neighbors.
He knew you’d be back eventually, it was only a matter of time until you were back with your latest meal for him. He found himself reciting what he’d say to you over and over again, cementing it into his brain as he pressed his palms against the island top one morning, eyes staring off into space as he mindlessly grabbed his coffee and took a sip.
knock knock knock!
The sound is familiar and it practically haunts Logan in his fucking dreams, the soft sound of your fists rapping against the door. He sighs softly because he knows you’re behind it, big bright smile on your face as you hold god knows what in your hands to gift to him.
“Morning Logan!” You beam, bright eyed and bushy tailed as you give him a small wave before you look down at the container before stretching your arms out to hand to him.
“You seemed interested last time I mentioned that breakfast quesadilla recipe I was working on…and I think I got it!” You’re so excited, and Logan lets out a soft sigh as he eyes you carefully before he pushes his hand gently against the container so that it’s back against your chest.
“I…look kid….I don’t…” his words trail off, feeling bad as you simply stare up at him with those big eyes and that happy smile, looking at him as if he’s the only person you want to see right now, waiting for him to say whatever it is he can’t do.
“You’ve gotta stop this” he tries to reason with you, his forearm pressed against the top of the door as he stares down at you.
You furrow your eyebrows as you watch him, shaking your head a bit as your voice goes low. “I….what?” Your voice trembles a bit, because you know what’s happening, you’ve been here before. You’ve gotten yourself into this same fucked up mess of liking someone so much that you couldn’t even see that they didn’t like you back, going on a power trip of showering them with so much affection that you didn’t even realize they’d been trying to stop you from the very beginning.
It was happening again.
Logan knows that he can’t let you down easy. You’re too sweet, too understanding, and he knows that if he isn’t blunt with you, giving you the harsh truth, that you’ll just feed into the nice things that he says rather than looking at the bigger picture.
So he sighs, looking over your head for a moment before he finally looks back down at you.
“You’re just…you’re not my kind of girl, alright? Someone like you, could never be with someone like me and that just is the way it is….so quit it with the food deliveries, alright?” He’s stern, speaking to you like a child who refuses to listen, voice growing louder and rougher as he towers over you.
“There’s nothing you can make for me or do for me that will make me want you” He adds salt to the wound with that one, wanting his words to get through to you loud and clear
Logan knows it’s already coming, those big eyes filling with tears that make your eyes shimmer like swimming pools, mouth opening and closing as you struggle to find the words to respond with before you give a slight nod, quickly looking away once the tears spill out into your cheeks, your hands coming up to wipe them away roughly.
“I…fuck…I’m sorry..” is all you say before you quickly rush away from the door, mortified as you open your own apartment door and slam it behind you, the sound making Logan groan softly before he closes his own door.
Of course you apologized. Here he was, crushing your dreams for his own sake and you fucking apologized. It only further cemented how wrong you and him were if he were to ever give you a chance, you were too good, too nice, and Logan could only hope that you found someone else who could give you what you wanted and what you deserved.
As for him? He wanted to focus on the relief he’d soon feel settle in now that he didn’t have to face you every other day anymore. He could only hope that you little stunts would come to a halt after all of this.
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Logan doesn’t really have to hope for you to not come around, because he doesn’t see you for a long time after that.
At first he assumed it would just be a day or two until you were back for Wade, the two of you never going long without at least chatting in the hallway for a quick recap of your day or your week, however it’s the end of the week and neither Logan nor Wade have heard from you at all.
There are no knocks at the door, no more pastries or yummy meals with your name written all over them, it’s almost as if you don’t even live in the same complex anymore.
And when that Friday rolls around and you never show up either? Logan knows he’s fucked up.
Logan is thankful that Wade isn’t too freaked out over you being absent that week, seeing as he’d explain that this wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary for you. Although Logan knew what it was that pushed you away from the apartment, he was more than willing to let Wade believe work had drained you a bit more than usual that week, pulling you away from him.
By the third week though? Wade is pissed.
It’s Friday night, and he’s pacing the living room in front of Logan, his arms crossed as he shakes his head.
“I don’t get it! She’s only ever gone two weeks without coming by and that’s because she had a cold, and she told me! I haven’t heard from her in so long, I feel like I’m a fucking military wife waiting for her husband to write her back!” Wade whined out, desperate for an answer behind your disappearance.
Logan couldn’t even look at Wade, guilt eating away at him as his fingers wrapped around the ice beer bottle in his hand, simply letting the man walk around searching for answers when the reason behind his friends absence was sitting right in front of him.
“Fuck this. If she wants to stop being my friend she’s going to have to man the fuck up and tell me herself. Im going over there myself” he huffs out in annoyance, moving towards the front door.
Logan is on his feet before Wade can make it any further, stepping between him and the door as he shakes his head.
He knew that what happened needed to come from him, not you.
“Slow down…I…I know why she’s not coming around anymore” Logan makes out slowly, his words makes Wade raise his eyebrows.
“Anymore? What the fuck did you do, kill her or something??” Wade’s eyes are wide, and it makes Logan roll his eyes at the dramatics before he shoves him over towards the couch.
“Go sit down” he orders before he follows behind, singing softly as he sits next to Wade, avoiding his eyes as he speaks.
“She was coming around a lot and I…I didn’t want her getting the wrong idea so…I just…I told her she needed to stop” Logan shrugged nonchalantly as he gave a horrible retelling of what happened between the two of you.
Wade on the other hand, knew you very well, and he knew that you were probably the most understanding person on the entire fucking planet, so Logan had to probably say some fucked up shit to make you avoid them like the fucking plague, so bad that he probably made you-
“You fucking idiot. You made her cry, didn’t you” Wade visibly gets angry when he comes to this conclusion, making Logan snap his head in his direction quickly because how the fuck did he come to that conclusion so quickly?
“I…so you did talk to her?” Logan questions carefully, his words making Wade groan loudly as he stands up, pressing his face in his hands.
“You are….oh my god you are probably the dumbest person I have ever fucking met. Charles Xavier would be very ashamed of this behavior Logan!” Wade practically sobbed before he shook his head once again.
“You do realize she’s just a girl, right? She’s not some villainous asshole trying to do experiments on you or something. A simple ‘I’m not interested’ would have sufficed” Wade groans out in annoyance before he walks back towards the door.
“I am going to try and save one of the only friendships I have, and leave you here to think about how you are going to save ours, because after this stunt I am not sure I will ever let you touch me again” he huffs out softly before whipping his head away from him in disgust before he swings the door open, slams it shut and leaves to your apartment, leaving Logan there by himself.
Wade’s words echo in his head, making him realize that you really are just a girl, a girl who had an innocent crush that he brutally stepped on and smashed into a thousand little pieces when he could have easily told you he wasn’t interested in you.
Logan hated it, but he felt guilty.
He’s happy to hear that you and Wade were able to mend things together, the two of you opting to spend weekends in your home rather than his from now on, leaving Logan to the peace and quiet that he’d always wanted.
Although, it isn’t what he wanted, it isn’t what he wanted at all because he finds that he’s missing something. He’s missing the smell of your cookies or cinnamon rolls or whatever the fuck it is that you bring over, he’s missing the sound of yours and Wade’s laugh across the way as he tries to sleep, and he especially misses the little front door chats you and him would share whenever you stopped by for him.
Because over the course of the time that he’d lived there, he’d see you at least once every week, your bright smile filling his days and making him feel warm inside.
But now the last memory he had of you was you crying in front of him before running away.
Logan tries to drown out those annoying thoughts as he usually does, with alcohol. He comes home drunk on a Saturday night, stumbling in through the front door as he tugs off his leather jacket, kicks off his boots and stumbles into his bedroom to fall face first into his bed.
He’s able to forget about you for a bit, annoyed that your pretty face had been plaguing him for days on end. Right now he just wants to sleep and enjoy the warm floaty feeling that comes with a good cup of-
“Oh my god” Logan makes out the faint sound of your voice through the thin walls of the apartment.
He realized the first night he’d moved in that his bedroom was adjacent to yours when he was going to sleep and he could hear you shuffling about your bedroom.
Every night he’d hear little things, sometimes he’d hear the small sound of your music while you got ready, or he’d hear you giggling softly to someone as you spoke to them on the phone, he’d even heard a loud thud followed by an annoyed groan from you, which he could only assume was you stubbing your toe or running into something.
Logan had heard you a lot, and while most times he was too drunk or tired to ignore it, the sounds he was hearing now were….they were foreign for you. He’d never heard your voice pitched that way, high and whiny…he wondered if you were okay, were you crying?
“Fuck…fuck!”
There it was again.
It had Logan frowning as he turned onto his back, staring up at the ceiling as he squinted a bit, straining to hear more of what was going on.
“That’s it baby…so good for me…” another voice groaned out, muffled and lower, too deep to have been your own. That, paired with a slow rhythmic thumping, and Logan wasn’t confused anymore.
You were getting fucked.
Logan tried very hard not to think about you this way, splayed out on a bed in front of him, eyes red and glossy as you beg for him to give you more, needy for any sort of attention that he'd give you. He knew that you were something he couldn't feed into...
Because he knew he'd like it too much.
Yet here you were, moaning so pretty for another fucking man with a bit of dry wall separating the two of you, and it was making Logan's head spin.
His chest swelled with different emotions, anger, annoyance, jealousy, envy.....
Lust
You sounded so fucking pretty, and as much as he hated that it was someone else making you feel that way, subjecting him to a fucking audio porno, he couldn't deny the tent that was growing in his jeans.
Logan groaned softly as he propped himself up, eyes low as he stared down at his throbbing cock through his jeans, begging to be touched, begging to take the place of the idiot that was in your bed making you moan like that.
Another loud moan rumbled through the walls, making Logan's eyes flutter shut and roll to the back of his head as he took in your noises.
He wondered how you'd sound for him, what you would say, if you would beg for him. God, you probably sounded so fucking good when you begged, so pretty, so fucking sweet for him. You were so eager for him, so eager to please, there was no doubt in Logan's mind that you would be the perfect girl for him.
You were practically begging him for it the weeks prior.
His hand made its way to his jeans, undoing his belt and popping them open before tugging his cock out, hissing softly as he laid back, head resting against the pillow as his fist wrapped around his length, slowly working on his sensitive skin as he let his mind travel to more thoughts of you as your moans sang him the symphony that matched perfectly with it.
His fist moved up and down over his length, spreading his precum as he thought about what you'd taste like, how you'd feel pressed against his tongue while he did just this. He imagined you'd taste perfect, the best pussy he's ever had if you'd ever let him.
Another string of moans makes its way into his bedroom, and it has him bucking his hands up into his fists, growing closer as he chases his orgasm to the sound of your voice.
Logan felt like a fucking pervert, stroking his cock while you were getting fucked by someone else right next door. That could have easily been him had he not fucked things up with you royally, he thought.
"Im gonna cum..." you mewl out, Logan can practically hear the pathetic little pout on your lips as you announce it, and he can't stop himself from groaning out softly as he bites back a moan in fears that you'll hear him too.
"Me too baby..." He growls out between gritted teeth.
He's fucking his hand at this point, the sounds of your moans and visions of you under him driving him closer to where he needed to go, he finally cums when he hears you moan loudly, knowing that was it. Thick ribbons of his pearly cum fly out of him, making the man sigh softly as he slowly rides out his orgasm with a few strong strokes from his hand.
Logan is old and gross and truly can't be bothered with the clean up, so he opts to grab a nearby t shirt and clean himself off before he tugs his jeans off, tosses them into the corner with the rest of his clothes and turns onto his side, pulling his pillow over his ears in fears of you and that jackass going another round while he sleeps.
He wants to sleep before embarrassment can take over, because he knows what he's done is beneath pathetic. He would much rather deal with it all in the morning.
Because despite how embarrassed he feels, he needs to orchestrate some sort of plan to speak to you.
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Logan knew that getting you to talk to him was not going to be an easy feat. You ran from him any time you two ended up in the hallway together, and you made it a point to never be in the same place with him for two long.
So he had to be smart with this, and he needed a full proof way to get you to speak for him for more than a few seconds.
He figured trying to convince you as himself was a lost cause, there was no way you would even give him the time of day to ask for a bottle of water let alone talk to you about his feelings.
However, you would most definitely listen to him if he were Wade.
Now, Wade most definitely would not do this for Logan. There was no way in hell Wade would risk your feelings for that, he was way too protective over you for that. He was weary of Logan when it came to you now, and rarely brought you up unless Logan asked....
Which he did quite a bit now.
He was able to snag Wade's phone while he was taking a shower, getting ready for one of his little dates with Vanessa (they were going to meet up at a bar and then fuck the entire weekend).
Logan had limited time, because Wade was already on Rewrite the Stars off The Greatest Showman soundtrack, so he had to work fast.
He stood outside of the bathroom with the door cracked to swiftly put the phone back when he was done, the man groaning in annoyance as he clicked through Wade's endless screens of stupid games with clickbait-y ads that are designed to lure children in to find his messages.
When he finally finds them, he's quick to click the icon with a picture of you and Wade and the contact name angel baby.
Logan knew he had to put on his best Wade impression for this, so he inhales deeply before his fingers slowly tap across the screen.
me: Hey baby cakes! Wolvie's gone for the night, vanderpump at mine? Like old times?
angel baby: Hi! You sure? I don't mind doing it here!
me: I have wayyyy better drinks here. See you soon!
angel baby: fineee I'll be there after work
Logan lets out a breath he was holding for what felt like forever before he quickly slips Wade's phone back into the bathroom on the sink counter, closing the door slowly before rushing out of there to make himself seem as casual as possible.
Wade is out about twenty minutes later, a clear pep in his step. It makes Logan chuckle softly, bringing his beer to his lips as he nods towards his roommate. "Hot date tonight huh?" Logan hums out.
Wade hums softly as he nods, biting his bottom lip as he gives Logan an excited smile. "You bet I do. I am getting laid tonight buddy, I refuse to be the roommates that everyone thinks fuck...unless" his words trail off as he gives Logan a look, wiggling his eyebrows (or lack there of) as he opens his hands and gives him a little spin, shaking his ass at the end.
Logan chuckles as he puts a hand up. "Im good" He refuses before taking another sip of his beer, watching as Wade reaches down to grab a shot glass and a bottle of tequila, pouring some out for himself as he throws it back. "Liquid courage how I love you...its your loss man. I'll go give myself to a woman who actually knows how to fuck" He nods to himself before pouring out another shot, throwing it back and giving Logan a wave as he makes his way to the front door.
"See ya Monday Wolvie!" He chirps out as he leaves with a peace sign, his antics making Logan chuckle softly as his eyes drift over to the bottle off tequila.
He could use some of that with having to face you.
Logan sighs as he gets up, pouring himself a shot and throwing it back before he pours one more and throws that back before he tosses the bottle back into its reserved cupboard, moving to the couch to wait for your inevitable arrival.
knock knock knock!
It comes almost an hour later, the sound making Logans heart seize up, recognizing the familiar knock as if it were his own fucking heartbeat. He inhales deeply, stopping by a nearby mirror and checking himself out before he exhales deeply, moving to open the door.
"I'm a little late! I had to stop at the store to get the proper necessities-" Your words are cut off when you finally look up to see Logan instead of Wade, your face dropping as your mouth hangs open for a moment.
Logan want's to die just from that look in your eyes because you look fucking terrified, you even go as far as taking a step back as you give a nervous laugh.
"Oh...sorry Logan..is umm...is Wade around? He told me to come over..." You quickly explain, quickly fearing that the man will have more mean words for you for knocking on his door again.
It breaks Logan's heart because you don't have that twinkle in your eye anymore, nor do you have that excited smile on your pretty face when you see him and it makes him feel sick to his stomach.
"No he actually just left, you just missed him" He explains with a shrug and a soft apologetic smile.
You clear your throat awkwardly as you nod slowly. "Uhh...No worries! He probably had something to do....could you maybe tell him I was here when you see him? Sorry for bothering you" You mumble out before giving him a tightlipped smile and an awkward wave before you sigh, turning to leave at that.
Bothering him? God, he had really fucked up, hadn't he?
"Wait!" Logan calls out, stepping out into the hallway to catch you before you've made it into your own apartment.
You turn to face him, raising your eyebrows at the man. He groans softly as he stares at you for a moment before he looks back into the apartment, inhaling deeply as he remembered Wade's words
She's just a girl.
"I don't uh...know much about that Vanderpump thing but...I'm not busy, if you wanted someone to watch with tonight?" He sighs out sheepishly, giving you a small smile.
You stare at him for a moment, a soft frown on your lips as you clutch your snacks closer to your chest, using them as somewhat of a shield for your poor heart. You couldn't trust Logan, and you weren't sure if your heart could take anymore of the mean things that he said to you.
"You don't have to pity me or anything....I'm not a child, Logan" You explain to him, voice small and quiet as your frown deepens, your hand coming down to grip your door knob as you let out another sigh.
"Have a goodnight..." You try your best to end it, and it makes Logan groan softly as he quickly rushes towards you, putting his large hand over yours on the doorknob, stopping you from opening it further.
The sudden closeness makes your eyes widen, staring up at the man as his large hand squeezes over yours, the feeling making your heart flutter with excitement.
“I….please….let me makeup for being such a dick the last time we spoke…you deserve it” he nodded, eyes staring deeply into yours as he gives your hand one more squeeze.
You swallow nervously as you stare up at him, hating how warm you feel with him being so close, especially after he was so fucking mean to you all those weeks ago.
You sigh softly before your hand slowly falls from your doorknob, giving Logan a small nod.
“Yeah….okay” you agree with him before you look over to the opened door of his apartment, giving the man a small smile.
“Lead the way Wolvie” you tease him gently, the sound of your playful voice making Logan chuckle softly with you as he sighs in relief, leading you back to his apartment.
Logan can kiss his lucky stars over the fact that you actually agreed to coming back to the apartment with him. Wade was right when he said you’re the must understanding person on the planet.
He finds it hard to focus on the show when you’re this close to him, head resting against the back of the couch as you babysit a bag of sour patch, giggling softly whenever one of the insufferable Los Angeles characters complain about their boyfriend of their girlfriend cheating on them with someone else in their friend group.
It’s hard to focus when you’re this close to him, because he’s never been with you this way before.
You had been on Logan’s mind almost 24/7 since he first met you, and now that he had you with him alone, he didn’t know how to talk to you or how to interact with you. He felt nervous that he would open his mouth and say something stupid.
To sum it up, he was almost 200 years old yet a 20 something year old girl knew how to communicate her feelings better than he did.
You hum softly as you finally look up at him, pouting softly at how stiff the man looked in your presence. "You alright Logan? We can watch something else if you want" You hum out softly as you move to sit criss crossed on the couch, turning your body to face his.
Logan shakes his head as he reaches for the remote, knowing that he would not be able to focus with the sound of three Californian girls fighting over a man named Todd. "Let's talk for a bit....I wanna get to know you more" Logan sighed out softly as he turned to face you a bit more as well, watching as your face beams with excitement over his interest in you.
"Im an open book....what do you wanna know?" You open up as you take a sip of your beer, giving Logan a soft smile.
That was all it really took for you and Logan to actually hit it off, the mans anxiety melting away at the thought of talking to you once he realized how easy going you were. He was able to learn so much about you within the hours that you and him spoke, and before he knew it, it was almost 2 in the morning and you two had been talking since around 9.
"College sucks...Im literally either there or at the bar....its why I find nights with Wade so important" You sighed softly as you explained, your face falling as you pouted a bit.
Logan smiled fondly at you, the many easily seeing how you wore your feelings on your face, you were so expressive, so clear with how you were feeling and open with your emotions.
You truly were an open book.
Logan licked his lips as he brought his beer to his lips, taking a sip as he watched you carefully. Something burned inside of him. something that desperately wanted to grill you about what it was he heard that night through the wall, who it was you were with, if you were still seeing him or not.
"Yeah? Any time for dating then?" He hums out, pink tongue darting out of his mouth to lick his lips as he settles back into the couch. One of his legs were trapped along the couch, caging you in as the other rested on the floor, knee bent as his hand rested on it, legs spread right in front of you.
His question catches you off guard, eyes widening a bit as you try to register if he's asked the question that you think he asked, and if he is, does he mean it in a friendly way?
He has to, right? A man doesn't tell you that he doesn't want you just to grill you about your love life.
You inhale deeply as you try to find the right words to say, wondering how deep you should get into the current state of your love life.
You give Logan a shrug as you take a sip of your beer. "I try....my love life is in shambles though....I truly can't remember the last time I had a decent date" You frown, your words honest as you scrunch your nose in disgust as you think back to the horrible men you've dated.
Logan raises his eyebrows in disbelief at your words before he nods slowly, taking a sip of his drink before he sighs. "Mm...the things I heard through the walls would beg to differ Princess" Logan shoots back without a second thought.
Your eyes widen as you think back to a few nights ago, throwing your head back as you find yourself cringing in embarrassment over the fact that Logan had fucking heard you.
"You heard that? Logan oh my god that is....that is so disgusting on my end I am so sorry, I promise it won't happen again" You ramble, making a mental note to never fuck in your bedroom again as long as Logan was living across from you.
You were going to be having shower sex only.
Logan chuckles softly as he shakes his head, holding his hands up in defense before he speaks. "Oh no need, you sounded like you were having quite the time....don't stop on my account" He smirks at you.
Knowing that you had not the slightest inkling that he was stroking his cock to the very sound of you getting fucked.
You groan softly as you take a healthy swig of your drink, Logan watching closely before he hums out once more.
"New boyfriend?" he questions again, eyes growing darker as he uses the conversation as a gateway into more important things.
You scoff softly as you shake your head. "God no....he's just a guy from my psych class....we met at a party and he took me home and...im sure I can spare you the gory details" You giggle softly before you sigh, moving to rest your head against the back of the couch as you watch the man across from you.
Logan nods slowly, bottom lip tugged beneath his teeth as he listens to you before he speaks.
"Just a guy hum....interesting" Logan nods slowly as he tosses back the rest of his beer before he sets the empty bottle down on the coffee table in front of the both of you, strong hands resting along his denim clad thighs, eyes never leaving yours.
"Forgot about me already baby?" he drawls out, voice low and gruff, dripping with lust as he watches you closely for your reaction.
His tone and words make you perk up, breath hitching in your throat as you face the man completely. His words shoot straight down to your core, making you swallow back a whine as you stare at him with a dumfounded expression.
"I....Logan..." You sigh out softly, your hands resting on your knees and balling into fists as you physically try to stop yourself from doing something you knew you couldn't do.
Logan chuckles softly as he shrugs. "It's true....you forgot all about me princess....it's okay though, I deserve it don't I?" he questions, watching as you silently watch him from across the couch.
When you don't answer, he's quick to pull it out of you. "Answer me baby" His demand makes you flinch softly and you quickly nod before you respond.
"Yeah...you did deserve it..." You agree with him.
Logan nods with you, a soft hum leaving his lips as he watches you. "I did...was so mean to you and you were just being the sweetest thing to me..." He hums softly, watching as you slowly grow softer for him with every word he spoke.
"It's alright baby....did he at least make you cum? I heard you, you know....when you said you were there? sounded so pretty...." He groans softly, a prominent tent forming in his jeans at the mere thought of your moans.
He's shocked when he hears a tiny one leave your lips, your eyes shooting down to his growing cock. It makes him smirk softly, pride filling his chest as he moves his hand down to palm himself before he nods at you.
"Eyes up here baby...thats it..." He nods slowly when he finally has his eyes back on yours.
"Now...answer my question" He urges you once more, his voice deliciously low and gravely, the sound making you squirm in your spot on the couch.
You inhale deeply before you shake your head. "I faked it..." You mumble under your breath, fighting the embarrassment that threatened to creep up your spine.
Logan felt like he had died and gone to heaven.
Because not only were you here with him, but that idiot that got the chance to be with you couldn't even make you cum properly...which only left more room for him to come in and do the job properly.
"You poor thing....I was afraid of that..." He groaned softly before he pat his hand along his lap, calling you over to him.
"C'mere peach...let daddy show you how a real man is supposed to make you feel..." He hummed out softly.
It was all you needed to come crawling over to him like a bitch in heat.
You moaned softly once you were settled down in his lap, either one of your plush thighs straddling his lap, arms wrapping around his neck as you stared down at him with needy eyes, bottom lip tugged between your teeth.
Logan groaned softly, strong hands coming down to grip your waist, tugging you closer as he leaned in, pressing his nose against your collar bone and growling at how fucking good you smelled.
"Atta girl....go on then baby, give daddy a kiss..." He ordered once more.
You wasted no time in pressing your lips to his, moaning softly into his mouth as you tugged at the hair at the nape of his neck.
You're so...fucking sweet, and sugary, and the dulcet sounds of your moans drives Logan absolutely insane, the older man gripping your waist tightly as he pushes his tongue into your mouth, tainting you for anyone who ever dares to kiss you after he has.
Logan groans into the kiss when he feels you rocking your hips back and forth, grinding your pussy against his bulge.
"Needy huh? Want daddy to help you baby? Yeah?" He groans out, your forehead resting against his as you nod, breathing heavily as you continue grinding down onto his bulge.
Logan chuckles softly as he nods, his hand going around your middle before he flips you around, tugging you down so that your back is pressed against his chest, his chin resting on your shoulder as he hums softly.
His hands trail down your body slowly, the little top you have on has a tie at the front, one that if Logan so much as flicks, will come undone. It makes him smirk softly as he takes one of the strings between his thumb and pointer finger, tugging at it slowly until your boobs bounce free, making him hiss softly.
"Fuck, look at that....such a pretty girl...." His hands look so rough along your soft skin, calloused fingers running along either one of your tits, cupping and massaging them delicately before he brings your nipples into his finger, twisting them slightly before he goes back to cupping them all over again.
You're so sensitive, so responsive to his touch. Your hand goes up to cup your hand over his thats working on your boobs, your hips bucking up into nothing as your other hand goes up and around Logan to hold onto his head.
"Logan...please..." You moan softly, your words making Logan smirk softly as he nods, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek.
"Im here baby....just enjoying all of you first" He explains before his hands go down your body.
Soon enough, he's unbuttoning your denim jeans, one of his hands coming up to raise your hips as he tugs them off your legs with your panties in one swift move before tossing them somewhere else in the living room.
Logan lets out a low gasp when his neck cranes down against your shoulder to look down at the mess between your legs, his strong hands creeping down to where you need him the most, your own hands pressing against his thigh.
"Fuck princess....so wet already....all this for me?" He hums out softly.
Either of his hands go down between your legs, pressing right against either one of your lips as he massages you softly, the feeling making your eyes roll back as your head falls against Logan's shoulder.
He smirks softly, his head coming down to attach his lips to your neck as one of his hands comes up to hold your hips down, pressing you flush against his body whilst the other starts rubbing your clit slowly.
"Such a good girl...letting daddy apologize for being so mean...thats it baby...fuck...thats it...." He urges you on further as his skilled fingers slowly works on your clit, your moans like music to his ears as he gives you exactly what you needed.
"Daddy...im....fuck....don't stop" You whine softly, gripping his wrist as he continues playing with your pussy, the feeling making your eyes roll. You're damn near drooling and all the man is doing is rubbing your clit for you.
It makes Logan chuckle softly, his fingers speeding up as his lips unlatch from your neck so he's able to look down at you, not wanting to miss the fucked out state of bliss written all over your face that's coming to you all because of him.
"Come on baby....cum all over your daddy's fingers, give it to me princess" He growls, picking up the pace as he begins grinding his hard on into your ass from behind, matching the way your hips roll to chase the rhythm of his fingers.
You're squirming so much at this point, a moaning mess as Logan holds you down by your hip, forcing you to take what he gives you, not giving you the chance to run away from the pleasure he so desperately wants to give to you.
"Oh my god! Im gonna fu-ahhh!" You moan loudly, back arching off of Logans chest as you cum hard all over his fingers.
Logan moans with you, watching in awe as you become a puddle of nothing but moans and gasps as you come down from your high, his fingers working slowly on your swollen pussy as your arousal drools out onto his fingers, forcing them to slip around and lose their place as he works on you.
"That's a good girl...thats daddy's good fucking girl....thats it....im right here baby...daddys gotchu" He praises you, soft whines and moans leaving your lips as his rough hands move from your pussy to instead run along your body, holding you, massaging you, making it known that he was indeed there with you.
It takes a few minutes for you to catch your breath properly, when you do, you finally feel Logans very large bulge pressing into your ass.
He's too busy pressing kisses along your throat and jaw, working his way up to your cheek and the corner of your lips to make sure you were there with him and comfortable.
"Logan..." You mumble softly before you roll your hips down against his cock, your eyes locking with his as you stare up at him with a needy glint in yours.
Logan raises his eyebrows at your actions, holding onto your hips as he guides you to grind down onto his lap.
"You want daddy's cock baby? Is that it?" He questions, his words alone making you moan softly as you nod, your hand coming up and tugging his head down to press against your lips.
"Please fuck me daddy..." You moan against him, pushing your tongue into his mouth as you swallow his groans.
He nods against you, silently reaching between the two of you to undo the button to his jeans and pulling his cock out, tongue playing with yours as he sits you both up a bit before he grabs both of your thighs, lifting you up and making you gasp softly.
"Don't worry princess...Daddy's got you..." he assures you before he slowly sinks you down onto his cock.
Both of you moan softly in unison, his length filling you up completely, making your eye roll back as as he settles you down onto his lap.
"Logan...L-Lo...you're so big...fuck" You gasp out, struggling to even form words properly as Logan's arms wraps around your waist, holding you close against his chest as he slowly starts to fuck up into you.
"You can take it baby...fuck...such a tight little pussy...so fuckin' good for me...takin' me so well angel" Logan growled against you, lips pressed against your back as he found a steady rhythm in fucking you.
You're a moaning mess. Logan is so big, and he fills you up so well, better than anyone ever has, and it makes you feel like you'll fucking cry because of how good it feels.
Logan growls every time your pussy tightens around him, wrapping him up and keeping him so warm. He’s forgotten how fucking good it feels to be this close to someone, hearing such pretty moans….
Logan thinks he could get used to this….
Logan thinks he could get used to you.
“Come on baby….give it to me…cum all over my fuckin cock” He urges you, wanting nothing more than to feel your pretty pussy spasm on his length.
You gasp softly, struggling to hold your head up as he defiles you from down below, making a mess of your pussy as he pounds into you like a wild fucking animal, the feeling foreign to anything you’ve ever experienced for. He’s like a machine, and his skilled cock as your head spinning.
“Daddy…daddy I…I can’t…you’re gonna make me cum-“ your words are cut off by just that, a loud shriek ripping through your lungs as you cum hard all over Logan’s cock just like he asked of you.
“That’s my fuckin’ girl, fuck yeah…you want Daddy to cum inside you baby? Yeah? Want Daddy to fill up this pretty pussy?” He growls out, his own eyes fluttering shut at the mere thought of cumming inside your pussy, filling you up and making him as your own.
You’re nodding like an idiot, all dumb and cock drunk as the pleasure fades and the overstimulation takes place, making your mind fuzzy and the world around you dull, the only thing you’re able to focus on being Logan.
“Please…want you to cum inside Daddy….wanna be yours” you moan out softly, your eyes rolling back as you allow Logan to continue fucking up into you mercilessly, turning your brain into mush with every thrust.
“All mine baby…all Daddy’s…fuck…that’s it baby…let daddy fill up this little pussy….fuckfuckfuck” Logan growls out, his moans strangled as he pulls you down roughly onto his lap, his cock twitching with every spurt of cum, painting your insides with his seed as his large hands press your sweaty body flush against his.
You both sit there like that for quite a while, his hands massaging your skin, thumbs rubbing small circles into your abdomen as you both try to catch your breath, the come down sucking all of the energy out of both of you while you enjoy the warmth of being connected to one another.
After a moment passes, you’re finally the one to break the silence, a gentle smirk on your face as you turn around a bit to face Logan.
“So….I guess it’s safe to say I am your type of girl after all?” You tease the man as you recall the words he’d said to you all those weeks ago.
It makes Logan groan softly as he cringes at himself, finally giving in and resting his chin against your shoulder, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek as he nods.
“Yeah….I guess you are princess…”
5K notes · View notes
val-made-a-mistake · 11 months
Text
❝PUSHING THE LIMITS.❞
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(not my gif)
summary: eddie might fuck you good, but venom pushes your limits.
warnings: SMUT SMUT SMUT, nasty ass smut, surprised-myself-while-writing-it kind of smut, sorta dubcon towards the end, oral sex f and m receiving, sticky tendrils and tentacles and appendages and such, bondage using v's tendrils, hair pulling, spanking, double penetration, eddie spitting in reader's mouth, eddie slaps reader's cheek a lil bit in the beginning, overstimulation central, names like "good girl", "sweet angel", "sweet girl", "beautiful girl"... don't wanna hype myself up too much, but i think y'all are gonna be eating good while reading this one. monsterfucking. i am definitely not getting into heaven, so make my sacrifice worth it and grab some popcorn!
word count: 2k
a/n: if you've ever wanted me to write a sequel for fics like "take the reins" and "don't pretend", this is for you. i can't believe this is my official return to fic writing LMAO, but we're pretending like i never left! (yes i know i posted my last fic in april.) i hope you enjoy, please give me some feedback for this one!
//////
“Gooooood fuckin’ girl.”
You struggled to hide your wince as Eddie harshly slapped your cheek again: you were on your knees, your face raised to look at him as he knelt over you, directing your face in whatever way he wanted it to go. Some parts sweet, some parts rough - whether it was pulling your hair until your cunt twinged with need, or spitting in your mouth when it got too dry for him to fuck, or how fucking good his cock felt when it was shoved into your mouth, you took all of it enthusiastically. 
You hadn’t heard Venom’s commentary in a while, but at least Eddie seemed to be enjoying himself.
“That’s great, honey,” Eddie gasped as he slipped the tip of his cock in your mouth again: you sucked on it dutifully, slathering your spit over his already glistening length, but throughout all of it, your eyes were locked on his face.
He was almost out of breath just from watching you. “Jeez, that’s fuckin’ nasty…”
Overachieving, you responded by taking his whole length into your mouth until the tip of his cock slammed into your uvula and you were forced to gag.
You meant to stay there, but Eddie’s hand was buried in your hair very suddenly, tugging you backward: he evidently hadn’t been expecting that.
“Easy, honey,” he told you. “It’s not every day I got a girl jumping all over me, y’know.”
You sat back on the bed and stuck out your tongue for him, grinning widely. “Sorry.”
Inside his head, Venom scoffed.
PUSSY.
“N-no, don’t be sorry for anything,” Eddie managed to say to you as he allowed his cock into your mouth again, determined to keep Venom at bay inside his thoughts. “Feels so fucking good, just like that…”
Sucking him off until he came had to be the plan, you figured, so you kept going, keeping your tongue flat along his length as he fucked your mouth. His cock was so goddamn thick, and your tongue kept brushing along a prominent vein as you went. The best part was his hand, firm in your hair, ensuring he was using you in whatever way he wanted.
Meanwhile, Venom’s voice was a reassuring purr in Eddie’s ear.
SHE LOOKS SO GOOD LIKE THIS, EDDIE.
So it came as a bit of a surprise when Eddie decided he wanted to move: he was off of you in an instant, but he was grabbing your leg, indicating he wanted you to move with him.
His voice was soft, almost sweet, keeping you wet. “Up, honey, c’mon.”
Breathless, your heart pounding now that there wasn’t a hand in your hair anymore, you got off your knees and, following his direction, rolled over on the bed.
“Shit,” Eddie commented appreciatively, just before he spanked you harshly. “Pop that up for me, honey.”
Grinning sheepishly, you buried your face in the pillow and lifted your stinging ass in the air for him.
“Fuck,” he gasped as the palm of his hand brushed over your pussy - yeah, you already knew you were dripping, and the humiliation of it made you flush. “You always get this wet just having a dick in your mouth?”
“It’s just you,” you mumbled weakly, which earned your another spank.
“Just me, huh?” Eddie replied, mockingly, making your face burn. “Not V? You’re telling me this pretty pussy’s dripping just because of me?”
You opened your mouth to respond, but he’d spanked you directly on your pussy this time, making you moan weakly.
“Fuck,” you gasped, burying your face in the pillows. You had a feeling that Venom would’ve teased you endlessly if you moaned for him, and you weren’t sure if you could handle it when your pussy was already this wet, but God, you’d never been more tempted.
Inside his head, Venom was sounding impressed, but he hadn’t revealed himself yet.
KEEP GOING, EDDIE. YOU WILL BREAK HER.
Keeping your head in the pillow, you spread your legs wider for him, trying to expose as much of your pussy as you could. Spurred on by Venom’s praise, Eddie grinned.
“Fucking glistening,” he laughed, running a finger delicately along your drenched pussy, sending sensitive nerves haywire. “What a pussy. I mean, Jesus…”
He leaned forward to press a gentle kiss to your damp inner thigh, and that simple, two-second touch had your mind speeding out of control with obscenities. No doubt about it, spreading your holes like this turned you on: you could feel your slick running down your inner thighs, and if your brain wasn’t jammed, you would’ve been begging for Eddie for Venom to come out, to finally fuck you.
Breathless with anticipation, you grabbed a fistful of pillows instead and waited patiently, keeping still.
Inside his head, Venom was chomping at the bit, too.
WHEN WILL YOU LET ME OUT, EDDIE?
Just give me a few more minutes, Eddie’s thoughts responded, a bit urgently.
He opted to pretend as though nothing had happened, keeping his control over you.
“Spread your legs more, baby. I want to see how turned on I made you.”
Moaning weakly, you did as he said, spreading your legs to reveal your glistening wet mess of a pussy: you had yet to touch yourself, or do anything to stop the spread of heat in your most sensitive spot, but you felt like if he didn’t touch you soon, you were going to go into cardiac arrest.
You closed your eyes and listen to him move closer.
Eddie’s hands were warm around your thighs, and you could feel him kiss both of your inner thighs - dear god, he’s about to kill you - before he kissed your clit, enveloping it with warmth. 
Everywhere. Oh God.
You gasped weakly. “Oh, Eddie…”
Again, Venom’s voice was a reassuring purr in Eddie’s ear.
YOU ARE UNRAVELLING HER, EDDIE. KEEP GOING.
“That feel good?” he whispered, kissing you softly again.
Well, fucking obviously: you were clutching the pillows above you with all your might, doing your best not to squirm in pleasure. “Eddie, please…”
You were so fucked out you couldn’t finish that sentence, but Eddie knew what it meant, and Venom did too.
LET ME OUT, EDDIE. YOU KNOW SHE WANTS IT.
“You need V, honey?” Eddie whispered from between your legs: he sensed from the growing warmth in his abdomen that he wouldn’t have control over his body for much longer, so he was determined to savour it for as long as he could.
You nodded weakly, flushed with pleasure - Eddie’s tongue may have been a natural, non-monstrous length, but it was pressed to your clit nonetheless, and it would’ve made anybody come after long enough. “Give him to me.”
That did it: Venom came out with a flourish, enveloping Eddie’s body entirely in black goo until he wasn’t Eddie anymore, but tendrilled and sticky and terrifying and one hundred percent Venom.
You almost came at the sight of him. “Oh, V…”
Venom’s tongue protruded from his mouth, licking clean his impressive row of fangs. His milky white eyes might’ve caused others to cower, but you stared directly into them, breathless. It was fascinating, really, how quickly Eddie had disappeared.
Venom’s voice was a deep purr, deeper than anything you’d ever heard.
DID YOU MISS ME, SWEET ANGEL?
“I did, V,” you gasped as a glittering black tendril snuck up your leg, “God, I - I want you so bad.”
Venom cocked his head to the side, watching you intently, like a predator watching its prey.
I TELL EDDIE THAT ALL THE TIME.
You gasped as the appendage finally breached your cunt, pulsating and sticky, giving you exactly the feeling of fullness you wanted. “Oh, Venom…”
The pillow you were clinging onto was gone in a second, replaced by two tendrils pinning your arms onto the bed. Before you knew it, two other tentacles were wrapping around your ankles, fully restricting your ability to move, and there you were, trapped on the bed as Venom was leering above you, his cock sliding in and out of you.
His pace was relatively slow, but you soaked up every pulsing inch succeeded inside of you, and every now and again, he’d make the tendril twist, bringing you closer to the edge every time.
I DON’T EVER THINK I’VE SEEN YOU THIS WET, SWEET ANGEL.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this wet, your thoughts responded incredulously, but all that came out was a choked, “Ngh!”
You were coming, you knew it, and it still hit you like a fucking freight train: the orgasm rushed through you as blood thundered to your brain, euphoria crashing over you at maximum intensity. Everything welling up inside of you just burst, and nothing had ever been so lovely.
You went deaf for a moment as the only thing you could hear was your heart absolutely pounding and the shrill ringing in your ears, but you knew you were gasping for breath, completely overtaken by this orgasm. You’d never tell Eddie, but it was Venom who knew how to pull orgasms from you like this, and only Venom, his glittering black cock absolutely destroying you from the inside out.
Of course, it was then Venom suddenly decided to slam his cock into you at full force, overstimulating you beautifully.
The confidence in his voice never wavered.
I KNOW YOU CAN TAKE IT, BEAUTIFUL GIRL. I HAVE SEEN YOU TAKE IT.
“Oh, Venom,” you were gasping over and over, but you couldn’t fully hear yourself over the ringing in your ears and the sounds of Venom’s glittering black tendril sliding in and out of your drenched, abused pussy, filling you up to the maximum. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He did the pulsating, twisting thing inside of you once again, and your eyes nearly rolled back into your head: when he was pinning you down like this, you had nothing to hold onto, it was just you, the cock inside of you, and the threat of this monstrous creature swallowing you whole. “Oh my god, Venom!”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT EDDIE SEEING THIS, SWEET GIRL?
“Oh, fuck, Venom…” you moaned from underneath him, incoherent now as his cock pistoned in and out of you. You were blathering, but the message was clear: don’t fucking stop!
Venom was smug, now.
HOW DO YOU FEEL KNOWING I CAN TAKE YOU BETTER THAN EDDIE EVER COULD?
“You’re better than Eddie,” you mumbled incoherently as Venom ramped up speed, “Loads better than Eddie, I just - oh fuck - holy shit, V, keep going!”
WILL YOU COME FOR ME, SWEET ANGEL?
Yes, I will, your thoughts responded immediately, but actions spoke louder than words: your second orgasm ripped through you as your legs shook, you were pushed to the point of insanity. This one really took you by surprise compared to the first, but you revelled in it, your vision flashing with white as Venom fucked into you. You could feel your body sinking into the bed despite the restraints, spent, and you almost thought it was over, but–
Venom, of course, didn’t care.
COME FOR ME AGAIN, BEAUTIFUL GIRL.
“V,” you whispered weakly, your entire body damp with sweat from your last orgasm, “I - I don’t think I can, I just came.”
Above you, Venom absolutely snarled, and his tongue slithered down to force your legs even further apart.
WHEN I SAY COME, YOU COME!
A second, bigger tendril sank into your ass this time, and you gasped: you were filled, completely and utterly filled, and God, you’d be lying if it didn’t feel so fucking wonderful.
“I - I’m gonna come,” you blathered, blinking hard as the realization set in: you were about to come faster than you’d ever come in your life. “I - I’m gonna come, V, holy - oh my god-”
The words I’m coming were lost in your throat, but it didn’t matter: in a matter of seconds, you’d came for a third time, and the euphoria this time around was still there, yet with a bitter and harsh edge. Your body was exhausted, but your pussy was drenched, and all Venom knew was to keep fucking going, so–
You were gasping, half-deaf with your vision flashing with white, trying to make peace with the reality that Venom was going to fuck you until you passed out.
11K notes · View notes
asahicore · 22 days
Text
cold hands - psh (m)
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this work contains smut - minors please do not interact
pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader
synopsis. plot plot plot what is a plot when you can just have vibes and a vague narrative direction... if you MUST know you go to your brother's hockey team back-to-uni party accidentally matching one of the members with your cowgirl barbie costume. hopelessly romantic sunghoon sees this as a sign that the two of you are meant to be together, but you're impossible to read and soon the two of you settle on an ambiguous secret friends with benefits relationship. unfortunately, conflict ensues.
genre. strangers to friends to fwb to lovers..?? its not an asahicore fic if it doesnt have fluff angst AND smut, brothers best friend, jock x nerd type vibe, slight miscommunication put your pitchforks away and hear me out pls it works out i promise, reader has ISSUES 💜 loser loverboy sunghoon, its mostly in his pov, i know nothing about ice hockey
word count. 39.5k 😂
a/n. inspired by @moonlighthoon's request for the 1k trope event! sorry it took ages to write but i hope you like it and that i met ur expectations!!!! hope everyone else enjoys it too, this is the longest fic ive ever written and im quite proud of it, pls pls pls let me know what u thought <333 shoutout to @zreamy .. good luck with your studies, thank u for beta reading and making this fic exponentially better as u always do ⭐️ credit to @/plutism for the dividers :)
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Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong.
The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers.
It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, look, the flowers you nearly brought Have lasted all this while. - Wendy Cope, Flowers
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When Sunghoon falls in love, it usually goes as quickly as it came.
Just to name a few:
There had been Ahn Yujin, whose family had moved next to his when he was twelve, and whose dog got on perfectly with his. His crush on the cute girl next door grew with every walk the four of them took but disappeared the second she ditched him to walk home from school with Na Jaemin. 
A few years later, there had been Bae Sumin, who sat in front of him and always had her hair up in a ponytail he found exceedingly pretty. An appointment at the hairdresser was enough for him to stop liking her, as if his interest in her had been laying in the ten centimeters of hair she had cut off. 
In his junior year of high school, there had been Kim Yerim, a college student that tutored him in Math and English. She was three years older, but that didn’t deter him—what did was the fact that she was dating a college graduate. She showed him a picture once, and the guy had biceps probably twice the size of Sunghoon’s. He thought it was safer to give up on her than to fight such a bulky guy five years his senior. 
The first time it stuck was during his first year of college. She was his coach’s daughter and he liked the way she would smile at him when she came to watch their practice. Sunghoon didn’t like to think about her, mainly because even after she broke his heart, for a while there, he continued to love her. 
So, when he first spots you from across the room at the Welcome Back costume party thrown by his hockey team, unintentionally the Cowboy Barbie to his Cowboy Ken, he tries not to read too much into it. Barbie was a hit this summer, it’s an easy and topical costume, of course there’s a pretty girl wearing the same bright pink cowboy hat he is. It doesn’t mean she’s the love of his life.
Right?
He knows you from the pictures that littered the walls of Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon’s apartment last year, from Instagram posts, both yours and your friends’, from your video calls with Jake, who dragged him into the camera’s view. Say hi to my sister, he’d insist, like Sunghoon was a child who didn’t want to greet his great-great-aunt. He’d dip in to say hi as requested, ask how you were, and mumble me too like a fool when you said you heard so much about him and were excited to meet him in real life. 
These are the things Sunghoon knows about you: Jake’s older sister by a year, currently on a year abroad in Rome, studies something fancy like Classics, which he hadn’t known people still did in the twenty-first century, deep attachment to Stardew Valley in first year, rarely seen with the same man twice, very pretty. Absurdly so. He’s also weirdly obsessed over the texts you’ve sent to the group chat he was added to at the beginning of last year—scarce, short, elusive. Never more than two sentences, and always long after the conversation was over. But sometimes you’d send photos and videos out of nowhere, of your adventures or of funny things you saw online, and he always hearted them. He even replied to it sometimes (brave hahas or that’s so cool!s), in hopes that it would make you like him, would make you think, he gets me. 
The two of you have never formally yet because you left for Italy the year he started university. He’s been nervous about meeting you since the first time the group told him about you. 
Now that he is about to, he can hear his heart thumping so loudly in his ears, it drowns out the bass of the music. He’s glad he gets to see you before having to talk to you—he’s not sure he could take in your presence and form coherent words at the same time. He watches you laugh with your friends, the smile lines that form like dimples around your mouth, the strands of hair you keep tucking behind your ear. Then someone joins your group—except it’s not just someone, it’s Minjeong, her denim jacket so often worn he recognises her from the back, and he realizes the people you’re with have been Chaewon and Yunjin this whole time. The three of them have been banging on about you all year, even more so due to the fact that their replacement flatmate was dreadful, a Spanish girl who only hung out with other Spanish exchange students and looked the girls up and down when they tried to invite her out somewhere.
You turn towards Minjeong, and before he knows it, he’s in your line of sight, and your eyes meet. Confusion, then a flash of recognition goes through your eyes. He had been resting his elbow on a countertop, cider bottle in hand and watching you, he realizes, not unlike a creep, but now he stands up straight and looks around him as if you hadn’t just caught him staring. Before he can find a way out, Jake appears by his side and throws an arm around his shoulders, guiding him into the throng of party-goers and, coincidentally, closer to you.
“Dude, you’ll never guess what.”
“What?” Sunghoon says, tone coming out more irritated than he means it to. He’s just had to give up on making a good first impression on you, and he doesn’t even have the time to think of a way to redeem himself. When he dares to look back at you, your eyes are already on him, a small smile on your lips. You probably hate him already.
“My sister is dressed just like you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys came together or something. Hey, guys!” Jake calls out, and all of a sudden, it’s not just your eyes on him, it’s everyone’s. Well, to be fair, they’re also looking at Jake. But you’re only looking at Sunghoon, and he can’t look away from you either, can’t even manage the politeness to hug everyone in greeting like Jake is doing now. He watches as your eyes rake over his figure, taking him in, assessing him, and he suddenly feels awkward in his costume that matches yours, like he’s somehow overstepped a boundary, like you might think he’s asked around about your costume, found out you were going as Barbie and decided to match you so you’d think the two of you were meant together, like he had two minutes ago, and come to the fairly reasonable decision that he was the weirdest man on Earth. But then you meet his eyes, smile a kind, genuine smile, and his whole body relaxes. 
“Hey, Hoon!” Chaewon calls, arms open wide. He remembers himself and hugs everyone, even you, and he has to pretend like this is completely fine and normal, like his hands aren’t practically shaking as his arms circle your shoulders in a two-second embrace. 
You squeeze one of his shoulders, and keeping his countenance is a Herculean task. He feels like those people centuries ago who passed out at the sight of a lady’s ankle. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” you say, peering at him over the rim of your red cup. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Sunghoon feels the blush growing on his face; he wasn’t expecting so much of your attention so quickly. He takes a swig of his lukewarm cider, hoping if he seems drunk, it might explain his redness. “Good things, I hope,” he says, aware of the unoriginality but unable to come up with anything better.
“Oh, don’t worry, they’ve made you out to be a saint.” You’ve not once broken eye contact or stopped smiling—it should intimidate him, but instead, it makes Sunghoon feel like you’ve known each other for ages and that this isn’t your first conversation at all. He finds himself able to relax into a smile, and manages to meet your eyes for more than three seconds at a time.
“You don’t believe them?”
You pause, gaze zeroing in on him even more intensely than previously, smile turning smirk-like. Sunghoon’s heart skips a beat. Okay, maybe he’s not that relaxed. “I don’t know you well enough to make up my mind yet. But we’ll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, won’t we?”
This is exactly what Sunghoon has been warned about. You at parties, the way you look at guys, the way you talk to them. Sunghoon has been the audience of more than one recreation of such a scene, Yunjin pretending to be you, Chaewon pretending to be your “victim,” as the others liked to call them. Because once you had set your eyes on a man, he had little chance of making it out. Jay prides himself as being the only survivor, although he has to admit it’s only because Jake interrupted your conversation, telling him, “I see you’ve met my sister.” And Jay was not the kind of person that got off with their friends’ siblings, especially since his and Jake’s friendship was only a week long at that point, and he didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere in their dorm for the rest of the year just because his dick had gotten the best of him. His words. Whenever they were all hanging out together and they called you, one of the girls would inevitably ask if you had “turned any Italian boys into men” or if you had been “terrorizing the good men of Rome recently.” You would either roll your eyes or say this was not a conversation to be had in front of your brother.
Sunghoon had been sure they were exaggerating—it takes two to tango, as they say, and it wasn’t like you ensnared innocent men into your trap. They had to be willing, to want something from you just as much as you wanted something from them. He’d also gotten them to admit it wasn’t that frequent, that you weren’t looking for a new prey every party, just once in a while when you found someone you liked. (He’d been very quiet when Jay asked why he was trying so hard to defend you.)
But now that he is on the receiving end of your alluring smiles, he starts to understand how one could fall for you without meaning to. He knows he can’t — Jake probably wouldn’t take to it kindly, and he didn’t want to spoil the dynamic of his best group of friends at uni — but he has a feeling that ten minutes of talking to you would be enough to shake his resolve.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure we will. Jake said you studied a lot, but I’m sure we’ll get to hang out. All of us, I mean,” he quickly adds, lest you think he’s already asking you to hang out one-on-one. Sunghoon would not be that forward.
“Of course. I have to see if you did a good enough job replacing me for a year.” Sunghoon’s eyes widen, and before he can blurt out something weirdly laudatory like “I could never replace you, I would never even try, I don’t know you but you’re clearly far superior to me in every aspect and I could never even claim to fill your spot,” you giggle and tell him it’s just a joke. “If anything, I’m happy Jake has managed to make a new friend that he didn’t meet through me, that loser,” you say, and together, you laugh at Jake’s loserness, a topic that will never fail to amuse Sunghoon, although he’s not faring much better in that department. 
“Like, look at him right now,” you say, jerking your head in Jake’s general direction, somewhere behind Sunghoon’s shoulder—and that’s when he realizes that it’s just the two of you standing there, the others gone without him even noticing. Sunghoon turns around, finding the girls, Jay, and a bunch of other people he vaguely recognizes huddled around Jake. They all start chanting his name as he gulps down a giant red cup of beer, then raises the empty cup over his head in victory and crumples it, beaming at the people around him. 
“What is he doing?” Sunghoon asks, laughing at his friend.
“Jay called him over for a beer-off,” you explain. After a beat, you ask, “You didn’t notice?”
The implications are clear in your tone and in your eyes. In the smile playing on your lips, just shy of being a smirk. You didn’t notice because of me, is what you’re really telling Sunghoon—at least, that’s the impression he’s getting. And you’d be right. He was too busy talking to you and trying his best not to make a fool of himself to notice his friends leaving, too engrossed with you to register the sudden disappearance of four people. Across the room, where people have shifted their attention to yet another hockey player downing a sizable amount of beer, he catches Chaewon’s eyes, and she winks at him. Of course—leave it to Chaewon, to whom Sunghoon once made the mistake of drunkenly rambling about how pretty you looked in your Instagram posts last year, to give you and Sunghoon some time alone, “to get to know each other properly,” she would probably say. Although he isn’t sure that small talk over 2000s music counts as getting to know someone. According to the others, she and Yunjin started dating a month into their second year, so Chaewon has proclaimed herself as the goddess of dating and is now always trying to set people up. Sunghoon thinks she’s just living vicariously through her friends now that she has a Mrs. at home.
Because the filter usually at work between the part of Sunghoon’s brain where sentences are formed and his mouth is apparently on leave today, he says, “I do have a pretty distracting sight in front of me.” He’s immediately both mortified and impressed by this sudden bout of confidence, but then you look down and giggle, actually giggle, the sweetest sound he’s ever heard, and only pride remains. 
“So, Ken?” you ask, a cute attempt to change the subject, taking the fabric of the pink bandana around his neck between your fingers. Sunghoon wonders if you’re going to yank him down to your level, and he thinks he wouldn’t have much of a problem with that. 
He realizes that even though you should technically know each other’s names, you haven’t actually exchanged them, so in a confused but correcting tone, he says, “Um, Sunghoon.” He only belatedly realizes that you hadn’t gotten his name wrong, you were just making a comment on his costume, which he had completely forgotten he was wearing in the first place. Just as he’s about to backtrack and salvage what he can of the situation, you burst into laughter, hand leaving his bandana to cover your mouth as he hides his face behind his own hands, laughing along with you despite himself. 
“I know your name is Sunghoon!” you exclaim. The gratification of hearing you say his name takes away some of his embarrassment. “I’m Y/N, by the way. Not Barbie.”
Sunghoon nods. “Good to know.”
The laughter gradually dies down, but your smile stays the same; wide, bright, a smile that exposes your teeth and turns your eyes into crescents. Sunghoon can’t look away. He’s awash with nerves, your gaze simultaneously planting his feet to the ground like they’re full of lead and making him light-headed. His heart is beating so fast, he can barely feel it anymore. 
The two of you stand there, looking and smiling at each other, like in a cliché movie scene where everyone else at the party seems to fade into the background. He has no idea how much time has passed when you break the silence. “It really is nice to finally meet you,” you say, repeating your statement from earlier, as though you mean it more now. 
“It is,” Sunghoon simply replies, because he doesn’t know how else to express the relief of seeing you in the flesh after hearing about you and looking at a digital version of you for a year. The relief, but also the anticipation of what is to come now that he knows he likes you even more now that he’s actually seen you. And improbable as it sounds, you might even feel the same.
Sunghoon can already feel it. The beginning of something.
You nod towards his now empty cup. “Want a refill?”
Together, you make your way through the crowd of increasingly drunk students until you reach the kitchen, where the countertops overflow with open bottles of liquor of all sorts and paper plates with half-eaten pizza slices on them. He watches your every move as you find a cold bottle of beer in the fridge, a bottle of strawberry syrup in a random cupboard that you had to know was there, and a half-empty discarded bottle of lemonade on the counter. You ask him to tell you about last year, everything you missed out on, and so he does. He knows you’ve probably heard it all from the others before, but you still laugh and gasp like it’s the first time you’re hearing about any of it, all the hockey games they won, Jay getting food poisoning from the sketchy pizzeria he kept eating at, Yunjin almost getting into a fistfight with a man twice her size who was flirting with Chaewon. 
You assemble two drinks and hand him one of them. When he takes a sip, his eyes widen at the refreshing and sweet taste. “Good, right?” you say. “I discovered it on a trip to France last summer.”
“Thank God for France. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed drinking beer,” he says.
“That’s probably because you can’t taste the beer at all.”
Sunghoon smiles. “Probably, yeah.”
You turn around, lower back against the counter, and take in the current kitchen population. “We really weren’t very original with our costumes tonight.” Sunghoon, who had not taken his eyes off of you this entire time, follows your gaze. He counts five partygoers dressed in some version of Barbie or Ken, and that’s just the kitchen. He doesn’t blame them—the fact that so many people came dressed in costumes at all impresses him, especially for a party on the 10th of September and not the 31st of October. The social committee of the hockey team just seems to really love themed and dress-up parties.
He chuckles, then takes a sip of his drink. It’s really nice. “Yeah, but we look the best.”
Your head whips towards him, eyes glinting with something that makes Sunghoon smile, even though he doesn’t know what you’re thinking. “Should we enter the couple’s costume contest?” you ask.
At the mention of couple, his eyes widen, his brain tricking him into thinking you’ve asked him out for a second. But when what you actually meant dawns on him, the first thing to come out of his mouth is, “There’s a couple’s costume contest?!”
“Mh-hm. The sign-up sheet should be around here.” 
For what feels like the millionth time since he’s started talking to you, his face heats up. “Are non-couples allowed to enter?”
“We’re Barbie and Ken. I’d say that’s enough of a couple, don’t you think?” 
Right. Because he had been thinking of Sunghoon and Y/N, while you obviously meant Barbie and Ken. In the contest, it doesn’t actually matter whether the contestants are dating in real life—it matters that their costumes match. Sunghoon knows that. He just needed a second.
He grins, deep dimples punctuating his cheeks. “Okay, let’s do it.”
Armed with your drinks, you walk around the kitchen in search of the sign-up sheet. You find it on a wall next to the dining table, which has been turned into a beer pong table for tonight’s festivities, and the sheet is almost filled with names already. Sunghoon can only hope that by midnight, when the contest is set to take place, most participants will have had too much to drink to remember it. You write your names on the list, and Sunghoon likes seeing his name in your handwriting so much he almost wants to take a picture.
“There you guys are!”
You both turn around to find Jake stumbling towards you, clearly more intoxicated than when he had left you half-an-hour ago. He rests his arms on your shoulders, forcing Sunghoon down to his height and making you stumble forwards from the sudden added weight. “I’ve been looking all over for you- You’re entering the contest?!”
For a split second, Sunghoon is scared he’s going to get scolded by Jake for trying to hit on his sister, but surprisingly, it’s you he narrows his eyes at. “Y/N, what are you roping my little Hoonie into?”
Sunghoon groans, face perpetually red at this point. Leave it to Jake to make him seem like a total loser. 
You frown at your brother. “I’m not roping your little Hoonie into anything.” Sunghoon wants to bury himself alive. “We agreed on doing it together. Right?” you ask, turning towards Sunghoon and batting your eyelashes at him. It makes him feel a bit better.
He turns back to Jake. “Right. We’re just joining forces to crush the competition.”
Jake scoffs. “As if.” He snatches the pen from your hands and underlines his name as well as Kazuha’s, the girl he came with tonight, three thick black lines that almost erases the names underneath them. “You can’t beat the hockey player and cheerleader combo.”
“Those aren’t even costumes, you guys are a hockey player and a cheerleader,” you protest.
“So?” Jake simply retorts, more attitude in his tone than he would have were he sober.
“So, that defeats the whole purpose of a costume contest.”
Jake knocks on your cowboy hat, and you immediately put it back in place, glaring at him. “As if Barbie was the greatest costume ever. Whatever, let’s just play beer pong so I can defeat you guys twice in one night.”
“You’re on, Sim.”
“You’re going down, Sim.”
Sunghoon had just been watching your back-and-forth amusedly when you grab his hand, leading him to the side of the table opposite Jake. His fingers tingle under your touch, but just like that, it’s gone. He’d rather keep on holding your hand than play this stupid game, but he isn’t opposed to taking Jake’s ego down a notch, either. The boy can barely stand straight, anyway, so it probably won’t be a very tough match.
Some guy he doesn’t recognize in a striped black-and-white referee t-shirt fills most cups with beer and a couple on each side with shots of vodka—he’s so earnest, Sunghoon isn’t sure whether he’s just taking his costume-slash-role very seriously or if he has genuinely been hired to look over the beer pong matches of the night. Some order in the brutish world of college parties, Sunghoon guesses.
Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jay appear then, exchanging a quick look at the sight of you and Sunghoon together. The two former join your team, while the two latter join Jake’s, as well as other people that Sunghoon vaguely recognizes from other parties. But by the simple action of getting behind him, they become his most trusted allies for at least this part of the night.
You’re a terrible shot, but Sunghoon makes up for it by scoring almost every round. In his defense, he only misses when you come up close to him and whisper in his ear which cup he should go for. Your breath tickles his (oddly sensitive) ears and the combined scents of the strawberry and lemonade on your tongue and your delicate perfume make his head spin. He can barely think straight, so his aim is naturally thrown off—other than that, he makes Jay drink a healthy amount of beer. He almost feels bad for his friend, but he’d arrived late at the party and needed to quickly catch up with everyone’s level of ebriety anyway.
When the opposite team is down to their last cup, a lightning bolt of luck strikes you, and your ball disappears straight into the vodka-filled cup that Jake now has the honor of downing. 
Sunghoon gives you no time to celebrate, to gloatingly pump your fists in the air and point a mocking finger at your brother, because as soon as you make the shot, he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you off the ground. When you’re on your feet again, you spin around to find a proud-looking Sunghoon beaming down at you. You burst into giggles and high-five him, your palms perfectly clapping against each other, and he threads your fingers together. A current of electricity rushes through him, and for a second, he swears it’s just the two of you in this packed room.
The moment is cut short by the loud cheers of the others on your team as they shake your shoulders and raise their hands for you to high-five them too. Minjeong flips the other team off and Yunjin has to go hug Chaewon and reassure her it’s nothing personal. It’s really quite easy to make college students happy—or devastated. 
You raise your eyebrows at Jake, who’s busy glaring at you instead of accepting his defeat and taking his shot. With a begrudging sigh, he tips his head back and drinks the vodka in one gulp, the cheers doubling in volume when his face scrunches at the bitter taste of the liquor.
“Don’t act so proud,” he scolds you. “Sunghoon carried your team.”
“Maybe, but she made us win in the end,” Sunghoon retorts, putting an arm around your shoulder. 
Jake scoffs, frowning at Sunghoon’s hand placement before eye-rolling his gaze away. “Whatever.” He slides his phone out of his back pocket and smiles as he shows the two of you his screen. “Would you look at the time? The contest is starting soon.” Then, with an accusatory finger pointed at you, adds, “You may have won this battle, but I’m winning the war.”
He stomps away, presumably to find Kazuha before the contest starts, and it’s your turn to eye-roll at his dramatics. You grab Sunghoon’s hand that hangs off of your shoulders, and together, make your way through the crowd again to the garage, where the contest is taking place. All the alcohol he’s been drinking has definitely started kicking in by now, and he finds himself giggling at nothing with you.
When you reach the threshold, still hand in hand, Sunghoon stops so abruptly behind you that you almost stumble. You look back at him, then follow his gaze towards the garage and the sheer amount of people in there. Worriedly, his eyes take in every single one of the contenders. You let go of his hand and stand in front of him, placing your hands on his shoulders and putting on a determined expression. You’d almost look like a parent reassuring their kid before their first day of kindergarten if you weren’t so much shorter than him. “Don’t even worry about them, Sunghoon. We look better than anyone here.”
His eyebrows crease. “There’s like, three other Barbie-Ken couples here. Some of these costumes are so original. And do you see their makeup? Is that even possible?” he asks, staring at a couple in scarily realistic cosplay of Simon and Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks, fur and all. He can’t look at them for too long without getting chills.
You shake your head. “Almost everyone here is either a hockey player or a… hockey-affiliated person. You’re the beloved and talented defenseman of the team and I’m the star player’s sister. They’ll love us,” you say with a smile, watching the worry dissipate from his features.
“We’re like nepo babies,” he whispers. His lips break into a grin when your eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I don’t know how nepotism works,” he admits, smiling wider when you burst into laughter. “How do you know if I’m talented, anyway? You haven’t seen me play yet.”
Your eyes rake him up and down appreciatively. “I took a wild guess.”
Not unlike a cartoon character, Sunghoon audibly gulps. As a hockey player since his most tender age, and dare he say, a pretty good-looking guy, he is used to girls flirting with him, and he is even hit sometimes by the occasional lightning strike of confidence that allows him to flirt back (he still can’t believe he managed to call you “a distracting sight” without spontaneously combusting). But there’s something in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you talk—something about you that has his breath hitching and his heart racing. He doesn’t know if he wants to run away and hide in a corner or kiss you right then and there.
Heeseung, the captain of the hockey team, announces into a microphone (which Sunghoon wonders where they got the money for) that the contest will start now, so he can neither kiss you nor run away. Instead, he follows you to the side of the room where all the contestants, including Jake and Kazuha, wait for their names to be called out. There are so many participants, it takes way longer than Sunghoon would like for the two of you to step onto the makeshift stage. Judging by the looks on the audience’s faces, everyone is surprised to see you and Sunghoon together—the hockey community at your university may be big, but everyone knows everyone, and gossip travels fast. No one had seen you and Sunghoon together before, for the obvious reason that you hadn’t even met before tonight. But you could be sure that by tomorrow, as silly as it sounds, word will have gone around that you and Sunghoon had participated in a couple costume contest together. 
At least, you give them something of substance to talk about—as you and Sunghoon pose on stage, wearing your brightest smiles to please the crowd, you stand on your toes and press a kiss to Sunghoon’s cheek. Sunghoon’s eyes burn a hole in the side of your face but you just watch as the audience of drunken 20-somethings goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. Jake is the only one booing. 
Sunghoon is still in shock when the next couple is called forward and you have to step off. His cheeks are redder than before and he can’t quite meet your eyes. Apparently, he also goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. You nudge his shoulder. “See, I told you they’d like us.” 
He feels like a fourteen-year-old for it, but Sunghoon can’t stop thinking about your soft lips against his cheek, so much so that he barely says a word as the three judges deliberate. If you notice the sudden change in his behavior, you don’t comment on it, perhaps chalking it up to nerves. He’s glad for it—he doesn’t know if he could handle being teased about it, especially from you. Although he’s not sure he wants you to think he’s the kind to stress over a last-minute Halloween costume contest. 
In the end, you don’t win. He suspects it was a rigged contest all along: the couple in the unimpressive Edward and Bella costume are friends with one of the judges, probably leading to their anticlimactic victory. At least it isn’t Simon and Jeannette who win, or Kazuha and Jake, even less original than the winners. Anyway, Sunghoon couldn’t care any less. With your hand in his as you walk back to the main room in search of your other friends, he feels like the biggest victor of the night. He doesn’t even mind it when his teammates tease him about his costume and how good the two of you look together—the smile you shoot him makes putting up with it worth it. He tries to think straight, but between the alcohol and your proximity, he feels like you’ve cast a spell on him.
Jake stumbles into your group, three drinks drunker than when Sunghoon last saw him, enthusiastically reporting that a game of spin the bottle is about to start in one of the rooms upstairs, because what every college party needs is a middle-school game to shake things up. None of the guys seem particularly interested until Jake reveals that the cheerleaders are playing. 
Sunghoon looks down at you, laughing when he sees your mildly disgusted moue. “Don’t feel like playing?”
“Not really, no.” Your eyes linger on his face. “There’s only one person here I want to kiss, anyway.”
All capacity for thought leaves Sunghoon’s brain. He just stares back at you blankly, lips slightly agape, willing himself to say something but also terrified that whatever leaves his mouth might make him seem like the biggest loser ever. 
You couldn’t possibly mean him—but did you? Was he the person you wanted to kiss?
As these questions resound through his head, your gaze drops to his lips. There’s his answer. 
His heart beating wildly in its cage, Sunghoon decides to do one smart thing tonight and leans in, slowly but surely closing the gap between the two of you. Then a sudden vibration in the back pocket of his jeans zaps through him like lightning and he jumps back, as if startled out of the trance you had put him in. Shame flooding his cheeks, he checks his phone; it’s the stupid alarm he set himself earlier to make sure he doesn’t get home too late. Midnight, Cinderella-style. 
You scratch the back of your neck as your eyes dart around the room. For the first time tonight, you look embarrassed—Sunghoon is in disbelief at how pretty you look even then. “I, um,” he starts, clears his throat. “I have this thing tomorrow morning, so I can’t stay too long…” he says guiltily.
He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he swears that what he sees on your face is disappointment. It makes him want to take it all back, to stay here with you for as long as you want and forget about tomorrow morning. 
“Oh, right,” you say, nodding. “That’s fine. What thing?”
“Oh.” Sunghoon turns an impossibly deeper shade of red, further resembling the strawberry syrup the more he gets himself in these embarrassing situations with you. “Just… choir. I go to choir on Saturday mornings.” He looks down at his feet like he’s just revealed a secret, shameful part of himself.
You burst into laughter, and Sunghoon is scared for a second that you’re making fun of him, and his feelings are a lot more hurt than they should be by someone he just met. Although, to be fair, you don’t feel like someone he just met.
“That’s so cool! It must be such a nice change from all the dudes on the hockey team,” you say, a sweet, curious smile on your lips. Like you mean what you say. Like you might want to know more.
Sunghoon thinks he just fell in love.
He chuckles. “Yeah. Definitely a nice change. As much as I love hockey, it’s nice to do something calmer, you know. And I like singing. And the cakes the local grandmas bring.”
“So that’s what it’s all about, really.”
“Yep, you caught me.” Sunghoon still feels the almost-kiss lingering, a tension between the two of you that has him on edge. He feels like he’s just missed his bus because it left a minute earlier than planned. The opportunity is gone, and he would definitely mess everything up, trying to kiss you now. So instead, he decides to leave. Whatever must happen, will happen, even if it’s not tonight. You have the same friends—this is definitely not the last time you will see each other. “Well, I should probably head. I have to be up at eight tomorrow.”
“Oh, wow. The choir grandmas don’t play around.”
“They really don’t.”
“Well, see you around then,” you say, a clumsy laugh falling from your lips as you wrap your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, bringing him into a tight but short hug. You also smell good, he notes to himself. Of course you do.
“See you, Y/N.” Just as he’s about to turn away, you wrap your hand around his wrist.
“Wait. Sunghoon?” He’s only half-surprised at the immense relief he feels to hear his name on your lips. Like you, too, didn’t want to part with him just yet.
“Yeah?” he says, wishing the hope and anticipation aren’t too obvious on his face.
“Where’s that choir of yours?”
--
When Sunghoon arrives at his neighborhood’s community center, ten minutes before nine a.m., you’re already there. Despite the seven hours of sleep under his belt, he feels like he could’ve done with three more, and the singular cup of instant black coffee he had for breakfast was both atrocious and useless. But your smile has the restorative effect of two Red Bulls and a power nap. You look surprisingly bright, like you either managed to get a very good night’s sleep or are just the biggest morning person to ever exist.
He hugs you when he reaches you on the sidewalk, tighter than he probably should, but you return it. You smell like fresh soap and sugar. The two of you exchange quick greetings before he leads you inside the center. 
“I made some cookies as well.” You point to your tote bag and Sunghoon’s jaw slackens.
“You had time to bake?” 
“Kazuha made me take Jägerbombs, so I felt crazy when I got home. I thought it wouldn’t be fair on the old ladies if they did all the work.”
Sunghoon laughs. “They’re going to love you.”
You follow Sunghoon up two flights of stairs and into a spacious room with a wooden stage. There’s a snacks table on one side of the room that is almost fully decked with plates and tupperwares of all sorts, and although their contents remain covered by tin foil or lids, the coffee and hot water pots are free to use. Most of the chairs are stacked on each side of the room but a few have been put in the middle, the grandmas sitting and chatting there waving at Sunghoon as the two of you walk in. There are about fifteen people in the room so far, most of them older ladies, but not only. There’s a dad that came with his daughter, a couple of teenagers, and a few other adults. It’s quite an eclectic mix, and Sunghoon loves it.
Minjeong is here, too, which Sunghoon realizes he forgot to say until he sees the sheer confusion of finding someone you know in an unexpected place on both of your faces. She walks towards you, suspicious eyes darting between you two.
“Hey,” she says only to Sunghoon before turning to you, arms crossed over her chest. “And what are you doing here?”
“Hi, Minjeong, so nice to see you too!”
“I invited Y/N,” Sunghoon says quickly, although you did technically invite yourself. For some reason, he feels the need to defend you, even though he knows you and Minjeong have been friends for years now, and Minjeong is just always this blunt.
“I didn’t know this was the choir you went to,” you say to Minjeong.
“Oh, this?” She looks around the room. “It’s only the choir I’ve been going to since I was a kid. You’d know that if today wasn’t the first day you showed interest in it, ever.”
“I came to your concerts!”
One of the old ladies calls Sunghoon’s name from the snack table, and he is glad for the diversion. “Right. I’ll let you guys talk this out.” A hand on your shoulder, he smiles down at you. “I’m gonna say hi to the ladies over there. Be back in a minute.” He shoots Minjeong a look as if to say, Be normal. 
As he approaches the small group, one of them asks very loudly if you’re his girlfriend. They all burst into giggles, blushing and eager-eyed like they’re sixteen rather than sixty. Sunghoon would be endeared if you didn’t look so alarmed and Minjeong so horrified, both of you looking at him before turning back to each other and getting into a very heated and secretive discussion. He is bombarded with a hundred questions: what your name is, where you’re from, how did the two of you meet, are you together? No? But you’re so pretty! And he’s such a nice boy! He answers all of their queries to the best of his ability while checking that your conversation with Minjeong hasn’t turned physical—your arms are now also crossed over your chest, and you look annoyed while she looks like she’s accusing you of something, but at least, punches aren’t being thrown. 
Thankfully, it’s only a couple more minutes until the conductor calls for everyone to gather on stage, and a weight is lifted off of Sunghoon’s shoulders once the ladies’ collective attention is no longer on him. He isn’t sure where they came from, or why they’ve decided to make the choir rehearsal their hang-out spot, but there is always a group of women who sit there and knit while chatting quietly or listening to the songs, and they are sometimes joined by children whose parents are part of the choir but don’t want to sing themselves and apparently have nowhere else to go. Sunghoon had been so excited at the prospect of having you come see him that he hadn’t thought of how boring this might be for you, sitting with sixty-year-olds for two hours, listening to an amateur choir go through scales and sing corny romance ballads—they’re rehearsing for a wedding they’ve been hired to sing at. But as the minutes go by, his worry dissipates when the delighted smile on your face hardly falters. He can’t imagine that his choir is that good, but you genuinely look like you’re having a nice time, and it makes Sunghoon stand a little taller, sing a little louder. Your eyes are on him for most of the time, and he blushes every time your gazes meet, but he still can’t keep himself from looking away from the conductor to check on you every few seconds.   
Once rehearsal is over, everyone gathers around the refreshments table. When you tell Sunghoon that he looked good out there, he stuffs his mouth with banana bread to stop himself from blurting out something stupid. Your cookies are a hit, and so is everything else—Sunghoon would be more than happy to watch you eat as many baked goods as you possibly can and chat with the grandmas, but he has something to ask you. Without thinking much, he wraps his fingers around your wrist, gently pulling you away from the table and towards him. The question that was at the tip of his tongue fades as soon as you meet his eyes, looking up at him like a deer caught in headlights, cheeks stuffed with brownie. You’re so cute that words fail him for a second, and when he notices the proximity between the two of you, takes a small, bashful step backwards. You glance at his hand still around your wrist, and he withdraws it like he’s suddenly been burned. 
A playful smile grows on your lips. “Everything alright?”
He scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I just, um, well. There’s a bus that takes us from right across the street directly to the beach, if you’re, um, if you’re interested. In going. With me. If you want.”
Your eyebrows cock in surprise, and Sunghoon thinks he’s messed it all up. You shoot Minjeong a quick, worried glance, then seem to think for a second. But when you look back to him, your smile is soft. “That sounds nice.”
An hour later, you’re running around together on the beach—or rather, Sunghoon is running around, and after five minutes of watching him with a smile on your face, he’s convinced you to run around with him. You’ve both long discarded your shoes and socks, jeans scrunched up to your mid-calves, grins so wide, your cheeks start to hurt. The wet sand is hard under your feet and the water cold against your skin. Sunghoon’s t-shirt sticks everywhere you sprayed water on him, and he knows putting his shoes on later will be a whole ordeal, but it doesn’t bother him. Even the gray September sky feels brighter because you’re standing with him underneath it. 
The water-splashing battle quickly has you both out of breath, and Sunghoon is ready to call a truce when you spot something behind him, gasping and running towards it. He turns around to find you picking up a bunch of sandcastle-building toys that must’ve been left behind by some kids. “I haven’t built a sandcastle in such a long time, this is so exciting,” you say, excitement written all over your face. 
As much as he loves seeing the glint of childish amusement in your eyes, Sunghoon keeps looking around in case the owners of these toys might appear out of thin air. “I feel like there’s something immoral about this,” he says, and you stop stacking sand into one of the toys to look at him with a confused frown. “Aren’t we technically stealing from some kids?”
“Sunghoon. If those kids really cared about these plastic toys, they wouldn’t have left them here.”
“What if they come back for them?”
“Then we’ll give them back. We’re not monsters.” That’s all it takes for Sunghoon to give in. He helps dig trenches around the towers you build, carving out small windows on them and apologizing profusely when he accidentally pokes too hard into one of them, destroying half of it. 
The second he notices you shivering, Sunghoon is on his feet, unwrapping the scarf around his neck and laying it like a blanket over your shoulders. “I’m going to get us something warm to drink. I’ll be back in a minute!” he announces before you can even protest, and practically runs to the nearest café. 
He only leaves you and the slightly pathetic-looking sandcastle alone for a minute, quickly coming back with two take-away cups of milky Earl Grey tea and a brownie that he couldn’t help himself from buying. The moan you let out when you bite into it, gooey, sweet chocolate sticking to your teeth, goes straight down Sunghoon’s spine, but he tries not to let his thoughts get too carried away.
“Good, right?” he asks, laughing when you nod fervently. When you laugh too, it’s a sound so sweet, it rivals the decadence of the brownie. “I sometimes make the trip all the way here just for this.”
“I thought I’d be done with sweets after this morning, but this is so good.”
“Better than Berta’s banana bread?”
“Oh, a hundred percent,” you say, covering your mouth with your hand as you speak. “Sorry, Berta. I’ll be thinking about this for the rest of my life.”
Sunghoon hopes you’ll remember him as the boy who’d introduced you to those brownies, if nothing else.
The two of you are silent for a little bit, but it’s a comfortable silence—something Sunghoon didn’t know was possible with someone he’d just met. This was something he loved about the sea: it allowed for some quiet. The crashing of the waves against the shore, the calls of the seagulls, the dogs barking after them—it all meant he didn’t need to fill the space with needless chatter. He could look out at the peaceful water, you by his side, and just enjoy the moment.
“I’m still so amazed whenever I come to the beach, no matter how many times it’s been.” Sunghoon’s voice is quiet when he speaks, lower than usual. It sounds a lot more intimate than he means it to be. You turn your head to look at him, silently asking him to go on. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes as he watches the water. “The town I grew up in is right in the middle of the country, so the sea is like, a five-hour drive. There was a lake nearby, but it was nothing compared to this. It might sound silly, but being from somewhere where everyone knows each other, I never realized just how big the world was until I came here and saw the sea for the first time.”
“You’d never been to the sea before coming here?” you ask, surprise clear in your voice. 
He shakes his head. “My hometown isn’t far from the mountains, so it’s a huge tourist spot both in the winter and in the summer, which meant my mom had to work even when my sister and I were out of school and could actually go on holiday. We’d go visit my grandparents and aunts when we found the time, but that was it.” He meets your gaze, a smile playing on his lips at the thought of his hometown and his family. “This is the furthest I’ve ever been from home.” 
The corners of your lips raise into a smile too, matching Sunghoon’s. “And how has that been going?”
He sighs. “It’s okay. I miss my mom and sister like crazy, of course, but they FaceTime me so much that I barely notice it. And anyways, it’s also nice to be on my own. Discover another part of myself, and all that.”
“For sure.” 
There’s a slight shift in your expression that Sunghoon catches onto, a falter in your smile and a hint of sadness in your eyes. He doesn’t want to force a topic that you don’t want to talk about, so he just gently eggs you on, in case all you need is a small push.
“What about you? I think Jake mentioned you guys growing up around here, only an hour or so away.”
At the mention of your brother, the smile returns to your eyes. You take a deep breath and think for a bit, but eventually, you start talking. Although Sunghoon’s eyes are on you, you keep yours trained on the sea. “Yeah, we did. We live just up the coast, so we were always hanging out at the beach. In a way, it’s nice having the sea here as well. It’s like-I don’t know.”
“Like having a piece of home even when you’re away?”
Your gazes meet for just a second, the surprise clear in your eyes, but as quickly as it came, it’s gone, and you turn away from Sunghoon once more. “Basically, yeah.” A sardonic smile appears on your lips. “Although the constant reminder isn’t always appreciated.” 
He tilts his head. When you don’t say anything further, he flicks some sand onto your hand and asks you what you mean by that. He looks at you with curiosity and kindness only, eager to know more about you, to let you know that you can open up to him, that he won’t judge you, but careful not to overstep any boundaries either. It seems to work.
“It might sound stupid, but back home, the beach was a place I could go to when it all was a bit too much, you know? Like an escape from everyday life. Where I could forget about all of the pressure on my shoulders.” Sunghoon hums, and you take another deep breath. “I don’t know if you and Jake talk about this sort of thing, but… our parents are barely nice when we do well, and pretty awful when we don’t reach their expectations. So we were like, constantly having to outdo ourselves just for them to say, ‘Keep it up’, or something like that. And if we did something wrong, well…”
You trail off, but Sunghoon knows what you mean. “Yeah, Jake said they barely spoke to him anymore because he decided to play hockey instead of becoming, like, a doctor or something.”
You smile, but it’s humorless. “Yep. They send him money, and he comes home for a bit over Christmas and summer break, but that’s it. I’ve gone home by myself sometimes and they won’t even mention him, it’s insane.”
“He also doesn’t talk about it a lot.”
“I know. I’m always the one to bring it up. I know it’s a sensitive topic for him, obviously, but I still find it amazing how well he deals with it. But me… despite everything, I still need their approval, you know?” you ask, and Sunghoon nods.
“That makes sense.”
You sigh. “I guess. And I’m obviously not becoming a doctor like them. Not a medical one, at least. It took a year of convincing them that doing the degree I’m doing was okay. ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s still me filling in my university applications, and they can’t actually force me to go to medical school, but I still wanted them to be proud of me. Even if I study languages.” It’s quiet for a few seconds as you both look out at the waves crashing against the shore. When you start talking again, you look down at the sand, picking it up and letting it filter through your fingers. “So, yeah. Jake got a scholarship here, and I didn’t wanna be too far from home, so here we are. We’re so close to home, the sea I went to when I needed a break in high school and the sea I go to now are one and the same. And now it reminds me of my parents rather than making me forget about them.”
“I’m sorry for bringing you here,” Sunghoon says. “I didn’t think…”
You cut him off with a smile. “It’s okay. Now I’ve created new memories. Nice ones. And you know… wherever I am, it’ll be at the back of my mind. It’s up to me whether I let it affect my life or not.”
“Letting go of these things is never easy,” Sunghoon offers. “You also can’t blame yourself if it does affect you sometimes.”
When you look at Sunghoon, your eyes darting back-and-forth between his like they’re searching for something there, he feels himself tense up slightly. He can’t read you at all, has no idea what you’re thinking even as you smile and say, “You’re right.” Even as you silently link your pinky with his, gazing down at your hands with a small smile. He hadn’t realized how cold his hands were until this small touch, so small yet able to spread warmth throughout his entire body. When he speaks, he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes—he’s still so focused on where your hands touch, too aware of the skin of your finger right against his. Such a small, innocent touch. He can’t even begin to understand why it means so much to him.
“For what it’s worth, I think what you’re doing is super cool,” he says. “I’ve always been so shit at foreign languages, let alone dead languages. And packing your bags and going abroad for a year, not everybody can do that. Becoming a doctor might be hard, but it also takes a specific kind of person to do what you do. And what Jake does. It’s all valuable.”
“Now, if you could say that again while I record you to show my parents, please,” you say, making him laugh.
“It’d be my pleasure.”
“What about you?” you ask him after a small pause. “I can’t be the only one who trauma-dumps on the first date.”
Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat. He hadn’t even dared entertain the thought that this might be more than a platonic hang-out in case he was crossing a line—but you’ve just called it a date. With just a few casual words, you’ve changed the entire meaning of the hours you’ve spent together. He hopes you can’t tell how flustered it’s made him.
“Well, there’s not much trauma to dump, really. Sorry.” 
You giggle. “Don’t apologize. That’s a good thing.”
Now that you’ve just opened up about your parents, Sunghoon is scared that telling you about how good of a childhood he had might come off as insensitive—but you smile softly at him, holding his hand face-up in yours, tracing the lines of his palm with the tip of a finger, and he starts talking. “So, it was just me, my older sister and my mom growing up. My dad died when I was 2.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It is a bit sad that I don’t have any memories of him, but everyone who knew him said he was a great guy. And my mom’s had this boyfriend since I was like, 10? He’s the one who got me to start hockey. So it hasn’t been that bad.”
“Your mom must be really strong.”
Sunghoon smiles. “She is. She’s amazing. To raise two kids on your own while grieving and not royally fuck up is… well, amazing. She’s always been so supportive of us, no matter what we wanted to do. My sister did well at school, but I wasn’t so good. I never really enjoyed it, but she’s never made me feel bad about it. She didn’t mind that all I wanted to do was hit a puck around.” 
“And you’re pretty good at hitting that puck around, aren’t you?”
“I’m not so bad,” Sunghoon says, chuckling along with you. He’s about to go on, but he is cut off by a raindrop hitting his hand, then another one; before either of you know it, your clothes are soaked through. Sunghoon takes his denim jacket off, using it as a makeshift umbrella for the both of you as you run towards the nearest awning, shaking with giddy laughter until you forget about the chilly rain and the clothes sticking to your skin. When it doesn’t let up for another few minutes, Sunghoon suggests catching the bus back, and you agree. 
The heating on the bus is set on low, but it’s enough to warm Sunghoon up as soon as he steps onto it. You sit at the back in a corner of your own, multiple rows away from the other people onboard. The two of you are relatively quiet, lost in your own thoughts until Sunghoon, after much internal deliberating, takes one of your hands in his and interlaces your fingers together. You look up at him, but he doesn’t return your gaze, eyes fixed on the window to hide his shy smile and the blush slowly staining his cheeks. To his surprise, you squeeze his hand and rest your head on his shoulder. He freezes for a second, unsure how to react to your reciprocated affection, but he makes himself relax into your touch, and starts brushing his thumb back-and-forth on the back of your hand. The sudden storm has made day turn to night a little earlier today, and with the quiet hum of the bus, he finds himself on the edge of sleep for the whole ride—the only thing keeping him awake is his booming heart.
The bus is nearing his stop when the buzz of his phone in his back pocket jolts him awake. You lift your head from his shoulder, massaging your neck as you fish your phone out of your own pocket. Sunghoon, more intrigued by you than by whoever has texted him, watches as the brightness of your screen makes you wince. Once you’ve read the text, you turn towards him, sleepy eyes and sleepy voice as you ask him whether he’s seen “this,” referring to a text from Chaewon. dinner at our flat tonight!!! come whenever. bring drinks. 
“Oh, I forgot she was doing that tonight,” you say through a yawn.
Sunghoon chuckles. “Do you have enough energy for it?”
“I always have enough energy for Chaewon’s cooking.”
You and Sunghoon make a pit-stop at a grocery store to buy two bottles of white wine and the hummus Chaewon likes, then head to your flat. Naturally, questions are asked when you and Sunghoon arrive at the exact same time, but before Sunghoon can explain that you spent the day together, Minjeong’s head pops out of the kitchen door, and she asks whether you ran into each other downstairs. Chaewon is only looking at the both of you, waiting for an answer, so she doesn’t see the very pointed look Minjeong gives you, as if to say Agree with me or else. You quickly glance at Sunghoon then say, “Yeah, we just arrived at the same time.” When they’ve both turned away, you tell him in a hushed tone that you’ll ask her about it later. 
The girls are busy in the small kitchen and Chaewon insists that they don’t need any more help, so you and Sunghoon bring two chairs by the kitchen door and sit as Yunjin catches the four of you up on the most recent drama in her Law cohort. Jay arrives twenty minutes later, but it isn’t another hour before Jake shows up with the excuse that he was taking a nap.
“Someone would think you don’t sleep at night, with the amount of naps you take,” you say.
“Oh my God, I miss when you weren’t here,” Jake replies, flicking your forehead before promptly plopping himself down on the couch. “I was so hungover when I woke up. I had to sleep it off,” he explains as he grabs four cans of beer from his backpack. 
Chaewon always makes a point to ask how everyone’s spent their day, but today, she unfortunately starts with Sunghoon, so he doesn’t have any time to come up with anything believable other than the truth, which is exactly what he does—and when Jay asks, What, to the beach by yourself? under Minjeong’s heavy gaze, he has no choice but to say yes. He isn’t sure why it’s such a big deal that you spent the day with him, or why it needs to be kept a secret, but there must be a reason. He’ll find out later. When it’s your turn, you look straight into Sunghoon’s eyes as you say you spent the day at the library but didn’t get much work done. Everyone ignores Jake when he exclaims Boring! and Chaewon swiftly moves onto Jay.
But you don’t. 
Your eyes stay on Sunghoon, unflinchingly watching him, expression unreadable, and he finds himself unable to look away, even as he feels his face heat up and his stomach flip. Then you smile, a satisfied smirk like you got what you wanted, and shift your gaze to Jay, who’s going on and on about the first six episodes of Lost he binge-watched earlier and wondering why nobody had told him about this “masterpiece of a show” before. Sunghoon is too busy thinking about the way you’d looked at him and pondering all the reasons for it to listen carefully. He watched Lost when he was fourteen anyway.
All throughout the evening, as the seven of you eat Chaewon’s pasta dish (which she made entirely from scratch, and is probably one of the best things to have ever graced Sunghoon’s taste buds), drink, talk, and afterwards, play card games, every glance between you and Sunghoon feels like a secret conversation that only the two of you are privy to. No one except for Minjeong is aware that you spent the day just the two of you until now—and even she doesn’t know what it is you did. Within a day of knowing each other, you already share memories that are yours and no one else’s. Sunghoon is giddy with the knowledge, heart skipping every time your eyes meet, no matter how fleetingly. When you’re all saying goodbye, it takes everything in him not to hug you for an awkwardly long time and to tear himself away from you. 
He can hardly fall asleep that night.
--
For the entirety of the year you were gone, Sunghoon could only nod and smile while the others bemoaned your absence or commented on how much more fun it’d be if you were here (even Jake, after enough wine spritzers, would admit to missing you). He understood that the group dynamics might feel different to them without you around, but this particular set of people was all he knew, so he never minded it. It reminded him of people telling him how sad it must’ve been growing up without a father, trying to be empathetic, when he didn’t know how he could miss something he never had. 
But now that you’re here, he gets it. You add something to the group that he can’t quite put his finger on. It’s in your affectionate gestures towards Chaewon and Yunjin, in your shared sense of humor with Jay (which no one else seems to find funny, save for Sunghoon, sometimes), in your bickering with Minjeong and downright arguing with Jake. It’s a hackneyed expression, but you do light up a room—at least in Sunghoon’s opinion, you do. In your presence, everything feels not only more lively, but also more cohesive, like you were the missing piece of a puzzle. Like a historic work of art that has been returned to its rightful owner. 
Sunghoon just finds himself drawn to you, at times unable to keep his eyes off of you, and the only things keeping him from making a move are his inherent shyness and the eyes of your friends. He doesn’t want to mess up the friendship he has with anyone from the group, least of all Jake, just because he can’t keep it in his pants. He thought of Yunjin and Chaewon, how their relationship had gone smoothly from the beginning and posed no problem to the dynamic of the group, but he had no idea if this was replicable between you and him at all.
If he had to be honest, a big part of him was also just afraid you’d reject him.
Getting a read on you is hard, which doesn’t help. It’s been three weeks since the gang reunited, since that party where you met. The first semester of his second and your fourth year started a little bit over a week ago; Sunghoon sometimes worries that you think there is some big age gap between you and that you see him as a kid, even though, admittedly, two years is not such a huge difference. In those three weeks, there have been many encounters which could be seen as cases of flirting between the two of you—Sunghoon has noticed every single one of them and replayed each an embarrassing amount of times in his head. A hand carefully posited on his shoulder; prolonged eye contact; jokes whispered in his ear at a crowded house party; knees lightly touching at first, then pressed together during movie night. None of it ever fails to make Sunghoon’s heart flutter. You could breathe in his general direction and it’d make his heart beat fast enough to worry a cardiologist, so when you smile at him, it’s a small death every time.
And so he dares hope that his interest isn’t one-sided—although most of the time, he is so stuck between thinking none of it means anything and thinking every single thing you do is a sign that you like him, that he rarely knows what to think. And whenever you’ve paid him enough attention to make him believe it’s not all in his head, you do something that proves him wrong. Watching you interact with other people, he realizes that you keep good eye contact with everyone and that you’re just as touchy and playful with all of your friends. At parties, you hit it off with new people and catch up with old friends without so much as a hint of awkwardness. He watches as you talk to other guys, the same smile that has been making him weak for the past three weeks, directed towards them and not him. Sunghoon assumes you’re either really nice to everyone and oblivious to the fact that it could be seen as flirting, or you just flirt with everyone. 
In that sense, the two of you are complete opposites. Sunghoon, whose entire friend group hangs on the fact that he befriended Jay, who knew Jake, who knew you, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon. Sunghoon who has spoken to maybe half of his hockey team outside of the locker rooms and the occasional party. Sunghoon who, outside of his usual friend group, has managed to make three other friends on his own in the year he’s been at university, because they had been put in a group project and magically hit it off enough to upgrade from classmates to friends. 
Then there’s you, who has to stop every thirty seconds at a party to say hi to someone you know. You, who still keeps in touch with the friends you made in a foreign country, even those who spoke broken English. You, who didn’t make Sunghoon feel like his crippling shyness was a problem when you first met. 
He doesn’t understand how everyone who meets you doesn’t instantly fall in love. 
Or maybe they do, and he’s just one of many vying for your heart. 
Tonight is one of the nights where all he can do is watch from afar as you interact with another man that he desperately wishes was him. With your lower back against the kitchen counter, drink in hand as you laugh with that other guy, eyes never leaving his face, it almost looks like someone has copied your time with Sunghoon at the costume party and pasted it onto this post-hockey game party. All you’re missing is a bright pink cowgirl hat and boots to match.
And yet, it’s his team jacket over your shoulders, his name and number on your back. Sunghoon shouldn’t feel nearly as jealous as he does.
So he does what any good friend would do, and blames Jay for reasons completely unwarranted—even now, days after receiving his advice, and hours after taking it, Sunghoon still can’t help but regret involving him at all. 
Initially, Sunghoon hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about his growing feelings for you—he’d thought that if he pushed them away and kept them to himself, they’d go away on their own. But clearly, they didn’t, seeing as how his stomach always twisted in nervous excitement at the prospect of seeing you and how he could never get through a conversation with you without blushing. So, quicker than he’d like to admit, he’d given in and told Jay about the day you’d spent at the beach and how felt about you now, thinking it was some big shameful secret that would render his friend flabbergasted. 
That was his first mistake. 
Jay wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, it’s been pretty obvious, dude,” he’d said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. It was after hockey practice, and they were sitting in the burger joint near the ice rink that had some of the best student deals in town. Jake was going on a Hinge date, and Sunghoon had lured Jay in with the promise of free food (Jay wanted to go home and game, but all Sunghoon needed to do to convince him was to say “I’ll pay for it”). 
“Obvious? How obvious? Does everyone know? Does Jake know?” Sunghoon asked, growing more agitated by the second.
“Jake is possibly the worst room-reader that has ever lived, so no, I don’t think he’s caught on. But the rest of us know. I mean, you look at her like a twelve-year-old with a crush on his English teacher,” Jay said, unceremoniously cramming fries into his mouth.
Sunghoon ignored the slightly humiliating remark, still preoccupied by the fact that he hadn’t been as discreet as he thought he had. He leant in towards Jay and dropped his voice to a whisper, even though the restaurant was practically empty, save for them and a group of rowdy middle school boys who were definitely not paying attention to them. “Do you think… does she know?”
Jay dropped his fist on the table in sudden annoyance, causing Sunghoon to jump back in his seat. “Now you’re acting like a twelve-year-old.” Before Sunghoon could defend himself and argue that he’s being completely rational, Jay launches into a surprisingly moving monologue. “It’s fine if you like her, there’s nothing to be embarrassed of. Everybody feels attraction towards other people, everybody gets crushes, it’s no big deal. Just talk to her. Worst case scenario, she doesn’t feel the same way, and you both move on, because you’re adults.”
There’s nothing worse than a friend being right about something you absolutely don’t want to hear. Sunghoon did feel like he had been carrying a horrible secret around, but Jay was spot-on: crushes are a very common, very human experience. And yet Sunghoon managed to feel like he was the only one who had ever had to go through this torture. “You say that like it’s easy,” he said, sulking.
“It is easy. You’re making it hard.”
“So what, your advice is just to confess to her?”
Jay rolled his eyes. “See? You’re saying confess like it’s some sin you have to repent for. Yeah, just tell her.”
“Just tell her,” Sunghoon repeated, looking at his friend like he was crazy. Jay just took another bite of his burger.
“Yeah, dude. It’s not even like you’ve known each other for a long time, so there’s no risk of ruining a friendship, or anything.”
“But do you even know if she feels the same way at all?”
Jay shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned anything,” he said, and Sunghoon’s heart dropped in disappointment. “But it’s Y/N, she’ll be cool about it. And who knows, she might actually see something in you, for some godforsaken reason.”
Jay laughed at his own joke, and Sunghoon afforded him a chuckle. They moved on to other topics, but later, as they waited for Jay’s bus to come, he couldn’t help himself. “Do you think Jake will mind? If something happens with Y/N and me?”
Jay thought for a second. “I think he’d be more upset with her than with you, what with everything that happened with Heeseung... But knowing him, he probably won’t care as long as you aren’t weird in front of him.” He puts a hand on Sunghoon’s shoulder and shakes it gently. “Don’t let that stop you from making a move, okay? You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.” His bus came then, so Sunghoon couldn't ask for more details about this Heeseung situation—he knew that there had been something between you and him which hadn’t ended particularly well, but no one ever really talked about it so he didn’t dare bring it up. All he knew was that it had been significant enough for Jay to mention it now, and for Jake to seem bothered every time it was mentioned.
He put all of that out of his head for the time being. In a way, he had just received Jay’s blessing; even if it scared him shitless, he could make a move. Perhaps not something as straightforward as Jay was suggesting, but something, at the very least. 
The first major hockey game of the season was that coming Friday. Sunghoon had an idea.
The morning of, he shot you a text. He tried to make it sound as nonchalant as he can, so that you wouldn’t know he spent close to an hour deleting, writing and pouring over a singular sentence. Can you meet me in front of the locker rooms 30 mins before the game? 
That was his second mistake.
You replied twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Sunghoon spent questioning everything that had led up to this moment.
yn.sim i’ll be there!!
You even got there five minutes early. He was waiting for you, all decked out in his hockey uniform, save for the gloves and protective headgear. He was anxiously chewing on gum, heart doing somersaults inside his ribcage—a grin found his lips as soon as you appeared around the corner, the sight of you alleviating his nerves for a second, then doubling them when you came close. “Hey,” he said, voice soft and slightly trembling.
“Hey,” you simply replied, a smile on your face to match his as he took you in his arms. It was a hug that lasted a second longer than it should, but that also ended too early for his liking.
“Um, I only have a second, Coach will be wanting to give one of his pep talks,” he said when you separated. One quick glance back at the locker room doors behind him, then back at you. The tips of his ears burnt, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from furtively darting between your face and the floor. But he’d come this far, so he couldn’t back out now. He just had to get it over with. “Here,” he blurted out, holding out the letterman jacket he had been hiding behind his back. You grabbed it, eyeing him with amused suspicion at first, but surprise spreaded over your features as you unfurled the jacket.
“Your team jacket?” 
He couldn’t tell whether you were amazed or horrified. You stared wide-eyed at the jacket, at its dark green sleeves, at the four letters of his last name and the huge number 8 embroidered onto the back. Your surprise faded back into what he thought — what he hoped — was excitement as you looked at him. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling his face flush red. “Yeah, I just, you know… It’s the first big game of the year, and I thought it’d bring me good luck if a pretty girl was wearing my name…” he explained, repeating the words he’d practiced over and over, voice turning into more and more of a mumble as he spoke. He had planned on speaking with more confidence, but now, the fact that he could speak at all felt like a miracle.
A light giggle spilled out of your mouth. Sunghoon immediately took it for mockery and regretted every decision that had led him here. “Sorry, it was a silly idea, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it,” he said, reaching for the jacket. But you were quicker than him, hugging the thick bundle of fabric to your chest as you now beamed at him.
“Are you kidding? I love it,” you said, shrugging off your jacket and replacing it with his.
First, relief flooded his body, then pride and excitement — as you spun around and showed the jacket off — at seeing his name on your back, and his attempt at making a move being successful. At least, he thought it was clear what he meant by giving you his jacket to wear at his game—he could only hope you understood. “Well… I’m glad.” Your eyes met, and you both chuckled softly, gazes holding each other’s for a second too long. 
Two weeks ago, Sunghoon still would’ve been able to convince himself this was a fluke; that this was just another one of his crushes that a gentle breeze could blow away. Because after all, when Sunghoon fell in love, it usually went as quickly as it came. But at that moment, in front of the locker rooms, his mind solely on you and not the opening game of the season, he realized this was something else entirely. And whatever it was, he hadn’t felt it in a good long while.
He was terrified—but infinitely excited, too.
“Okay, I should probably head back in now,” he forced himself to say, but made no move to go.
“Okay.”
He paused. “Will you be cheering me on?”
Your smile widened. “Of course.”
He nodded slowly, upper body starting to turn away but feet still firmly planted on the ground. “Okay.” 
Another second passed, and just as he was about to actually walk away, you grabbed his hand. Before he could compute what was happening, you lifted your head and pressed a small kiss to his cheek. His hand was still in yours when you took a step back, and for once, it was you who looked sheepishly at the floor. “For good luck,” you explained. He had no time to reply—you were already walking away, only looking back once to wave and shoo him in the direction of the locker room. He chuckled and nodded, but waited until you were out of sight to head back into the locker room.
Inside the locker room, everyone was too focused on getting their head in the game to notice his giddy smile. Your lips had been warm and soft against his cheeks, a welcome repeat of that time at the costume party, but the quickness of it all had only made him want more. From that very first night he’d met you, the question of how your lips would feel on his had scarcely left his mind. This brought him a step closer to getting an answer, but also made his curiosity grow tenfold.
Thankfully, by the time his coach gathered them around for a last minute pep talk, he’d managed to put the distracting thoughts of you out of his head, at least temporarily—he’d need to play well, for himself and his team mostly, but impressing you was also a priority. 
As the captain, Heeseung said a few words. He reminded the team of how important this match was and went over the main strategy points. For the time being, Sunghoon was able to forget about his arguably unfounded resentment against the older boy and whatever it was he had to do with you. This was not the time for jealousy over someone he had no right to feel jealous over. 
A few minutes later, his members and those of the opposing team poured out onto the rink for warm-up. Sunghoon searched the crowd for your face—when he found it, you were already smiling wide and waving at him. His heart did something funny, but Jay punched his shoulder pad and he remembered what he was there for. He could get lost in the eyes of a pretty girl later, specifically when he’d destroyed the other team and shown her how good of a hockey player he was.
Every now and then as he skirted around the rink and did his stretches, he stole glances at you. They didn't last long, because every single time, you’d already be looking, as if your eyes never strayed from him. Knowing you were watching made him nervous at first, but by the end of warm-up, mainly because he didn’t have much of a choice, he’d turned those nerves into an ever stronger will to do well.
The moment the referee blew the whistle, and for the hour that followed, Sunghoon was locked in on one thing and one thing only: winning. He was only competitive when it came to hockey—he didn’t care about dying in an online battle game or losing to Jake at beer pong, but once he was on the rink, he had to win. Pride surged through him and filled every crevice of his aching limbs whenever he or one of his team members scored, and the feeling that came with a victory, with hugging his teammates in celebration or hearing the crowd cheer for them, was like nothing else he’d ever known. The other side of that coin meant that any loss was a tremendous disappointment. Getting beat at an important game could put him in a week-long funk. His sister had once carefully hinted at his self-esteem relying too much on his hockey performance, and although his first reaction had been to dismiss her, he knew she had poked at some truth there. But what could he do—on particularly lonely nights, he truly thought hockey was all he had going for him. 
To his overthinking nature, becoming so single-minded the second the whistle blows was a relief, a break from the stress of daily life. He didn’t have to worry about his next deadline or about what the guys on the team thought of him or about the inevitable phone call to his mom asking for more money for groceries. It was respite from the thoughts surrounding you that plagued him: how you felt about him, how you might react knowing what he felt for you, how Jake might react. Why Minjeong hadn’t wanted you to say anything that evening, but why Jay had told him to just go for it. Heeseung, whom he had to respect as the captain and an undeniably talented player, but also as someone who had had something to do with you, whether good or bad. All of it had been wildly bustling around Sunghoon’s mind, but once on the rink, all he had to concern himself with was the puck and getting it in the opposing team’s goal. 
And Sunghoon did just that��he scored the first goal of the game, another one in the second period, then a third during the eleventh hour, breaking the tie between the two teams. He smiled right at you after each one, just to make sure you had seen everything. He couldn’t quite describe how it felt to see you clap and cheer for him, jumping up-and-down, forming a megaphone with your hands around your mouth and yelling, “Go Sunghoon!” all while you wore his jacket. It was a separate kind of pride and satisfaction from the sort he’d get seeing anyone else cheer him on, for sure. 
The other team put up a good fight, getting in a few goals of their own and protecting their side well, but in the end, thanks to Sunghoon’s goal, it was his team that won. He took his helmet off and got his hair ruffled by half of his team, then shook hands with the other team, trying to contain his boastful smile—some ice hockey players flew off the handle very quickly, and starting a fight was the last thing he wanted.
Kids and local fans huddled by the barriers on each side of the player’s tunnel to get an autograph or a picture. People around here were weirdly attached to their university sport teams, and the athletes on teams that did particularly well — namely football and rugby — were sort of local celebrities. Their ice hockey team wasn’t quite at that stage yet, but they were placing better nationally with every year, and so the local interest had grown. More kids had started signing up for lessons, and their parents often brought them to home games. As Sunghoon chatted with men twice his age and took selfies with ten-year-olds, he tried to find you in the crowd, to no avail. He’d been hoping for a thumbs-up from you for a game well played, or even a hug, but you were nowhere in sight.
It wasn’t until half-an-hour later, after saying bye to all the fans that had waited after the game for them, listening to Heeseung and their coach congratulate them (but also remind them to not take anything for granted), showering and changing, that he got to check his phone.
chaewon we going k-bbq! u guys played well see u later at da party!!!!
Disappointment only had a second to sink to the bottom of his stomach. He’d barely finished reading the text when he was hoisted up by the shoulders. Two of his senior teammates, Soobin and Beomgyu, marched him towards the exit. “We are getting you wasted tonight, Park,” Beomgyu announced, a wide grin on his lips.
“I have a good feeling about this season,” Soobin added. Sunghoon looked back to find Jay and Jake simply shrugging and laughing at him.
Indeed, the second they got to the dorm where tonight’s party would be taking place, a beer was thrusted in his hand. It was only 7 p.m., still light outside, but that didn’t stop the team nor their friends that had come to the game. They sipped beer like it was water, so much so that two hours later, when the party started to grow, Sunghoon was already quite inebriated. It didn’t help that his cup was never empty for too long, and that he had the reassurance of being in his own dorm—it was the closest student building to the ice rink, and so was one of the prime spots for hockey parties. He could get as drunk as he wanted — or as Beomgyu wanted — and still get home in less than a minute. 
He somehow ended up in the corridor, part of a nonsensical conversation about candle-making with two guys he had recognized from one of his Phys Ed classes but could not for the life of him remember the names of. One had shared that candle-making was a big hobby of his, and it had made Sunghoon and the other unknown man lose their minds—Sunghoon had never realized how curious about candle-making he was, but he couldn’t stop asking questions. It sounded great. Maybe he’d have to pick up candle-making, too. 
Eventually, he headed back to the kitchen for a new drink. For the nth time this evening, he thought of texting you, then immediately thought against it. He wanted to know when you’d get here, but he didn’t want you to know that he wanted to know—although as the night deepened and his intoxication rose, he could remember less and less why that would be such a bad thing. He stepped into the kitchen, and going from the brightly-lit corridor to the dark kitchen with flashing neon lights made him so dizzy that he made a beeline for the couch, needing to sit down for a second.
And that was when he saw you.
Lower back against the counter, talking with a guy he’s never seen in his life. You look like you’re having fun—smiling, laughing, keeping eye contact with that guy. You’re still wearing his jacket. It should probably reassure him—his name is literally on you, what does it matter that you’re speaking to someone else? But instead, all he can think is that wearing his jacket must mean nothing to you. What was basically a confession from him seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
His friends’ words over the past year come back to him—how much you flirt with people, how it wasn’t a rare occurrence for you to go home with a guy after a party and never speak of him ever again. Was this what was happening here?
He knows it’s unreasonable, but in his drunken state, he takes it as a betrayal. Like he can’t believe you haven’t read his mind, figured out how he felt about you, and decided to give special attention to him and him only. He’s only able to take it for so long—two minutes later, he trudges out of the room, walking right past you but not looking your way.
His new mission is to find his friends, but before he’s done much searching, he hears his name being called out. Of course, he recognizes your voice immediately, but he doesn’t quite believe it until he looks over his shoulder, and there you are, face glowing and smiling wide. You’ve clearly had a few drinks, but he likes to think you’d be just as happy to see him if you were sober. He turns around to face you, watching as you narrow the distance between the two of you. He’s not in a much better state—the simple thought that you had come after him makes him forget any sort of resentment he held against you a second ago. When you reach him, he holds on to one of your arms, as much an effort to stabilize his swaying body as an excuse to touch you.
“Hey,” he simply says. He’s always at a loss for words around you, so scared he’ll say the wrong thing that he ends up barely speaking at all. He’s only sober enough to know that with all the cheap beer and vodka running through his blood, his odds of making a fool of himself are even bigger. 
“Hey. I was wondering where you were.” 
“You’re the one who came late.”
“I know!” you exclaim. “I wanted to come right away, but Chaewon was hell-bent on getting her Korean barbecue.”
“She does get cranky when she hasn’t had pork belly in a while.” Sunghoon feels like he’s just won the Nobel Prize when you let out a laugh. “Was the food good at least?”
“It was amazing. So worth getting here late,” you joke.
He rolls his eyes playfully. “I see how it is.” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “Then we should go there together next time.” 
Your smile changes, turning from cheerful to surprised, but amused—almost mischievous. You take a step forward. Sunghoon gulps; the gap between the two of you was narrow to begin with. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
Usually, this type of straight-forwardness would have him stuttering, but drunk Sunghoon is a man sober Sunghoon barely recognizes in the morning. “Yeah. I am. Is that okay?”
You nod. “Mh-hm.”
“Nice. Okay.” For a second, you just look at each other. Another thing about drunk Sunghoon: he doesn’t feel like prolonged eye contact will make him spontaneously combust. He actually quite enjoys it. He also stumbles, even when all he’s doing is trying to stand straight. “You’re still wearing my jacket,” he eventually says, reaching out to take the end of your sleeve between his fingers.
You stretch out your arms and appraise the team jacket as if you only remembered you had it on. “Yeah. It’s comfy.”
“It looks good. You look good.”
“You’re not quite sober, are you?” you ask suddenly. 
“Is it that obvious?” When you nod, he giggles, lowering his head in defeat. “The guys made me drink so much.”
“You did score three goals after all. And you looked good doing it.”
At the praise, he stands up to his full height and places his palms behind his head in a victorious pose. “I did, didn’t I?” he says, looking off in the distance with a self-assured look that makes you burst into laughter. He drops the confident facade and laughs along with you, until somebody bumps into him and sends him stumbling forwards. If you weren’t standing there to catch him, he’d probably have fallen flat on his face. But even though he doesn’t fall, he feels all the alcohol catching up to him and threatening to come right back out where it came from. You hold him for a second, and just as you ask him if he’s okay, he says, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
You sigh. “Okay. Where’s your room?” 
Arm under his shoulders, you let Sunghoon lean most of his weight on you as you guide him towards the elevator. It’s just one floor, but you said you didn’t want to risk the stairs with him. “Hey, who was that guy with you in the kitchen? That guy in the striped shirt? You guys seemed real chummy back there…” he mumbles as you help him out of the elevator. Even on the verge of sickness, Sunghoon is preoccupied by more important things.
“Oh, that was Jaemin.”
“Jaemin,” he echoes, more venom in his voice than needed.
You look at him, taking in his disgruntled expression, and chuckle. “Yeah, he’s having some problems with his boyfriend. He asked me for advice.”
Sunghoon almost freezes in his tracks, but you’re there to keep him walking towards his room. “Oh. He has a boyfriend.”
“Yeah…” He can tell you want to tease him about it, but thankfully, you say nothing. He’s made it clear he had gotten jealous of your gay friend—no need to spell it out in so many words. Once you reach his studio (which he’d stupidly left unlocked), he heads straight for the bathroom, locking himself in, half out of embarrassment, half because he really doesn’t want you to see him throw up. Talk about a turn-off. He leans over the toilet bowl, waiting for the vomit to rise, but nothing comes. He waits, and waits, mind completely empty, head spinning even though he’s sitting very still, when suddenly a knock on the door pulls him out of his stupor.
“Sunghoon? It’s been ten minutes. Everything okay?”
He doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the door for you. Without realizing, he fell asleep like a bored teenager in math class. “All right,” he hears you say.
He’s surprised you’re able to carry him out of the bathroom—if he was a deadweight before, by now, rigor mortis has practically set in. Despite his small student room, crossing it takes you an entire minute, and when you reach his bed, you all but let him flop on the mattress. He doesn’t mind. As soon as his body hits the bed, he feels quite snug, curling against his blanket. You start to unbutton his shirt, probably just thinking he’s already fallen asleep and wanting to make him more comfortable, but your fingers freeze when he starts giggling. Shoulders shaking with unbridled laughter, he feels as delighted as a five-year-old who just said a naughty word and made all his drunk relatives laugh at the family dinner. 
“I know I looked really hot tonight, but can we wait until I’m sober?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and keeping his eyes shut, despite the shit-eating smirk on his lips. You hit him on the chest but it just makes him laugh more.
“Bold of you to assume I’d still hit when I’ve just had to peel you off your toilet seat.” He lets you finish helping him out of his button-down. 
“Wouldn’t you?” he asks. He tries to look at you, but his eyes don’t quite open all the way, and they don’t focus properly, due to a strong mix of alcohol and inappropriate thoughts. Of you, specifically. His body feels suddenly very heavy, his want for you weighing him down into the mattress. The room is dark, your face illuminated only by the light in the bathroom and the glow of the street lights outside. You always look pretty, but your beauty is especially breath-taking right now, Sunghoon thinks. He wants to reach out and touch your face, wants to trace your jawline and know what your skin would feel like against his fingers. He doesn’t realize he’s actually doing it until he hears you inhale shakily.
The expression in your eyes is unreadable, and quickly gone, replaced by an annoyed squint. You grab his wrist gently, setting it back down next to him. “I’m gonna make you some ramen. You need to sober up, and you haven’t had dinner, have you?”
Sunghoon shakes his head. He feels rejected, and it makes him inordinately sad.
For five minutes, he watches as you rummage around his cupboards for a pack of ramen, fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil. His thoughts float back to your day at the beach, memories that he’s preciously held onto for the past few weeks. You running around on the sand, opening yourself up to him and letting him open himself up to you, holding his hand on the bus. That day, he’d really thought it would be the beginning of something new; but as time passed, he became less and less sure of himself. He’s scared it might’ve just been a fluke, and that he’d have to destroy the castle he’d built in his head. He’s seen you almost every day since, but it’s never been the same. And even if your eyes met unexpectedly sometimes, or if you went out of your way to sit next to him during movie nights, he can’t let himself go on with so few signs. Jay was right—he had to be clear about his feelings, otherwise this would go on forever. Even if it didn’t feel like it, the Earth would continue spinning on its axis if you didn’t reciprocate.
“I’ve missed you.”
You pause in your movements. “Missed me? But we’ve seen each other every day,” you say after a few seconds, still facing away from him. Your voice is softer than he’s heard it before, almost unsure of itself.
“No,” Sunghoon whines, frowning. He can barely keep his eyes open—he wishes you could read his mind so he wouldn’t have to explain, but alas. “I miss you—the you from the beach. When it was just me and you. It’s not the same with the others around.”
Silence falls over the room again. Sunghoon wonders if you’re just going to ignore what he said, until you take a deep breath, and walk back to his bed. You crouch in front of him and take both of his hands in yours. Electricity flows from where your hands touch to the rest of his body. He suddenly feels a lot more awake.
“It’s just the two of us now,” you whisper. 
Sunghoon nods. “I know. It’s nice.”
You smile. It might be the alcohol playing tricks on him, but Sunghoon swears there’s a hint of sadness in your eyes. One of your hands comes up to his hair. You thread your fingers gently through it, pushing it away from his forehead, then bring your hand down to the side of his face, your palm cupping it tenderly. Sunghoon lets himself lean into your warm touch. With his eyes closed, the darkness surrounding him makes this feel like a dream—he basks in the moment so as not to let a second of it go to waste.
“Do you wanna do something just us two this week?” you ask softly. His eyes shoot open—he needs to be sure this is really happening. He nods again, fervently this time, and it makes you chuckle. “Okay.”
“Just us two?” 
“Just us two.”
He relaxes once more. He guides your hand towards his mouth and presses his lips against your palm. Something shifts in your eyes—Sunghoon thinks the opportunity to finally kiss you has arisen, but as soon as his gaze drops to your lips, you’re back on your feet. “Let’s eat some ramen, shall we?” you ask as you head back towards the kitchen. Sunghoon tries his best (and probably fails) to not let his disappointment show.
There’s no dining table to speak of, only a low table near Sunghoon’s bed, on which you set down a wooden board and the steaming pot of spicy noodles. You hand him a pair of chopsticks and a spoon, and tell him to eat. Neither of you say much for a while, and Sunghoon grows redder and redder under your watchful gaze. He asks if you want any a few times, but you always turn him down. The silence quickly gets a little too unbearable for him, and he’s got a question burning the tip of his tongue anyway. Now’s as good a time as ever to ask it.
“Something’s been bugging me recently, actually…” You wait for him to go on. “So, at the costume party, right?” You nod. “You said there was only one person you wanted to kiss… Did you mean me?”
You tilt your head, looking at him like you’re trying to figure out whether he’s joking or not. “Yeah, Sunghoon… I meant you. Who else?”
He’s only half-relieved. “So why won’t you kiss me now?”
To his surprise, you smile. “Because you’re drunk.”
Confusion fogs Sunghoon’s brain. Is that all you’re worried about? Is his blood alcohol level the only thing stopping you from kissing him? “But I-I’m fine. I give you consent to kiss me, Y/N.” He’s dead serious, so when you laugh, it only frustrates him further.
“Finish your food, Sunghoon. We’ll see about kissing later.”
He sighs. Later he could deal with. “Fine. But I’ll hold you to it, okay?” he says, pointing a menacing chopstick at you.
“Okay.”
But Sunghoon can’t keep quiet for long—ten seconds later, he’s remembered another question he’s been dying to ask. He continues drinking his soup in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “So what happened between you and Heeseung?”
The question takes you so off-guard, you look like you would’ve done a spit-take had you been drinking water. “That’s-you know about that?”
“Well, not much, that’s why I’m asking.”
You scoff. “Why do you want to know? It’s boring.”
At those words, Sunghoon whips his head up to look at you. “It’s not boring!” he exclaims, perhaps a tad too vigorously. “Anything that has to do with you is interesting to me.”
Finally, the corners of your lips rise. Sunghoon hated the ten seconds in which you weren’t smiling. “Well, there isn’t much to say, anyway. We had a thing when we were in second year, I caught feelings and wanted more, and he didn’t. The end.”
Sunghoon freezes, staring at you with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth agape. He then sets his cutlery down neatly next to the pot of ramen and clasps his hands together like he’s in a business meeting. “So you’re telling me that he had the opportunity to make you his girlfriend and he just… didn’t?”
You shrug. “Basically, yeah.”
He hits the bedsheets next to him, huffing out in annoyance. “What an idiot.”
“He sure is,” you say. You smile to yourself as you grab Sunghoon’s spoon and try some of the broth. He wonders whether anything lies behind that smile. “But it happened a while ago. Don’t be weird with him on my account. He’s still your captain.”
Sunghoon thinks for a second. “Can I side-eye him once in a while? Or not pass him the puck during practice?”
“Sure,” you reply, laughing. You swiftly move on to other topics as Sunghoon slurps the last of his noodles, asking him about the beginning of the party and just how much his teammates made him drink. He’s recounting the shot contest they held, which Mark won with an impressive seven shots of tequila in a row — Sunghoon hopes the boy is okay now — when your phones buzz at the same time. Minjeong’s name appears on your screen, Jay’s on his, both asking where you are.
“Should we head back now?” you offer, although Sunghoon, wishfully perhaps, detects a trace of reluctance in your voice. “You look like you’ve sobered up a bit, seeing as you’re able to string more than two sentences together.”
“I wasn’t that bad!”
“I should’ve filmed you.”
It’s one a.m. when you head back down, and the party is in full swing. Pop music blasts through someone’s JBL speaker in the shared kitchen, the hallways are more crowded than the subway at rush hour, just as full of hockey fans celebrating their team’s win as students who just wanted an excuse to party, and every window is open to alleviate some of the stuffiness. They probably have another hour left before the dorm residents who decided not to join in the festivities call campus police on them.
Sunghoon is relieved to find that Jake is off with other team members, reaching levels of drunkenness that will most definitely be regretted in the morning. Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong—he simply let you nurse him back to sobriety after he almost regurgitated his pre-game protein bar and three beers all over your nice shirt. Chaewon and Yunjin are busy making out in a corner, their lack of decorum only increasing when they’ve been drinking, but Jay and Minjeong eye you suspiciously upon seeing the two of you arrive together. You explain what happened so casually that they don’t question it any further.
Chaewon and Yunjin only tear themselves off of each other when a Beyoncé song starts playing, and they drag all four of you to the makeshift dancefloor, which is really just three meters away in the middle of the kitchen. Sunghoon is practically all sobered up by now, but he’s loosened up enough not to feel self-conscious with every step he takes; the fact that you look so happy, dancing with him and laughing at his silly moves, is a considerable bonus. He won’t drink any more, not wanting to risk embarrassing himself further in front of you, and Jay, as the group’s self-proclaimed health guru, probably had his last beer around nine p.m., but the girls, each of them with a cup of suspicious transparent liquid in hand, are getting drunker by the minute—and so is Jake, who has now joined you all on the dancefloor, if his inability to stand straight is anything to go by. Sunghoon assumes you’re also done with alcohol for the night, until you turn to him in the middle of a song no one has heard since 2015 and tell him you’re going to get a drink.
“Okay!” he simply answers, and for a good thirty seconds, basks in the blissful satisfaction of knowing he was the one you informed of your whereabouts. That is, until he realizes a minute later that it was probably a covert invitation for him to come along, which he totally missed. But when he looks over at the counter where all the drinks are, his heart drops—Heeseung is standing in front of you, pouring gin and lemonade into your cup. A flurry of emotions course through Sunghoon, emotions he has no idea what to do with, because he’s not sure they’re entirely warranted. He’s angry that Heeseung is talking to you, after what he did, confused that you’d let him; but mostly, he’s jealous. But he knows it’s only because he has no guarantee that you like him, and that you won’t go off with Heeseung, despite having just talked about how you were over him.
Wait—is that really what you said? You told Sunghoon that what happened with Heeseung didn’t bother you anymore, which doesn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t go back to him, given the chance. 
Before he can think it over a second time, Sunghoon heads over to where you and Heeseung stand. He places himself right behind you, reaching for a bottle of Coke on your side and pouring himself a drink.
“Oh, hey, Hoon,” his team captain says, clearly surprised to see him there and looking so discontented. Sunghoon can’t remember whether they’ve ever been close enough for Heeseung to call him by his nickname. “Having fun?”
“Yep,” he curtly replies, avoiding eye contact with either of you and looking out at the crowd of party-goers instead. He can feel your gaze, heavy on his face, can see the knowing smirk slowly rising on your lips. How was it that you could see right through him so easily?
“Too much dancing made you thirsty?” you ask, taking a drink from your cup and hiding your smile behind it.
He glares at you, more annoyed that his attempt at subtly sussing out what you and Heeseung were doing together was shut down so quickly than anything else. “Yep,” he repeats.
“You guys know each other?” the older boy asks, eyes darting between the two of you.
“Jake introduced us,” Sunghoon quickly answers. To his surprise, this makes Heeseung chuckle.
“Jay, Sunghoon, me… Wow, do you meet all your friends through your brother, Y/N?” he asks jokingly. Immediately, so many alarm bells ring in Sunghoon’s head—the implication that you and Heeseung are friends, the fact that he put himself and Sunghoon in the same bag, and above all, that teasing, almost flirtatious tone of his. 
He’s horrified to find you rolling your eyes playfully and saying, “I have other friends, thanks,” in a tone far too similar. At that moment, Minjeong starts yelling about how much she loves everyone in this room but particularly “you guys,” pointing to Jake, Jay, Minjeong and Chaewon, and “you guys, too!” screaming over the music as she points to you and Sunghoon.
“There’s one of them,” you say, half-amused, half-exasperated. “We should probably go check on her. See you around, Heeseung.”
“Right. See you, Y/N. Sunghoon.” 
Back to no-nickname basis, apparently.
Your group’s indicator of when it’s time to go home is when Minjeong starts one of her “I-love-my-friends-so-much” rants—if she’s that drunk, everyone else must be wasted. Indeed, Chaewon and Yunjin are holding onto each other to keep themselves from falling down, and Jake is unable to keep his head up. You, Sunghoon and Jay herd your friends outside and wait for Jake’s Uber, making sure to get him safely inside and to tip the driver generously for his pains. Jay lives nearby yours and the girls’ flat, and Sunghoon, ever the gentleman, walks you all home.
“Just ‘cause you and Jay might need a hand getting these three home,” he tells you. Yunjin, Chaewon and Minjeong are currently running around on the road, pointing and laughing at random shop names, and Jay is yelling at them to get back on the sidewalk.
“Mh-hm.”
“And it’ll be good to completely sober up before going to bed.”
“Right.”
There’s no use putting up a front with you—he’s an open book and you’re an avid reader. You don’t need to say anything to make it clear that you know it’s just an excuse to spend more time with you.
“You know, I told you not to be weird with Heeseung,” you say, gently punching him in the arm.
“Was I weird?” he asks, knowing fully well he hadn’t acted at all like he usually did around his captain. 
“You basically only spoke to let Heeseung know we’re friends. You were making yourself all tall and looking mysteriously out into the distance instead of at us.”
“But I am tall and mysterious,” he says, pride coursing through him as it always does when you laugh at one of his jokes.
“You’re probably the least mysterious person I know, Hoon.”
Hoon. How much sweeter that name sounds coming from you over anyone else.
“So you agree that I’m tall?”
You roll your eyes, but there’s a grin on your face. A win is a win. “That’s just a fact.”
Sunghoon smiles victoriously. “I’ll take a fact. But I’m sorry if I was acting weird… I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you.”
“Heeseung is always bothering me,” you say with a sigh. “He comes up to me like this at every party. He’s just asking how I’ve been, but it’s like he’s sussing out whether or not he’s still got a chance.”
“Do you need me to beat him up? Threaten him? Dox him?”
Even though Sunghoon was only half-joking, you burst out laughing, hard enough for Minjeong to whip around and shout, “What are you laughing about?” as if you had offended her personally. At least Jay is there to make her turn around and focus on walking straight.
“I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be needed. I just don’t like talking about it, ‘cause it’s really not that big a deal anymore. It feels like digging up old bones, you know?”
Sunghoon shrugs. “I’d commit grave robbery with you.”
“You-what?”
“Nevermind. We obviously don’t have to talk about it, but I’m curious.”
You sigh. “I guess it’d make sense for you to know about this.” Sunghoon thinks he sees something like panic flash across your features, but it’s so quick and such a rare expression on you that he’s not sure whether he just imagined it. “You know-just ‘cause everyone else is aware of it, and everything,” you quickly explain.
“Sure.”
“I just… I’m sure Heeseung is a nice guy when it comes to other things, but what the girls and I have concluded is that he’s a bit of an attention whore, you know. When it comes to girls. We fooled around for a while, and he never made it official, even when I made it pretty clear that that was what I wanted. But every time we saw each other after that, he’d flirt with me like nothing had happened. I fell for it at first and flirted back, thinking he had changed his mind… but he really just wanted to make sure I was still into him.”
“Looking for validation,” Sunghoon says.
“Exactly. And when I realized that, I stopped giving it to him. I was getting tired of him anyway, saying the same thing every time. But now, I entertain him for a couple of minutes before I walk away. I shut him down before he gets a chance to do it to me.”
“That’s smart.”
“I know,” you say, smiling. “I understand the need for validation, but he won’t be getting any from me.”
Jay bravely handles the three drunkards the whole way home, letting you and Sunghoon hang behind and carry on talking. You reach the boy’s apartment first, and yours five minutes later. But when you reach your front door, Minjeong announces she needs to talk to Sunghoon. “Privately,” she emphasizes.
You give Sunghoon an amused look and shrug as if to say “She’s your problem now.” He doesn’t have time to protest before you’ve bid him goodnight and disappeared behind the door, Yunjin and Chaewon in tow, yelling good night at Sunghoon like they’re not going to see him for months. 
Minjeong places her palms flat onto Sunghoon’s torso and looks right at him—to the best of her ability, at least, considering she’s having a hard time focusing her eyes. “Sunghoon,” she says gravely.
“Minjeong?”
“Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she says, slurring her words. “You know I love Y/N, she’s amazing…”
“Yeah, she is,” Sunghoon says firmly—already, he can tell where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.
“But she’s not the best with relationships.”
“What do you mean?”
Minjeong’s hands drop by her sides and she exhales deeply. “I’ve just never seen her in a committed relationship in the-in the almost four years I’ve known her. She never lets things get serious. She’s just so afraid of being hurt, Hoon, and I-” 
A hiccup escapes Minjeong’s lips as tears start pooling in her eyes. Sunghoon has only ever seen Minjeong cry when drunk—even movies that had him sobbing barely made her eyes water. Even if she isn’t in her right state of mind, he knows it means this must be important to her. He holds her arms and tries to put on the most reassuring tone he can. “But I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“No, I know that. I’m scared you’d get hurt. I don’t want things to become weird between all of us.”
Sunghoon shakes his head. “Minjeong, what-that wouldn’t happen.”
“But it will!” she exclaimed. “If something happens with you and her, and it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, it’ll make things awkward-”
“If that happens,” he interrupts, “I’ll deal with it. I won’t make it your guys’ problem. Y/N and I are adults, okay?”
“You’re like, nineteen…”
“Yeah, whatever. Don’t worry about it, okay? It’ll be fine.” He takes a step back and opens the door for her to get in. 
She’s only on the first stair when she turns back around. “But, Hoon-” she tries, though he cuts her off.
“Minjeong, I promise-”
“Just don’t rush into anything, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Go inside.” 
She complies, giving him one last look before climbing the stairs to her apartment. Sunghoon closes the door behind her, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.
--
Sunghoon is on his way home from hockey practice when his phone buzzes with a text from you.
yn are you still up for doing something this week?
He almost throws his phone in the air in celebration, as if it was a graduation cap. His Sunday was spent going back-and-forth between lapidating himself for his drunken stupidity, memories, rough as stones, hitting him in the face every time he thought of what he said and how he acted, and congratulating himself for having finally made his feelings for you somewhat clearer. Hopefully, you now know he isn’t just awkward and silent around new people—well, he is, but it’s worse with you.
She never lets things get serious.
Minjeong’s warnings echo in his head as he types a positive — although not over-enthusiastic, ‘cause that’d be uncool — answer, but he dismisses them easily. Perhaps he shouldn’t; Sunghoon is, after all, incredibly serious about any and all romantic encounters. The girl at the grocery store who reached for the same red bell pepper as him was the most serious thing to him in the world for a good ten minutes; all of his school crushes were of utmost importance to him, however long they had lasted.
So this? This is capital-s Serious. But therein lies the problem; he’s so serious about you that he’d let you not make it serious. If Minjeong is right, and you’re not planning on taking this nearly as far as he wishes for it to go, he can already tell he’ll just let you. He’ll probably be happy you wanted anything to do with him at all. 
He has ways of reassuring himself, of convincing himself he isn’t a totally lost cause. Because when Sunghoon falls in love — and he had an inkling this was what this was — it usually goes as quickly as it came. Who’s to say this time next week he won’t have completely moved on? Maybe this date that he’s agreed to will go horribly wrong, you’ll be rude to the waiter, you’ll spill tomato sauce all over your shirt, and the flame in his heart will be put out. Easy as that.
You decide to meet on Wednesday evening, two days from now. Sunghoon suggests a Japanese restaurant he likes, a place he had gone to with his mom and sister when they had dropped him off at university before his first year, and that he knows is nice enough for a date but won’t burn a hole through his wallet.
Seeing you at the library the day before is a real thrill. Nobody but you knows of your plans—at least not until he caves in and tells Jay about it, who congratulates him with a roll of his eyes and a pat on the head. All of your eye contact feels loaded with the kind of complicity that comes with sharing a secret. As much as he would love boasting about it to every soul who’d listen, this secrecy electrifies him—it binds the two of you with something much more real than before. At least, more real than Sunghoon’s imagination and one-sided feelings. He knows that your text wasn’t in any way a confession of your own feelings for him, but it’s a step in the right direction.
In the few hours before your reservation at seven p.m., Sunghoon spends so much time thinking about the date that he’s almost late for it. He thinks about his expectations, then tries to get rid of them; he comes up with ideas of what your expectations might be, remembers Minjeong’s words, dismisses them, remembers them again; he goes through scenarios upon scenarios of everything that might go wrong and everything that might go spectacularly well. He ends up with less than twenty minutes to get ready, but manages to arrive at the restaurant a minute before you.
When he sees you approaching, Sunghoon feels like one of those boys in Disney movies as they watch their girlfriend coming down the stairs in her prom dress. You’re not wearing an over-the-top poofy purple dress, but the effect is the same—his eyes are glued on you with every step you take towards him.
You grab him by the arm and lead him into the restaurant as soon as you reach him. He’s too busy taking in your appearance to be bothered by it. “Don’t look at me like that,” you chide as you wait for waiting staff to seat you. He’d actually think you were mad at him if it wasn’t for the small smile playing on your lips.
“Like what?”
“Like what you’re doing right now! You’re staring.”
Realization slowly dawns on him; your gazes have made him lose his composure too many times for him not to know what being flustered looks like. He’d be lying if the fact that it was you in this tight spot and not him didn’t heavily stroke his ego. 
“Why wouldn’t I? You look beautiful,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper so that the approaching waitress can’t hear. Her presence saves you from responding verbally, but as she brings you to your table, you pinch his arm lightly as if to say Be on your best behavior—although Sunghoon would argue this was his best behavior.
You have trouble making up your mind about the food—you want to try everything on the menu. Sunghoon tentatively offers to order a bunch of dishes and share them. “It’s what my family always does at the restaurant, just try as much as you want and take the leftovers to go. We never ate out very often because my mom would spend so much money every time,” he recollects, smiling fondly.
“That actually sounds like a dream. My parents would never do that. It was always just eat what you got, but I’m unable to look at someone else’s food and not want to try it. It honestly should just be common practice to share dishes at the restaurant.”
Sunghoon thinks he could get down on one knee right then and there. Whenever they went out to eat, the boys would roll his eyes at him when he stole bites of their food. But you—you’re like him. He knows he’s prone to over-exaggeration, but he can’t help but feel like if you understand each other on this, you must understand each other at a molecular level.
He had expected a level of awkwardness to your date, at least at the beginning — God knows the moments in which he doesn’t feel like a mumbling fool in front of you are few and far between — but to his surprise, everything goes smoothly. There is no uncomfortable silence, all his jokes miraculously land, even the lousy ones, and you both laugh and talk and share sushi and pork cutlets like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which perhaps it is. His attempts at flirting are well-received and he only turns violently red twice when you compliment him and smile at him in a particularly pretty way.
It’s that day at the beach all over again. Always on the same page, you dip in and out of topics with a synergy he has rarely felt before. Sunghoon realizes it must be the presence of others, rather than you yourself, that makes him feel like he can’t act the way he wants to around you, makes him so nervous. Save for the moments where you make his heart flutter like a thousand butterflies’ wings, he actually feels quite at ease with you, all things considered. Of course, he still tries — and fails — to look cool for you, but he knows it comes from a place within himself rather than because you make him feel as though he has to meet a certain standard. Surprisingly, he can be totally himself, and it seems to be enough for you.
He loves his friends. He wouldn’t trade them for the world. But he’s not sure he won’t have moments where he’ll wish nothing more than for them all to go away and leave the two of you be.
You eat until you can’t anymore and are still left with enough food for another full meal. You only let him get the bill once he’s promised that next time will be on you. If it means there’ll be a next time, he’s more than happy with making that promise. The sun has set when you exit the restaurant. Sunghoon shivers as he steps outside, the temperature having gone down by at least four degrees in the last two hours.
You grab his hand; it warms him right up.
Your apartment is a thirty-minute bus ride away, but Sunghoon offers to walk you home. Anything to spend more time with you.
He spends the first few minutes of the walk worrying about his hand, whether it’s too clammy, whether it’s holding yours right, but he eventually relaxes into the touch. When a particularly chilly gust of wind blows, you drop his hand and hold onto his arm instead, inching closer to him for more warmth.  He only drank lemonade with his meal, but he feels blissfully light-headed.
Silence only arrives when you reach your doorstep. You stand in front of each other, Sunghoon looking down at his feet, you gazing out at the empty street. He knows this is the moment where he is supposed to kiss you. If there was a step-by-step guide on how to date — there probably is, but Sunghoon hasn’t resorted to such loser-like measures yet — this would probably be the moment where it would be written to just kiss her, you idiot. But nerves get the best of him.
At least, you’re there to save the day. You direct your gaze towards him, a bashful smile playing on your lips. “So… are you gonna kiss me now?” you ask, essentially reading his mind. 
He reacts immediately. “Y-yep. Yes. I am.” Heart racing, he takes a step towards you as he rests his hands on your waist. Then he changes his mind, and brings one hand up to your cheek. There’s an eyelash that has fallen below your eye; he brushes it out of the way with his thumb before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours.
In all of his late-night scenarios and daydreams of kissing you, he had never imagined something as good as this. You find your rhythm within seconds. It’s slow, almost hesitant, yet so tender, it makes Sunghoon’s heart ache. As your lips move against each other in perfect sync, as your hands find their way around Sunghoon’s neck, he realizes he should have known — this will not go away as quickly as it came.
Only when you grab a fistful of his hair, making him react viscerally and wrap his arm around your waist to bring you closer to him, does he remember where the two of you are. He leans back, then almost passes out when you chase his lips and press a shorter but just as sweet kiss there. He commits this view to memory—the smile on your lips, the glow on your face, the haziness in your eyes.
“Do you wanna come up?”
“Yes,” he replies immediately, and it makes you laugh. You grab his hand and lead him up the stairs and into your apartment.
“Are the girls in?” he asks as you lock the front door.
“Minjeong is at karaoke with her school friends, and Yunjin and Chaewon are at a dinner party somewhere.”
“Minjeong karaokes?”
“Get enough G&Ts in her and she’ll do anything.”
You turn on a small lamp in your room and take off your jacket. Sunghoon has been in your apartment before, but never in your room—at some point, he’ll spend an hour observing every photograph and trinket in detail, asking you about every backstory, but right now, he’s got more important things to tend to. His heart beats uncontrollably as you shut the door to your room and walk towards him, eyes gazing deeply into his. The corners of your lips rise when you tug at the bottom of his sweatshirt, a clear indicator that you want it off. He wastes no time in obliging.
The air is buzzing with electricity when your lips find each other again. You’re both more confident this time around, and so the kiss is deeper, your touches bolder. Everything happens quickly—one second, you’re standing in the middle of your room; the next, you’re laying on your bed, Sunghoon underneath you. 
“You know,” he says between kisses, “I’d really planned on being a gentleman and not going up to your room after the first date…”
Your lips move from his lips to his jawline, warm and soft against his skin. Sunghoon closes his eyes and lets out a low hum of approval. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” you whisper, lips brushing against his neck as you speak. “And since we’re onto confessions, I can finally say I’ve been wanting to do this since we met.”
This information sends his mind reeling. Not once had he been sure of how you felt about him — he even remembers you saying no to a kiss — and here you are, saying you’ve been wanting to kiss him since the beginning, just like he had. 
“You’re me,” he replies breathlessly.
“Hm?”
“I mean, me too.”
You pause your kisses to giggle, a sound so soft and intimate it has Sunghoon melting impossibly more. “You’re me?”
Unfortunately, he is too preoccupied by you to put a filter between the weird, half-formed thoughts in his brain and the words that leave his mouth. “Don’t question it,” he says, a smile audible in his voice, before moving his head and catching your lips. If he couldn’t stop himself from saying odd things, he could at least distract you from them.
Sunghoon thinks he’s doing a good job keeping himself together, until you roll your hips against his. It’s barely anything, but it sends waves of pleasure and anticipation through his body. His grip on your waist tightens, and when you repeat the motion, his hands sneakily find their way down your back and under your dress. Palms splayed against your ass, he brings you down closer to him. The second you moan into the kiss, he’s a goner. 
After that, it doesn’t take long for clothes to be discarded or for curious fingers to find the other’s waistbands. Your movements are hasty, messy—the tension that had built up over weeks of pining for you, after getting close to kissing you twice and thinking about it a hundred times more, it all comes crashing down in this moment, as his teeth sink into the flesh of your neck, as your hands pull at strands of his hair, as your bodies gently bump into each other. If someone asked Sunghoon right now how long he’d known you, he’d say years, not mere weeks. It couldn’t possibly be real that this much desire had accumulated inside of him — and inside of you, if your broken moans and rapid breathing are anything to go by — in just over a month. 
He only slows down when he has you naked and heaving underneath him, reminding himself to savor the moment instead of rushing it. His fingertips graze down your sides until they reach between your thighs, and he marvels at the way his touch makes you shiver. His eyes are so wide with amazement at the sight of you that he probably looks like he’s never seen a woman before, but he can’t help himself—he always thought you were beautiful, but this is something else entirely. 
His first touch is hesitant, a slow upward motion of his thumb between your folds as if quite literally testing the waters. But it has you arching your back and gripping his bicep, meeting his eyes to silently plead for more. Sunghoon takes that as his green light, thumb circling your clit as his lips continue their work on your neck, on your face, everywhere they can reach. He slips a finger inside of you, then a second one, and when he is satisfied with the state he’s gotten you in, all disheveled and gasping for air, he replaces his fingers with his dick, rock-hard just from seeing and hearing you.
He slowly inches forward until he’s bottomed out, letting you adjust around him. “All good?” he whispers, lips moving against the shell of your ear.
“Never better,” you whisper back, smiling. You kiss him, and the tenderness of your lips on his, mixed with the feeling of being inside you, has Sunghoon’s heart constricting inside his chest. He starts rocking his hips back-and-forth into you, the side of his face is pressed up against yours, head light from the little oxygen the two of you share. It all feels oddly intimate for a first time, feels more like the kind of sex two people would have after years of knowing each other’s bodies. He moves like it’s second nature, thrusts deep and slow, trying to reach those spots that have your hands clawing at his back. He wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him, using his free hand to push the hair that sticks to your face with sweat.
You wrap your legs higher around his hips, the shift in angle letting him go deeper. “Fuck, right there,” you say, voice strangled. Sunghoon doesn’t need to be told twice—he picks up his pace, and already within a minute, starts to feel himself reaching his limit. He tries to muffle his groans against your skin, but with the way your hold on him tightens and your moans go higher in pitch, you seem to be just as close as he is. When you do come undone around him, breath hitching in your throat before you release a heavy sigh, he has mere seconds left in him. A few thrusts later, his orgasm finally releases him from the tension that had been twisting his stomach into a knot for the past half-hour. You’re both spent, but he continues lazily rocking his hips against yours chasing the last remnants of pleasure, wanting to bask in it just a bit longer. He rolls onto his back after sliding out, wrapping his arms around you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck.
His chest rises and falls as his breathing takes its time returning to normal. In a way, he’s almost relieved it’s over, like any longer would’ve actually taken too much of a toll on him. He likes the comfort he gets from having you in his arms as much as the sex itself. “I didn’t know it could feel this good,” he says, the words spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them. He needs more than a few minutes to get his head back on straight and start thinking before he speaks again. You chuckle airily, he chuckles too, and within seconds, you’re both laughing for seemingly no reason. The bliss of such an intense orgasm and the lack of oxygen must have gone to your brain, too.
“Me either,” you say once the laughter dies down. When your lips find his once more, Sunghoon forgets entirely about his exhaustion and feels like he could go for a second round. “Shower?” you ask right when he realizes how sticky and smelly he is.
“Yes, please.”
He can’t keep his hands off of you in the shower, rubbing soap on every square inch of your skin when you could do it perfectly fine yourself, kissing you even when you’ve both got foaming cleanser on your faces. The taste of soap in his mouth is worth the giggles he gets out of you.
Sunghoon reaches heaven when you drop to your knees in front of him, water rushing down his back as you take him in your mouth. He’s eager to return the favor, of course, thumb flicking your clit with a speed and dexterity even he didn’t know he was capable of. If you weren’t already in the shower, you’d have needed another one.
As soon as your bodies hit the mattress, you both drift off to sleep, limbs wrapping around each other as though they had been separated for too long and finally found each other again—not to let go again.
--
When Sunghoon wakes up, it takes him a few seconds to realize that he hadn’t dreamt up last night’s events. He reaches a hand out hesitantly, still half-asleep and scared that you’ll disappear into thin air at the touch of his fingertips. But no—he feels your skin, warm and soft, and he knows this is real.
You’re laying on your side, facing away from him, so he has to strain his neck to peek at your face. You look so peaceful as you sleep—he doesn’t want to wake you up, but he can’t stop himself from wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing his torso against your back, humming contentedly to himself. He presses a soft, quiet kiss to the top of your head, just because he can.
Outside, clouds part, and a bright ray of sun shines through the window, landing right on your face. Sunghoon watches as you grumble and turn around, burying your face in his chest to avoid the blinding light, but the damage is done—you’re awake. He can tell from the drawled-out whine you let out and the way you grab tightly onto his waist, as if it was his fault the sun had decided to shine right on you. 
He lets you settle in a comfortable position. Stays still as you hike your leg over his legs, then slip it between them instead; as you press your cheek against his chest, then bury your nose in his neck; as you wrap your arm around his waist, then move it to thread your fingers through his hair, until you give up on falling back asleep altogether. “It’s so bright in here,” you mumble in lieu of a good-morning greeting.
You can’t see him, so Sunghoon smiles and tightens his grip around you—one arm circling your shoulders, the other, your waist. Skin to skin. “We forgot to close the blinds yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” you say, sighing. You press a kiss to the base of his neck, right between his collarbones, then lift your face to look at him. “How are you feeling?”
This is what it feels like to wake up next to her, Sunghoon thinks. He’d thought about it so many times: what you would look like first thing in the morning, what you’d say to him, what it’d feel like when your eyes met. If you’d be a slow sort of morning person, cuddling in bed with him until the very last possible second, or if you’d be up and about as soon as you woke up. If you’d be grumpy. If you’d want coffee. If you liked morning sex. 
It seems to be a recurring theme that Sunghoon’s imagination never quite lives up to reality. Your sleepy eyes boring into his, struggling to stay open, your fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck; your skin, so warm and so soft, your scent, so intoxicating he can barely think straight.
You’re better than a dream.
“I feel great. Do you feel great?”
“I feel amazing, thank you so much for asking,” you say, burrowing yourself impossibly closer to him.
The two of you stay like this for a while, talking about your plans for the day and begrudging how little you want to go about them. Sunghoon wishes this could go on forever, but then his stomach growls so loudly, his face turns red from embarrassment. He hadn’t even noticed how hungry he was. 
“You’re me,” you say, laughing, and Sunghoon can’t help but join in. “Is it crazy to have last night’s leftovers for breakfast?”
What Sunghoon hears is that you want him to stay; that you don’t want to part ways just yet.
“If by crazy you mean the best idea ever, then yes.”
“Amazing, because I’ve been thinking about that curry all night.”
“Really? I was thinking about something else,” he says, burrowing his face in your neck and leaving warm kisses there. 
You hum and lean into his touches, leaning into his touches. Chills run down his spine as your nails graze his sides. “There might’ve been other things occupying my mind, too.”
And just like that, breakfast is postponed to thirty minutes later.
--
After that night, Sunghoon forgets how to act right.
His mind has never been so singularly taken up by sex in all of his life. It was already preoccupied with you most of the time, but now that it has more material to gnaw on, it’s practically started to eat away at him. It doesn’t help that you’ve seen each other every day since, or that at every chance you get, you smile knowingly at him or try to get him to play footsies with you. Of course, he loves every bit of attention that he gets from you, but whenever he feels his heart get carried away, Minjeong’s words come back to him in a panic, and he remembers that he has no idea what it is that’s happening between you and him. You could be stringing him along, for all he knows, or you could be as into him as he is into you and just letting things happen. Unfortunately, just letting things happen was not something Sunghoon was good at—if things weren’t written black and white, he’d find a way to overthink even the littlest of details. Like how you’d kissed him for a good five minutes before letting him leave your apartment, otherwise known as the least platonic parting to exist, or conversely, like how you’d sometimes take hours to reply to texts.
If he was already a mumbling fool in front of you before, his condition has only worsened now. He tries his best to be normal and not make you or anyone in the group feel weird, but the fact is that you rocked his world and now he can’t look you in the eyes and not remember how it felt when you touched him or the sounds you made or the way you looked. It’s all playing in a loop in his mind and the only way he knows how to control it is by limiting his interactions with you, which doesn’t even work that well. 
The first couple days, you seem amused by his shyer-than-usual demeanor, but you quickly grow confused more than anything. Sunghoon won’t sit next to you, only speaks to you when necessary, doesn’t seek you out outside of a group setting. He tells himself he just needs some more time to be able to be around you casually again, but before that happens, one day at the library, you make a point to ask him if he’ll come help you get drinks for everyone from the dispenser machine. He knows it’d be too odd to say no, so he follows you.
He presses the buttons for everyone’s order (a Sprite for him, Diet Cokes for the girls, a Red Bull for Jake who has a midterm tomorrow and nothing for Jay who only swears by his disgusting herbal infusion) as you lean against the machine, arms crossed over your chest as you stare at him.
He has never felt so awkward in his life.
“So…” he starts although he has no idea what to say—he hopes something will just appear in his mind and that it’ll alleviate the tension. However, you seem to have other plans.
“What the hell, Sunghoon?” you say, taking him aback. When he glances at you, you don’t seem angry—just genuinely confused. “You’ve been avoiding me like the plague.”
“I haven’t!”
“Sunghoon,” you say sternly. He gives in right away.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I just-I didn’t know what to do. After we, you know…”
“After we had sex?” you say, then burst into laughter when he looks around the room to make sure no one’s heard. His cheeks heat up.
“Yes, after we had sex,” he whispers.
He pays for the drinks and picks them up. When he looks at you again, your smile has completely died down, and worry has settled into your features. “Do you regret it?” you ask, voice now as low as his. As if it hurts to say the words too loud.
Panic overcomes him, and he almost drops half of the drinks as he shakes his head. “No, of course not! I’m really sorry, Y/N, I never meant to be weird about it, I was just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I just… Well, I just didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”
You nod, taking his words in. “That’s fine. I get it. I just wanted to say, you know, it doesn’t have to change anything. We can still be friends and all. Like you said, it shouldn’t make things weird.”
Sunghoon’s stomach drops. He knows you’re trying to make him feel better, but you’ve inadvertently said the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. He doesn’t want things to stay the same, or for you to stay friends. For him, things can’t go back to normal after that night — whatever normal means for the two of you — and he was foolishly hoping that you felt the same.
But clearly, you want to let the whole thing die and pretend like it never happened. And whether it’s a good thing or not, his feelings for you have grown so much, he’ll just let you lead him anywhere. Even if that turns out to be nowhere. 
So he conjures up the most convincing smile he can, hands you half of the drinks to carry, and says, “Yeah, sounds good.”
--
After that conversation, Sunghoon doesn’t think anything else will happen between the two of you. You had sex, you talked it out, and that’s the end of it. But then, it turns out that both of your last midterms are at the same time, in the same building, so you invite him to celebrate with pork belly and some drinks. Sunghoon is finishing his second beer when he starts to feel like he’s on that date again, laughing for no reason, butterflies in his stomach every time his gaze catches yours. You lean on your hand as you listen to him talk about a stupid memory from his childhood and he thinks he’s never seen anyone as pretty as you. 
The sun has long set when you say, “You know, it’s Wednesday today.”
He’s not sure what you’re trying to get at. “Yeah?”
“Minjeong’s out at karaoke tonight.”
With these simple words, all the images of you that Sunghoon had finally managed to banish from his mind come flooding back, and he is not even surprised to find himself half-naked in your bed thirty minutes later. So much for staying friends—one time is one thing, but Sunghoon knows he’ll never be normal again after a second time with you.
It’s not a long time before he finds himself in your room again. Every item of clothing between the two of you is gradually discarded while you kiss, lips growing more impatient with every inch of bare skin uncovered. He reluctantly lets you go when you suddenly giggle and say that you really need to pee, watching as you grab his t-shirt off the floor and put it on, just in case Minjeong comes home. You wear it like it’s yours, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that you’d be wearing his clothes. An indescribable feeling washes over Sunghoon at the sight, so intense he feels tears welling behind his eyes. Like something he’s been yearning for is finally at the grasp of his fingers; like it might slip away at any moment. 
His feelings must’ve transpired in the way he was looking at you—when you meet his eyes, your expression shifts slightly, and you quickly slip out of your room. He tells himself to reel it in. Get it together, he thinks. Or you’ll drive her away. 
A wave of tiredness hits him in the minute that you’re gone, probably due to all that soju and beer. “I’m back,” you whisper, but he doesn’t move, only opens his arms wide for you to get back into bed with him. It’s like a weight is lifted off his heart when he feels you against him again. You’re back. Your face is fresh, as if you’d splashed it with cold water, but when he slips one of his hands underneath your (his) t-shirt, your skin is still just as warm as before. Far from the fuzzy, tingly feeling he had gotten when you’d woken up together the other morning, now, he feels his desire for you deep in the pit of his stomach. The kind of hunger food couldn’t satisfy. “I missed you,” he whispers, voice low and gravelly. He reacts immediately when you squirm against him, tightening his grip around your waist and pulling you to him.
“I was gone two minutes.”
“I mean these past few days. I was starting to think I’d dreamt you up.” His hand on your lower back sneaks its way up between your bodies until it finds your breasts, cupping one of them with his palm before taking your nipple between his thumb and index, gently twisting. It pulls a half-gasp, half-moan from your throat, and the sound goes straight to his dick. “But you’re real, aren’t you?” 
“Very real,” you reply, a tremor in your voice. He’s barely touching you, and you’re already having trouble breathing. Sunghoon smiles at the idea of him having as much of a hold on you as you do on him.
“Good,” he says, voice so low it’s almost a growl. In one quick sweep, he pushes you down so your back is against the mattress, resting his palms on each side of your head.
He’s inside you within mere minutes. He’d wanted to hold back a bit, but you whispering Just put it in after thirty seconds of his fingers loosening you up was enough to convince him. His mind is already fuzzy with remnants of alcohol, and his overwhelming desire for you only makes matters worse. He barely has any control over his movements, rushed and sloppy, but as he drives himself deeper into you, your moans increase in volume. He only later realizes how tight his grip on your hips is when he sees two small bruises forming on the skin there. 
He comes quickly, probably embarrassingly so, but he can’t bring himself to care—he’s got other things on his mind. He’s not even bothered to discard the condom as he makes his way down your body, lips around your clit before you’ve even had the time to register what was happening. You cry out, a sound that Sunghoon works to pry out of you over and over again. Even when your thighs start shaking and you squirm away from him, he doesn’t relent. He’s just as desperate to make you feel good as he was desperate chasing his own pleasure earlier. He hooks his arms around your thighs, bringing you down to him and ensuring that you can’t get away. One hand still in his hair, the other clutching the bed sheets, you’ve turned your face sideways into the pillow so that your moans come out muffled. He is only satisfied when you’ve reached your second orgasm. 
As your breath slowly returns to normal, Sunghoon makes his way back up your body, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake. You clear your throat of its dryness and burst into soft, quiet laughter. “What’s funny?” Sunghoon murmurs, lips against your neck. 
“Nothing,” you say, still laughing. “That was just really, really nice.”
Sunghoon smiles. “I’m glad,” he says before kissing you, lips moving slowly against yours.
As he lays against you, the top of his head under your chin and your fingernails grazing along his back, a weird feeling overcomes him. Sunghoon is usually a pine-from-afar sort of guy, with at least five instances of hanging out that could or could not be a date before making things any sort of official. The pining has been a constant with all of his crushes. He’s gotten to the hanging out stage a couple of times, but the officialising has only happened once. Despite its low success rate, it’s a cycle Sunghoon feels comfortable with, and he’d imagined the rest of his romantic encounters would follow that pattern. 
But this is completely different. Of the three times you guys have met separately from your friend group, already two times have included sex. This isn’t a stage Sunghoon usually reaches before at least a few months and it disorientates him. What does it mean? That you like him so much, you decided to skip all of the steps and jump straight into the thick of it? He is reasonable enough not to delude himself into such a thought. He likes you a lot—that much he can be sure of. He’s liked you since the moment he laid eyes on you, even if the reason eludes him. Something in the way you smiled at him, the way you took him in stride as if you’d known him forever. When he thinks back to that party, he can’t believe it started out as the two of you being strangers. Even now, feeling your warm skin against his, it feels like a lie that just two months ago he hadn’t even met you. 
What he can’t say with total certainty is that you like him the same amount. Or that you like him any amount, really, although in his naivety he doesn’t understand how anyone could be this intimate with another person without liking them at least a little bit. And he doesn’t just mean the sex. He means this. The silently laying in each other’s arms, the soft kisses, the caresses wherever hands can reach. Eating post-sex snacks together, laughing as you watch the first episode of each other’s favorite sitcoms (Brooklyn Nine-Nine for him, Pen15, oddly enough, for you). Falling asleep together, cuddling the entire night then waking up and diving right back into each other’s embrace. 
After an entire day spent in rumination, Sunghoon’s still not sure what to make of it all.
All he knows is that when he DMs you that night, asking you how your day went, he goes through every emotion between anxiety, self-hatred and indifference in the five minutes that separate his text from your reply. He’s never been so happy to hear that someone couldn’t concentrate in class because of him.
--
Sunghoon has always been obsessed with the way couples stand together in public. 
Every time, it takes everything in him not to stare, because he wants to take in every little thing they do. He has that practically everywhere he goes, wanting to stare at people just to see what their deal is, but he is never quite as simultaneously fascinated and envious as when he spots a couple. But he knows staring isn’t the socially appropriate thing to do, so he either steals glances or watches for a little bit then pretends they aren’t there. He can’t help himself—even if they aren’t holding hands or obnoxiously making out in public, it’s still visible to anyone with eyes that there is something tying these people together. It’s in the way they stand near each other, their bodies turned inwardly, as though enveloped by a bubble containing just the two of them and no one else; in the way they look at each other, their eyes never straying from the other’s face as they talk, intimacy showing itself even in a loud, crowded room. Sunghoon craves to find that proximity, to be able to touch and be touched so softly, every graze of a hand purposeful and unconscious at the same time.
It’s the first of November already. The Weather app, as it tends to do, has deceived you; so instead of a walk on what was supposed to be a sunny day, you find yourselves in a busy café near the University, the air outside too chilly even with your scarves and gloves. You’re waiting for your order at the end of the counter — a mocha for him, an oat flat white for you — when he notices it. Your body is fully facing him, you’re distractedly playing with the hem of his sweatshirt, and you’re not looking at anything but him as you rant about that annoying classmate of yours that goes by a self-made nickname and always talks over the tutor. In this light, the two of you are like the couples he’s always longed to be—the simple thought makes him want to cry. As more and more often is the case these days, you have no idea what you’re doing to him.
It’s been around two months since you first met and in that time, although Sunghoon is lucky not to have enough fingers to count the number of times you have seen each other one-on-one, not much has happened. Minjeong, who had understood what was going on the first time she saw the two of you eating leftovers from the Japanese restaurant on the couch at 10 a.m., has grown accustomed to his presence in the apartment and even sometimes sits down to watch a movie with the two of you—a movie that Chaewon would usually have forced you to watch in the living room instead of the privacy of your bedroom, so that everyone could join. Sunghoon is just glad Minjeong has stopped silently scolding him with her eyes every time he comes out of your room. She never mentions that night when she essentially warned him against you after the party. 
Jake seems to be the only oblivious one in your group. Yunjin and Chaewon have eyes like hawks and horrifyingly vivid imaginations when they put their heads together, so they were probably already making plans for your wedding and fighting for the title of godmother when you and Sunghoon met at the beginning-of-semester party. They cornered him once at a party and forced him to spill the beans and spare no detail, because you apparently were “denying everything, but we know there’s something going on.” Jay is still Sunghoon’s go-to person when he needs advice concerning you, although the older boy doesn’t understand why it has to be so complicated and always tells him to “just tell her how you feel,” which Sunghoon will not do unless there is a gun to his head. But Jake just seems happy to see his friend and his sister get along this well—no matter how many times you wear his jacket at their games or disappear at the same time at the end of parties, he doesn’t grow suspicious. If he does, he doesn’t mention it to Sunghoon, at least.
Between the two of you, not a word is spoken about the nature of your relationship, which remains unbearingly undefined. For a while, he weakly convinces himself that he doesn’t need to have that conversation with you. He’s young, he’s free, he should be able to enjoy casual sex without putting a label on it. The main problem, though, was that the sex could not be further from casual, at the very least not to Sunghoon.
He has never known anything quite like it. In mere weeks, you’ve both mastered the art of pleasuring each other. He understands your body like it’s his, knows what each of the sounds and expressions you make means. He knows where to touch you to have a kiss go from light-hearted to dizzyingly intense, how to move his mouth to have you arching your back and holding onto him for dear life. And you—he thinks your skin must be laced with cocaine, the way he can never get enough of it. 
But it’s always the moments afterwards that get him in his head. To him, casual sex means getting dressed the minute it’s over and going off to do other things, which is the absolute opposite of what you do. Whether it’s falling asleep together or spending Sundays in bed, you always stay together afterwards, curled up in each other’s arms as you talk away the hours, conversations interspersed with slow, lazy kisses. He’ll say things like, “You’re so pretty,” or “Why do you smell so good?” because he’s so smitten with you that he can never stop himself from uttering every compliment that flashes through his brain, but the things he really wants to say are harder to speak out loud. Even just a What are we?—three simple words that he can’t bring himself to ask, too scared it’ll ruin everything. 
Arguably worse is that sex isn’t even a requirement for when you and Sunghoon see each other. He goes on walks with you whenever you’ve spent too much time in the library and need some fresh air. You go shopping with him when his department throws a fundraiser and he needs a formal outfit. He cooks you your favorite meal when your period is particularly nasty. You sneak into the ice rink after his practice and let him ‘teach’ you how to skate, even though you already learned how with Jake when you were kids. Even mundane moments become fun when spent with you, and you share so many hobbies and interests that you never run out of things to do or talk about.
And yet, it feels like one step forward, two steps back with you—if you let him close one night, you’ll run away the next. A week will pass without you seeing each other outside of the library or group hang-outs, and if Sunghoon asks you out, you’ll say no, usually blaming the amount of work you have. He gets it—due to the nature of your degree and your being a fourth-year student, your workload is much heavier than his, with essays, translations and oral presentations due every other week. And that’s not even including midterms and finals. But still, he doesn’t see why you would need to stay at the library for ten hours straight for days on end. He’d start worrying about your health if you didn’t at least relax on weekends. 
So while Sunghoon wants nothing more than to go all in with you, he senses you holding back. He notices you avoiding eye contact during particularly intimate moments, and when you look at him perhaps too fondly for your liking, you quickly catch yourself and resume your neutral, sometimes almost cold expression. When he tries to broach more personal, sensitive topics, you always find a way to change the subject or turn the conversation towards him before you get too deep. 
As time passes, and especially as exam season nears, he can tell there’s something that you’re not telling him about. His suspicions are confirmed when you come back from a weekend at your parents’ house. He’s also been away for an out-of-town hockey game, and because he hasn’t had much time to text you (and because their team won, so he wants to show off a little), he’s particularly looking forward to seeing you again that Monday. It’s only been three days since you’ve last seen each other, but he misses you like crazy. 
But the minute you’re back, you bury yourself in work like never before, often waking up at ungodly hours and staying at the library until midnight. More than once, he stays behind with you, long after the others have gone, reminding you gently every hour that it might be time to go home and get some rest. The moments you actually agree are few and far between, and although he sticks it out at first, sleeping with his head on the table until you tell him you’re ready to go, your stubbornness soon starts frustrating him, and he ends up leaving when he gets too tired. He knows this is important to you, but he doesn’t understand why you have to go to these lengths—you’d still easily be one of the best students in your class without all this exertion. And despite his many attempts, you won’t tell him what’s wrong, won’t even admit that something is wrong—you keep repeating that “it’s just what exam season is like.”
When he asks your friends about it, they seem just as confused as he is. One evening when you have plans to order some food and watch a movie at your apartment, he shows up at the agreed time, but you’re nowhere to be found. Thankfully, the girls are there to let him up and not leave him standing outside in the rain. You don’t pick up when he calls you and call him back a minute later, apologizing profusely but still saying that there’s something you really need to finish first. If it was only a one-time thing, it wouldn’t make him as angry as it does—but this has been going on for almost two weeks now, and Sunghoon is close to boiling point. 
The fact that it’s been months since your date at the Japanese restaurant, and the only thing that you’ve said about what was happening between you and Sunghoon “didn’t have to change anything.” The fact that you’re essentially each other’s boyfriend and girlfriend without the label or the reassurance that comes with it. The fact that there’s something clearly bothering you but that you won’t tell him about it. The fact that this something is effectively coming between the two of you. Sunghoon was originally more worried about you than anything—now that studying has taken obvious precedence over him in your list of priorities, he’d be lying if he said his ego wasn’t wounded. He isn’t asking to be the number one most important thing in your life, and he knew before even meeting you that high academic performance meant a lot to you, but he likes to think he deserves at least a little bit of your time and attention. 
Except, does he really? It’s not like you’re actually dating.
There’s a pang in his heart as he remembers this fact that he should never have forgotten in the first place. It hurts—and so perhaps, he’s less patient than he ought to be.
“Whatever, Y/N. Don’t worry about it, just let me know when you have time for something other than getting As.”
He hangs up and meets your flatmates’ worried eyes. 
“She still at the library?” Chaewon asks, tone delicate as if trying not to scare off a wounded animal. Sunghoon nods, a deep sigh escaping his mouth. 
“She always studies a lot,” Minjeong starts, “but this is something else.”
“Have you guys tried saying something?”
The girls nod. “Even Jake has talked to her, but she won’t listen. And he usually always gets to her,” Minjeong says. 
He goes home soon afterwards and spends the rest of his evening in rumination, torn between his worry and his anger towards you—emotions which only increase as more days pass, and he sees less and less of you. Your behavior was already concerning while preparing for your exams and final assignments, it gets even worse when exams actually do start. He doesn’t hear from you for an entire week, and the one time you miraculously agree to a short group hang-out in the form of getting coffee, you’re only half there, physically present but mind far, far away. You barely react when the guys tell you about their victory at the latest hockey game—which you didn’t attend, as well as any other game recently. 
No matter how much he tries to put it out of his mind, to focus on his own exams and hockey games, you stay at the forefront of his thoughts. The hockey team is away for another out-of-town game when he decides to broach the subject with Jake, with whom he’s sharing a room. The entire semester, he’s been careful not to raise Jake’s suspicions about the two of you, both out of consideration for you, who’d mentioned you didn’t want your brother to know what was going on, and for himself, who would also rather Jake not know, at least not until your relationship became official. Which it never did. But now that all he gets from you is radio silence at a time when you’d usually be an hour into a FaceTime call, he can’t help himself.
Jake is just coming out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel, when Sunghoon takes his shot in the dark. “Have you heard from Y/N recently?” he asks as nonchalantly as he can, pretending to not be avidly waiting for his friend’s reaction by keeping his eyes on his phone.
“Y/N?” Jake echoes. “No, not really. Why?”
“Just ‘cause I haven’t seen her around much. I’m wondering if everything’s okay.”
“You mean her staying at the library all day?” Sunghoon nods; Jake sighs. “Yeah, she’ll snap out of it soon enough. She gets somewhat like this every time exams come around, but even I have to admit it’s pretty tough this time around. The last time I saw her like this was way back in high school, and that’s because our parents were watching right over her shoulder. It’s been better in university thanks to the distance.”
“So this has to do with your parents?”
“Oh, one hundred percent. She’s always wanted to do well at school, but she only gets this obsessive when our parents are involved.”
“I guess this did start after that weekend when she went home…” Sunghoon muses absent-mindedly. It could’ve passed off as an off-hand remark, but Jake pauses in his movements and looks at him warily.
“Yeah, she did… You noticed that, huh?”
Sunghoon pauses. This whole time, he was sure Jake was oblivious to anything happening between you and him—but he might have underestimated his friend. Like brother, like sister; he can hardly read either of you when he really needs to. Jake might genuinely be surprised that Sunghoon remembered your whereabouts that weekend, or he’s onto him. “I guess I did,” he finally says, going for as noncommittal an answer as he can.
Jake says nothing for a bit, and Sunghoon thinks he’s managed to get through the conversation without raising too much suspicion—until a minute later, when Jake speaks again. “Do you… like Y/N?”
Sunghoon freezes, snapping his head towards Jake, who’s lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His first instinct is to deny, but there’s no point pretending anymore. It’s one thing keeping it from Jake—lying to him about it is something else entirely. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it must be had. “Yeah, I do,” Sunghoon replies, guilt clear in his voice, more because he’s only now admitting it to Jake than because of his feelings themselves.
A shaky breath comes out of Jake’s mouth, as if this was the exact answer he had dreaded. “Right, okay. Since when?”
“Since I met her, basically.”
Jake’s head whips towards Sunghoon, and their gazes meet awkwardly. “Since that party in September?” he asks, shock written all over his face. Sunghoon nods, and to his surprise, Jake bursts out laughing. “Don’t tell me it’s because you accidentally matched costumes?”
Sunghoon looks away, frowning. “That might’ve helped things along,” he mumbles, embarrassment washing over him as Jake’s laughter intensifies. At least he was taking it well—a bit too well, perhaps.
“You’re so predictable, man,” Jake says when he’s calmed down, wiping a tear from his eye. 
“How did you know, anyway?”
“You’ve been pretty obvious with it recently,” Jake replies after a few seconds. “I could tell you were a bit shy around her at first, and when it got better I just thought you’d become friends or something. But when she showed up with your jacket at every game and you never left her side at parties, I assumed something else was going on. You’ve always been staying behind at the library these days, and I know you don’t have that much work.”
Sunghoon chuckles. “I guess I haven’t been trying hard to hide it lately.”
“Yeah, why would you hide it in the first place? You could’ve just told me.”
“I didn’t want to make things weird.”
Jake frowns. “It wouldn’t have been weird. If anything, hiding it makes it weirder.”
“I just thought, if one of my friends had a crush on my sister, I’d probably rather they hid it. Like, I don’t need to know about that,” Sunghoon says, and it makes Jake laugh.
“Dude, Y/N and I are only a year apart. Do you know how many guys have come up to me asking me for her number or advice on how to ask her out? It’s been, like, one every few months since middle school. Guys here especially have no shame telling me how hot they find her.”
Sunghoon makes a face. He doesn’t disagree, but he’d never go out of his way to tell your brother how exquisite you looked in certain outfits. “That’s gross.”
“Yeah, it is. But you’re my friend, not some greasy rando, so I trust you. If anything, I’d probably have to tell her to be nice to you, and not the other way around.”
“Yeah, you could say that again,” Sunghoon grumbles, then realizes his mistake immediately, eyes widening.
“What do you mean?” Jake asks, sounding genuine at first, but when Sunghoon stays quiet for a couple seconds, debating whether he should just lay the truth bare, Jake sits up on the bed and repeats his question, his tone much warier this time around. Sunghoon glances at him then looks away guiltily.
“Well, to be completely honest… We’ve sort of been seeing each other, kind of. But it’s complicated.”
Jake flops back down on his mattress with a grunt. “Who else knows?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes with his hands as if suddenly very exhausted.
“Everyone…”
“Everyone?!”
“Well, Jay, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon.”
“So everyone.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Great.” Jake sighs. “Since when?”
“Since October,” Sunghoon mumbles, feeling guiltier than ever. He’s belatedly realizing that it would’ve been much easier to have everything out in the open from the get-go, both with you and with Jake; now he’s both stuck in situationship limbo and has to face the consequences of keeping something this important from one of his closest friends. “Are you upset?” Sunghoon asks, feeling a bit like a ten-year-old.
“Kinda, yeah, but more at her than at you. I’ve told her not to go after anyone from the hockey team.”
“‘Cause of Heeseung?”
“Yeah. God, that was messy. He gave her mixed signals for so long, I could barely talk to him without thinking of her crying for so long. And now he’s the one who can’t quite look me in the eye,” Jake says, shaking his head at the mere thought of his captain.
“Was it that bad? She made it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Jake raises his eyebrows. “Really? It upset her for a while though,” he says, then turns his head to look at the ceiling again. “I guess that’s not so surprising of her. She sometimes likes pretending she doesn’t have any emotions, even though I’m pretty sure she has more than most people.”
“Huh.” That would explain some things, Sunghoon muses. Emotions are not a topic that comes up very often with you, and every time he’s gotten an inkling of them, you seem to shut it all down immediately.
“But you know, I’m more surprised than anything. About… about it all, really. Not just that you’re only telling me now, but that it’s lasted this long. She must really like you.”
“You think?” Sunghoon says, his face brightening with hope, the words slipping from him before he can stop them once again. He shrinks when Jake laughs at him.
“Look at you. Down bad, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“But yeah, dude. I’ve told you about this. I’ve never seen her in a relationship, ever. Says she doesn’t have the time,” Jake says, air-quoting you. “I’ve only had the displeasure of seeing her go home with one-night-stands. You know that since she started college, she’s had a rule that she’d only see someone three times and that was it?”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, so she wouldn’t catch feelings. I’m telling you, she’s crazy. So you must be special.”
Sunghoon can’t stop the smile from spreading on his lips—special. But it doesn’t make him feel that much better, either. “It’s not like we’re actually dating, so I’m not sure how special I can be…”
Jake’s head turns to look at Sunghoon again, but the younger boy keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling fan above him. “What’s happening between you guys?”
A blush creeps on Sunghoon’s cheeks. “Is this something you really want to talk about?”
“Well, spare me the gruesome details, please,” Jake says, chuckling, “but yeah, I would like to know what’s going on with my best friend and my sister.”
“I’m your best friend?” Sunghoon says, grinning as he meets Jake’s gaze, who rolls his eyes.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Fine.” He sighs. “Well, I didn’t think it would happen more than once-”
“What would happen more than once?”
Sunghoon pauses. “Well, you know…” Jake gives him a look as if to say, Well, no, I don’t know, so Sunghoon is forced to go on: “Sleeping together.”
“You guys slept together?!” Jake exclaims, sitting up on his bed once again.
“Yeah, what did you think?”
“I don’t know, just that you were going on dates, hanging out one-on-one, or whatever…”
“Well, we were.”
“Ugh, whatever,” Jake says, waving his hand in front of his face like swatting a fly away. “So, not just once, then?”
“No. And I thought it’d be a one-time thing, ‘cause a few days afterwards she said something about it not having to change our friendship…”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. But then it did. Happen again, I mean. And it’s been happening frequently since. But we’re not… dating dating. We haven’t had that conversation.”
Jake frowns. “Why not?”
Sunghoon releases a shaky breath. Why not, indeed. “‘Cause she hasn’t mentioned it. And I’m too scared to do it.”
“What are you scared of?”
“The typical stuff. What we have now… it’s not what I want, but it’s managed to not disrupt the group, you know. I’m scared that if I tell her how I feel, it’ll make things awkward between the two of us, and between all of us by extension.”
“Well, it might,” Jake says after thinking for a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you with certainty that she’ll like you back, but I honestly can’t. As obvious as you were towards her, she was not giving anything away.” Sunghoon chuckles, more out of self-deprecation than anything. This was not the pep talk he had hoped for. “But, I can tell you that she won’t be the type to make things awkward. You have nothing to risk by telling her, because in the long run, you’ll be better off that way. I know you, Sunghoon. You’ll be miserable if you can’t be fully yourself with someone.”
Decidedly, Sunghoon’s friends had a way of telling him the exact opposite of the things he wanted to hear while being completely right. He wishes things with you could stay the same — minus the overworking yourself and ignoring him in the process — and that he wouldn’t have to do anything that might make them change. But just as Jake said, he’d also reach a point where he couldn’t take it anymore—a point he was already inching closer and closer to with every passing day. He likes you enough to let you not define the relationship, but he likes you too much to let it go on. He likes you too much to not be able to tell you, and show you, and remind you of it every day. He hated having to hold back, and he hated feeling you holding back. He wanted to give you his all and he wanted all of you, too, not just bite-sized portions of you.
“You’re right,” he finally says. “I haven’t been able to talk to her lately, but I’ll have to tell her soon enough. When her exams are over, I guess.”
Jake sighs. “Yeah. I don’t know if there’s any getting through to her right now.”
“She’s blown me off so many times! I don’t know what she’s doing, spending so many hours in that library. I’d go insane.”
“She’s a perfectionist,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I’ve talked to her about it. When it comes to school, she needs everything to be as flawless as can be. She spends hours re-reading and editing her work. It’s not good.”
“Not really, no.”
“But she’s only got a week left. I’ll try to convince her not to go home for too long, and it’ll be better after the holidays. Then we’ll make sure there’s not a repeat of this next exam season.”
He thinks of Christmas break and of not seeing you for two weeks; of next semester and going through all of this with you a second time. The uncertainty, the fooling around behind your friends’ backs — although that might not be needed now that Jake is in on it too — Sunghoon’s not sure if he can go through it all again. “Yeah, we will.”
--
They lose their game the following day. They had an amazing run, either winning or tying every game so far; this loss is not enough to make them drop significantly in the rankings, but it’s enough to demoralize Sunghoon. It couldn’t have come at a worse time—between you and this failed game, his self-esteem is taking a real hit.
He dared hope for some comfort from you once he was back, but in vain. He doesn’t know why he imagined your attitude might’ve changed overnight, and when he texts you asking to hang out, the same old sorry I can’t atm fills his phone screen. And just like that, as strong as his feelings for you have been all this time, so is his resentment—unwarranted, perhaps, but he thinks he deserves better than this, and he’s both angry at you for not giving him anything and at himself for letting it happen.
Now, he’s the one who spends hours working himself to the bone in the ice rink, who’s clearly preoccupied with other things when everyone gets together, and who doesn’t even show up to the party the whole group goes to when you’re all done with exams. The last game before winter break is in two days, and he doesn’t want to waste a day nursing a hangover when he could be practicing.
That night, he thinks everyone is out at some random club downtown, so he does a double-take when it’s past eleven p.m. and you show up at the rink. He’s skating laps, practicing his speed and his goal-shooting, only noticing you when you’re standing in the middle of the rink. He almost skates right into you.
“Y/N?” he asks, not completely sure you’re not just a figment of his imagination. He’s so exhausted, he wouldn’t be surprised if he were dreaming you up.
“Jay texted me.”
“Oh. Why?” He’s out of breath, and the words come out blunter than he intends them to.
“Because it’s almost midnight and you’re still here,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest. There’s a hint of a smile on your lips, but your eyebrows are furrowed in what looks like worry. It’s the first time Sunghoon’s seeing you concerned over something other than an assignment. 
He shrugs and resumes his laps, slower this time, forcing you to keep turning on your feet. “I’m practicing. There’s a big game coming up.”
“Which is exactly why you should be resting, like everyone else on your team right now.”
He resists rolling his eyes. “Why would I rest when I could be getting better?”
“Because you need rest as much as you need practice. You won’t be any use on the rink if you’re too tired to play properly.”
“And I won’t be any use if I can’t shoot properly, either.”
“Sunghoon, you need a break. You’re clearly exhausted-Will you stop it?” you suddenly snap. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I’m getting dizzy.” 
Your small outburst only has him growing more agitated, and even though he does stop, it’s more so you can see the annoyance on his face than anything. “You know, this is a bit rich coming from you, Y/N.” He knows this is not the right time to bring this up—if he has grievances against you, he shouldn’t be bringing them up when he’s already frustrated. He’s well aware of this, but he can’t help himself.
You scoff. “Excuse me?”
“You’re the one who spends twelve hours a day in the library during exams and does not budge even if I tell you you should go home.”
“That’s different-”
“How is it any different?” he interrupts, voice rising. “You don’t listen to me when you overwork yourself. I don’t see why I should.”
“So you realize that you’re overworking yourself?”
“Of course I do! But I have to.”
“No, you don’t-”
“Y/N, please. I have to win as much as you have to get the top grades. Is it actually necessary? No, but you know how shit it feels not to.”
“And it’s exactly because I know that feeling that I’m telling you to stop. You’re just feeding into it.”
“So are you, staying until 2 a.m. in the library. You’ve never once gone home when I asked you to.”
“Again, that’s different-”
“How?! How is it different? Please enlighten me, ‘cause they’re the exact same thing to me.”
You sigh. A sudden sadness appears on your face. Sunghoon is torn between wanting to see this to its end and taking everything he’s said back. But he keeps quiet, and your eyes, when they meet his again, harden. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”
“Yes.”
As if you couldn’t say your next words while looking at him, you tear your gaze away from his face. “Because I’m actually concerned about you, here. The only reason you want me to stop and go home is so we can fuck.”
Sunghoon is so astounded that all words fail him—he stares at you, mouth wide open like you just shot him. After a few seconds, all he’s able to come up with is an incredulous, “What?” His voice is a mere whisper. 
“You heard me,” you say coldly.
He closes his mouth and swallows. “So… you’re the one who’s worried, and I’m only after sex?”
You glance at him. “Yeah.”
A chuckle escapes Sunghoon’s throat, then another, until laughter spills out of him uncontrollably. He feels like the world is upside down. How could you have lived the same thing and come out of it with such different perspectives? Your account of his intentions with you is so ridiculous and unfathomable to him that he can’t do anything but laugh.
You seem taken aback at first, but your surprise quickly turns into annoyance. “Something funny?”
“Hilarious, actually,” he says, holding his stomach. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. All he finds at the end of his amusement is anger, bright red and hot. It’s not an emotion he feels often, its rarity only serving as an intensifier—he starts making his way out of the rink before it can explode and hit you in its wake. “Well, that’s convinced me to call it a day. So you got what you came for, I guess.”
His fingers tremble as he undoes the laces on his skates and puts his sneakers on again. You stand by the door of the rink, holding onto the frame as you look at him, that same sad look still on your face. “Hoon,” you say, voice weak. What would usually have him melting only has his anger flare harder.
“Don’t. For the first time ever, I actually really don’t want to talk to you right now.” He stands up, gives you one last harsh look, and turns away. He only halts right before exiting the bleacher area, and after a couple seconds of thinking, turns back around. “Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I want to fuck again. Since that’s all this is, clearly.”
--
It seemed to you no one thought you were good enough for Sunghoon.
Only Yunjin and Chaewon seemed excited at the prospect of the two of you getting together, or at least getting to know each other, but they were also the type to coo at dogs in the street and tear up at the sight of old people holding hands; Minjeong was apprehensive from the start, and made it clear; Jay was indifferent; Jake was oblivious for a while. Sunghoon was…
What was Sunghoon?
Someone who had come out of nowhere, shaken up your routine and messed with your head. That’s what Sunghoon was. He didn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.
Maybe it was your fault for not opening up to the people closest to you and letting them think you were some kind of no-strings-attached one-night-stands-only emotionless maneater who had been single for as long as they had known her, who would be seen with someone new every few months, and never for long, who, as far as the eye could tell, only used men for sex. Maybe it was their fault for never trying to dig deeper.
No, okay, it was definitely your fault.
Based on your conversations with your friends, they thought Heeseung had broken your heart, and you had never bounced back properly. He’d hurt you so much, you couldn’t fathom a real relationship anymore—you could only be with someone casually. Which wasn’t so far from the truth, but what Heeseung had done was much worse than just breaking your heart. He’d confirmed what you already knew of yourself: you want too much. You want what you can’t have, what you don’t deserve.
From the moment you met Park Sunghoon, you knew you didn’t deserve someone like him. Minjeong seemed to agree, and when she saw you and him together at choir that Saturday in September, three months ago already, she made sure you knew her thoughts on the matter.
“This is so… unlike you,” was the first thing she’d said after she pulled you aside. 
“What is?”
“This,” she repeated, waving her arms around. “Being here. Coming with him.” She pointed at Sunghoon, whose hair was being ruffled by one grandma and his cheek pulled by another. He kept glancing back worriedly at you—you liked him so much already. “See? You’re smiling at him,” she said, making you realize a sappy smile had started growing on your lips at the sight of him. Your face dropped and you scoffed at the disgust in her voice.
“Yeah, some of us like to smile. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Y/N, you know what I’m trying to say.”
“I don’t think I do, actually.”
She sighed. “You don’t do this. You don’t meet a guy and show up to his choir practice the next morning. What’s happening?”
You crossed your arms over your chest. Had you known your presence would be questioned like that, you might’ve thought twice about coming. “Can’t a girl enjoy a choir without getting interrogated these days?”
“You’re avoiding my question! Listen, Y/N. Sunghoon is not the kind of guy you usually go for. He’s-Stop. Don’t smile at me like that.”
“If you like Sunghoon, you can just tell me. You know I wouldn’t stoop so low as to go after a guy my best friend likes.”
“So you are going after him?”
“So you do like him?”
Minjeong shook her head violently and put her hands on your shoulders, staring into your brain as if trying to make you see some sense. Calmly, she said, “No, I don’t. Sunghoon’s nice, but he is so far from my type. He’s too… nice.”
“You mean he doesn’t wear leather jackets or ride a motorcycle?”
“That was once. But no, he doesn’t do that. And what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s not your type either.”
“And how have you gathered that?”
“Because so far, you’ve only wisely chosen guys who are as detached and emotionally stunted as you.”
“I’m not-”
“But he’s not like that, Y/N. He’s the bring-home-to-your-parents-for-Christmas type. Not the hump-and-dump type.”
“I’m starting to get offended by this conversation.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t go breaking his heart. Or yours, for that matter. It pains me to say but I care about both of you very much and I don’t see this going anywhere good.”
You shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Was her opinion of your romantic tendencies — or lack thereof — that bad that she couldn’t even recommend you to her friend? You felt like a chastised child whose mom told you you couldn’t get the toy you wanted. Despite being well aware that you weren’t the most committed when it came to relationships, you still felt like she was going overboard. Just because nothing had stuck so far didn’t mean it wouldn’t now—she was acting like you went around playing with people’s feelings for fun.
“Jesus, this is my second time seeing him. I just wanna see what his deal is. I’m not breaking anyone’s heart, okay?” 
The choir conductor had called out for everyone to gather on stage then, and that was the end of that conversation. You still remember how funny of a thing it was, seeing Sunghoon in his nice shirt and trousers, his hair falling into his eyes, singing diligently with the choir, when just the night before he had been playing beer pong dressed as Cowboy Ken. In this new light, you understood why Minjeong was so adamant about him not being your usual type, and why the grandmas were fussing over him. You hadn’t known what had pushed you to invite yourself to this rehearsal, and even then as you sat there, you weren’t sure what you were doing or why you couldn’t stop smiling as you watched Sunghoon sing. 
Time made things clearer, starting with that afternoon at the beach. The salt in the air that day had clouded your thoughts, covered them with a thin layer so that your usual reluctance to share anything remotely personal had dimmed. Or maybe it had had nothing to do with the air and everything to do with the boy sitting next to you on the sand, the way words came tumbling out of your mouth before you could think about them and were only met with understanding and empathy on his part. For once, you didn’t feel the need to guard yourself, to adapt your words and actions to the person in front of you. It was something you didn’t know was possible with a near stranger—perhaps because Sunghoon felt nothing like one.
He made you feel things you hadn’t felt in a long time; things you had been craving to feel, needed almost as much as oxygen. Being with him felt like breathing again. But you had been underwater so long, being on land again felt foreign, scary, and you couldn’t help but dive back into safe waters, coming up for air once in a while.
Whether he had intended to or not, Sunghoon had started to scratch at your surface, until he’d burrowed a small hole—shallow, but enough for cracks to appear, cracks you were quick to put back together as best as you could.
So when his gaze was too tender, his touches too gentle, you bristled. You went away, because you were afraid of what might happen if you stayed. The more you wanted to give him, the less you gave him anything at all. Your own desire overwhelmed you. His letterman jacket was warm around your shoulders, you proudly walked around with the four letters of his last name on your back, but you couldn’t get out of your mind how cold it would be if it was one day ripped away from you. 
You thought of Heeseung, how disillusioned you had been when you thought you had finally met someone who would love you the way you had always yearned to be, only for him to toss you away when you started asking for too much. You thought of your friends in middle school, how it seemed that no friendship could be more wonderful until you overheard them talking about you at a sleepover, about how clingy you were. You thought of your parents, how they had only bestowed kind words upon you when you performed well in your role of perfect daughter, of academically gifted child. How they hadn’t even glanced at any of the drawings you’d done of the four of you, mother, father, son and daughter holding hands with a bright yellow sun in the corner of the sky. How they had pushed you away from their bed when you seeked some comfort after a terrible nightmare. How they had never bothered to hide their disappointment when you came home from school with anything less than an A. How they had shunned your brother for not going down the path they had envisioned for him, how hard you had to fight to make them accept yours was not a worthless one.
Even your best friend seemed to think you were unable to receive affection of the likes of Sunghoon’s—but what you were afraid of was that he wouldn’t handle the amount of affection you knew you were able to give. In a way, that was what had drawn you to Sunghoon in the first place—from the moment you’d met him, you had been able to tell there was something of you in him. It seemed to you he had a heart that was overflowing with love, love to give, love to spare on whoever would have it. In his words, you were him. Nevertheless, your fear of getting hurt overrode your desire to feel Sunghoon’s love, and you didn’t know whether you would be able to revert to your nature after having spent so much time perfecting your new facade.
You knew what it was like to be cold. And so you prematurely braced yourself for it by pushing away Sunghoon’s warmth. If it was going to happen at some point, like Minjeong had hinted it would, might as well get used to it, right?
Except the cold never came. Sunghoon kept on burning relentlessly, no matter how much wood you fed his fire with—you could cling to him for nights on end or ignore his texts for days, without fail, he’d welcome you with his usual, unwavering warmth. He allowed you to bask in it, to momentarily let down your defenses. But something always happened to make you raise them back up—Minjeong would eye the two of you suspiciously, Heeseung would post on Instagram (Is one of the girls on slide five his new fling? Are they serious and it wasn’t that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, it’s that he didn’t want one with me?), or your mom would text you to ask you whether everything was okay.
Yet increasingly, you suspected there was something behind Sunghoon’s warmth, something you had missed, something that was tricking you. He looked at you like you had hung the stars in the night sky, yes; in public, a knowing look from you was enough to have his face turn bright red, and in private, one simple touch had his chest heaving, yes; he expressed disappointment every time you turned him down for a hang-out. Your attachment to him grew, and it became harder to put what the two of you had into words.
It wasn’t just sex—it couldn’t be. It ran deeper than that. You knew what relationships that consisted of just sex were like, and this wasn’t that, it was too good, too intimate to be just that. But you weren’t a couple, that much was clear. Only four other people were aware something was even going on, your brother not included, and you acted as regular friends in front of everyone. Jake had insisted you didn’t fool around with another member of his hockey team because his relationship with Heeseung had already deteriorated enough, he didn’t need to be on weird terms with anyone else on your behalf, so you were not keen on letting him know about what you got up to with Sunghoon. Anyway, even if everyone on earth was in on your shenanigans, you and Sunghoon hadn’t convened on what it all meant. Who knew what was going on in his head? You were no stranger to how deceitful men could be when they were after certain bodily pleasures. Unless Sunghoon said it in so many words, multiple times, you would not be a hundred percent sure he wasn’t only looking to get laid, or wanted someone to act like his girlfriend without the label and the obligations that came with it.
Because you basically were acting like his girlfriend, and he like your boyfriend. You always went to each other. Always, only each other. Whether he needed a second opinion on an outfit, you needed a rant session about your dissertation, either of you a really good orgasm, it was each other you went to.
You waited for him to initiate a conversation about the status of your relationship like one waits for church bells to ring at the turn of the hour—you knew it was coming, but the sound might be too much to bear. And the longer you had to wait, the more you dreaded it. Because how would you react when the time came? You didn’t trust yourself not to run away; neither did Minjeong.
The cold hadn’t come yet. You couldn’t let yourself feel the warmth unreservedly. It was all unpleasantly lukewarm.
Then you went home for a weekend.
It was a good friend from school’s birthday, and despite having spent a lot of time with Sunghoon at the expense of studying, you had done well this semester and thought you deserved a break. After having been away for so long, you had started to underestimate the power of your need for your parents’ approval over you. One small instance that your brother and many other people would’ve brushed off easily was enough to set you off—that same cold look of disappointment when you decided to be honest and told them one of your courses was deadly boring all while being unnecessarily complicated and you had received a low B-grade in it. They barely spoke to you for the rest of the evening.
Exams were a mere few weeks away when you got back. You buried yourself in work, forgot everything and everyone else, even Sunghoon, even yourself.
The cold hadn’t come yet, so you sought it out for yourself.
At the same time, you hadn’t indulged in enough introspection to realize how frustrated you had been at Sunghoon for not trying to create defined boundaries around your relationship. You were unable to do it yourself, you unrealistically wanted him to do the work for the both of you, you got upset when he didn’t. What you were able to do was make up reasons why he wasn’t giving you the what are we talk—he doesn’t like you that much, he just wants sex, he’s settling for you until he finds the next best thing, the real thing. This wasn’t leading anywhere, so you cut it off before he could.
You set foot in the library at seven thirty a.m. on a Monday and every following day of that week, then the next, then the next. He managed to pull you out every now and then—you weren’t that strong against his big pleading eyes, his soft messy hair, his warm hands that entirely covered yours. 
Oftentimes, you were too tired at the end of a long library day to have sex. Sunghoon never held it against you—he seemed more than happy to cook you dinner, let you fall asleep halfway during a movie you had chosen, and cuddle all night long. But your body burned with resentment at his mere presence in your bed, in your home, in your text messages. Who was he to stop you from studying, from achieving your goals, to distract you from that top grade just so he could get off? Even your friends and brother weren’t trying so hard to make you take breaks. The worry that furrowed his eyebrows, which you used to want to see fade away with a caress of your thumb, now infuriated you to no end, it seemed — to you — put-on. He kissed your neck and you wanted to push him away instead of melt into him like you had before.
It was his turn to leave for a weekend for an out-of-town hockey game, and you convinced yourself his absence came as a relief. But on the Sunday evening they got back, as you came out of the library, you spotted your brother waiting right outside of the building.
“Why is it so hard to reach you?” he said when he saw you in lieu of a greeting. “What’s the point of having a phone if you don’t even use it? I called you, like, five times.” “It was on airplane mode.” He rolled his eyes so hard, you could almost hear them moving beneath their lids. “What have you done to Sunghoon?” You stopped dead in your tracks. “Sunghoon? What about him?” you asked, chest constricting at the mere thought of him and at the implication that something had happened to him, even if you were the cause. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was clear the truth had been revealed to Jake, and for some reason, it didn’t surprise you. You knew they roomed together and assumed Sunghoon must’ve told him. You tried your best to take it in stride. “I thought we said the hockey team was off-limits after Heeseung,” he said sternly. “Also, Sunghoon, of all people?” he adds before you can say anything. “That’s like, my bro. And he’s the nicest guy ever. Not the perfect pick for one of your victims, I must say-” “Oh, please, he’s not a victim. He’s a consenting adult.” “Then why is he so upset over you spending more time studying than with him?” “That’s the male ego for you, Jakey.” Your brother sighed deeply. “He’s really hurt, Y/N. If you were going to reject him, you could’ve done it nicely.”
You frowned. “Who said anything about rejecting him?”
“You’ve shut him out. You’ve shut all of us out.” Jake was staring at you, trying to get you to look at him, but you kept your gaze on the ground and kicked non-existent pebbles around, hands hiding in your coat pockets. “You might not have meant it as one, but he took it as a rejection.”
You scoff. “There was nothing to reject. It’s not like we’re actually together.”
“Yeah, thanks for telling me anything was going on, by the way.”
“It wasn’t any of your business.”
“It is, ‘cause it concerns my sister and my best friend.”
“He’s your best friend?” you echo, a teasing smile on your lips. He rolls his eyes again.
“God, maybe you guys aren’t so bad together after all. But Y/N—I’m serious. You need to do something.”
“Why can’t he?”
“Because you’re the one who’s been fucking around.”
Ouch. “You’ve known about this whole thing for what, two days, and you’re already blaming me for the fact that it’s not going perfectly? How little do you think of me?”
“I don’t think little of you, Y/N, I just know you have a track record of not being serious about relationships.”
Your body tensed up. Maybe it had been a particularly long day. Maybe it had been a long time coming. Tears well up in your eyes—a sight you’ve not let your brother see in many, many years.
“You know what, fuck this, Jake. I’m stressed enough as it is. I’ve done my best with what I have, and you don’t get to pin this on me. As if I was the only person in that relationship. If Sunghoon has a problem, he can take it up with me directly.”
You walked away. Jake called after you once, and when you didn’t come back, caught up with you. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I don’t wanna upset you. I just-I hate seeing him hurt, you know? And you too.”
“I’m glad my feelings are of some importance to you.”
“Of course they are,” Jake said, too concerned to detect the sarcasm in your words. “And you’re right, I’ve only heard Sunghoon’s side of the story. But it really sounded like-”
“Listen, Jakey, I really don’t wanna do this right now. Let’s talk about it when exams are over. I can’t have anything else taking up mental space. I mixed up my Greek third declension endings earlier.”
“God forbid.”
After some arguing, Jake let you off the hook—“Just for now,” he said. You’d get him to recount his and Sunghoon’s conversation in excruciating detail later.
You come out of an evening of contemplation resenting Sunghoon for bitching about you to your brother, of all people. As if he had been begging on his hands and knees for your devotion, as if you had been cool-headed and detached and not thinking he’ll ask me to be his girlfriend any second now every time you spent time together. You told yourself you were well and truly done with him for the time being. If there was anything to salvage, that was future you’s problem.
But late on Thursday evening, Jay sent you a voice message, something he only did when he was gravely drunk, shouting over loud chatter and rap music that Sunghoon hadn’t shown up to a party and was apparently still practicing. You’d caught wind of their loss at the game, and even though your heart had swollen with concern for Sunghoon, very well aware of how important winning was to him, you’d managed to squash it down. You had bigger fish to fry, namely, an Italian written exam that made up 75% of your overall grade for that course. But after ten minutes of re-reading the same three lines of an article from Republicca, you couldn’t get the image of Sunghoon skirting endlessly around the ice rink and potentially hurting himself out of your head. You told yourself you only had this one exam left and plenty of time to revise for it, packed up your things and headed for the rink.
It was past eleven p.m. when you got there. The rest is history. 
Your grievances came out in an ugly way, but Sunghoon’s refusal to listen to you got the best of your nerves, and although you really did feel that your worry was more genuine than his, you didn’t truly believe that all he wanted from you was sex—at least, you hoped it wasn’t. It was the first time you ever saw any sort of negative emotion on Sunghoon’s handsome features, be it anger, sadness or pain. It tugged at your heartstrings, made you want to wrap him in your arms and get him away from whatever it was that tugged his eyebrows into a frown—even if that was you.
Now, as if the water has inched up your ankles and frozen over, your feet stay planted on the ice for a while after he’s stormed off. You don’t even realize you’re crying until a hot, salty teardrop falls on your lips.
Your feet regain control of themselves, and they seem to move of their own accord as they guide you right in front of Sunghoon’s dorm room. You’re barely conscious as your knuckles rasp against the door, and the tears that had fallen back behind your eyes spill out once more as soon as your eyes meet his. He’s just come out of the shower, a white towel wrapped around his hips, another one that he uses to dry his hair. His movements stop when he realizes who’s standing at his door, mouth falling slightly agape, chest visibly rising and falling. He’s so beautiful, you feel your heart breaking all over again.
Sobs pour uncharacteristically out of you, so much so that you have to hide your face behind your eyes. He ushers you in, holds you tight as everything flows out, the stress, the resentment, the loneliness, the longing. How could he be so close yet so far away this whole time? Did he want those miles of distance between you, or had you forced them upon him?
Sunghoon smoothes your hair down and shushes you, telling you it’s okay and that he’s here, voice strangled as if he’s on the verge of crying, too. A part of you still feels angry towards him, but the bigger part of you knows only he can give you the comfort you need.
“I missed you,” you say when you’ve calmed down partly. You only realize how true those words are once you’ve spoken them. You’ve missed waking up next to him, watching trashy reality TV together, taking coffee breaks that lasted too long in-between study sessions. You’ve missed the scent of his hair, the scent of his skin, you’ve missed watching the way his back muscles shift at the slightest of movements, feeling the weight of his head as he lay on your chest. All for a bunch of As you would’ve gotten without exerting yourself so much anyway.
“I missed you too, baby. Where did you go?” Just like that, you break down again, and he dissolves into apologies. “You’re here now, it’s all that matters,” he whispers against your hair.
“You didn’t see them, Hoon. You didn’t see the way they looked at me,” you say, struggling to speak, unsure you’re even making any sense but unable to stop. “I got As in everything, I worked so hard. Just one B, one week where I had four things due at the same time. Their faces, Hoon, like they were thinking, what was the point of letting me do this degree if I wasn’t even going to excel in it?”
“But you do excel in it, Y/N. You’re amazing at what you do. And even if you weren’t, you love it, and that’s what matters the most.”
“Not to them, it doesn’t.”
“Then forget them.”
“I can’t, Hoon,” you say, voice trembling. “I just can’t. I need them to be proud of me.”
“Isn’t it enough to be proud of yourself?”
“I wish it was.”
“Does it help if I tell you how proud I am of you and of how hard you’ve worked?”
He doesn’t see it, your face is still hidden in the crook of his shoulder, but a small smile makes its way to your lips. “A bit.”
“Then I’ll tell you everyday until you don’t need their approval anymore. They don’t deserve you, Y/N. They don’t even see what an amazing, beautiful, smart daughter they have. Or her sort-of-okay brother.” You laugh, and so does he. Sunghoon’s words and soothing touch against your back already alleviate the weight on your heart. “But I see it.”
You lift your head to look at Sunghoon. His eyes are glassy. “You see how amazing, beautiful and smart Jake is?”
He laughs again as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Yeah, exactly.” The way he looks at you makes you wish you could go back to the day you met him and right all of your wrongs. No more hiding or running away. You only want to stay under that gaze of his. But sadness soon replaces the joy in his eyes. “You mean so much more to me than you give yourself credit for, Y/N. This has never been just about sex for me. Not even for a second.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what has it been about?” 
He frowns like a student in an advanced math class who’s just been asked what three plus three is—isn’t it obvious?
“I love you.”
Your eyes dart between his as if searching for any trace of deceit there. Of course, you don’t find any—because there hasn’t been any since the start. You’d let your own fears invent things that weren’t there. Your lips tremble and you find yourself bawling on his shoulder once more, your tears like a well that digs deeper and deeper so as to never run out of water.
“I hope these are good tears,” Sunghoon says light-heartedly, but you can detect the nervousness behind his words. You nod your head vigorously, willing yourself to say something back, but your tears overflow, make your breath hitch.
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” you manage in between sobs.
“I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear,” he explains.
“I was waiting for you to say something.”
“I didn’t know. I thought I was being obvious enough.”
“You probably were. I was the one who couldn’t see it,” you admit.
“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”
“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”
Sunghoon chuckles, a sound of relief. “I’ve wanted you like that since the start.”
“I think I have too.”
“You think?”
You lift your head again and when your eyes meet Sunghoon’s, it feels like coming out of your hiding place hours after the round of hide-and-seek was over. He hadn’t forgotten to come and find you. He was waiting for you to reveal yourself.
Which goes against the rules of hide-and-seek, but you don’t blame him.
You smile; he smiles, deep dimples carving crescents into his cheeks. “I love you, too.”
You hadn’t realized how cold your hands were until Sunghoon found them.
--
Everything after that was a blurry mess of tangled limbs, warm kisses, happy tears and relieved laughter.
Your touch had always been intoxicating, but Sunghoon was particularly sensitive to it that night. The mix of not having felt you close in weeks and the heightened emotions driven by your confessions made his skin tingle everywhere it came in contact with yours. He’d never slept so little without regretting it in the morning.
It goes without saying that most of the night was not spent talking, but you still had things you needed to discuss. The two of you laid out all of your fears, and Sunghoon was immensely relieved to finally get a glimpse into that mind of yours. He made you promise to always tell him what was going on, and he promised you you’d never be too much for him. Always just right.
Now, he gets to wait outside of your exam hall with your favorite flowers in hand, to put his arm around your shoulders during movie nights instead of holding your hand beneath the blanket, to kiss you over the barrier at the end of a hockey game he won. Heeseung’s narrowed eyes at the sight of the two of you is an added bonus.
You text him that you’ll hang around the locker rooms after the game so that you can head to the party together. The end of December is nearing and you can’t wait for the new year, for twelve whole months of not hiding your feelings for Sunghoon from anyone, not even from yourself, least of all from him. At least, that’s what you told him in a sappy, drunken voice message at two a.m. the previous night when the girls made you drink a bottle of prosecco to yourself—their way of congratulating you for an arduous but successful exam period.
He steps out of the locker rooms with Jake and Jay. You’ve never looked quite as pretty, face lighting up as you spot the three of them, his jersey on your shoulders. You’d worn it during your last exam—“I thought it might bring me luck to wear a pretty boy’s name on my back,” you’d told him, to which he’d replied that it was good practice for when you actually took his last name. You’d looked away, fighting a smile.
Now your smile is full-blown as you look at him, but the downside of being an official couple is that Jake has now more material to tease the both of you with.
“Oh my God, you waited for me, what a sweet sister I have been blessed with!” he exclaims, arms outstretched as he barrels towards you.
“Fuck off, Sim,” you say but accept his hug nonetheless. “Nice game.”
“I know.” He pulls away and ruffles your hair. Jay nods at you like you’re someone he shared a class with back in second year and not his friend of almost three years.
As if on cue, just as Sunghoon reaches you and envelops you in a hug, Jake turns around and yells loud enough for all the players spilling out of the locker rooms, “And don’t forget to wear protection! I’m not ready to be an uncle yet.”
“That’s disgusting, Jakey,” you yell back, and he smiles proudly. Sunghoon had never thought the day would come where you’d initiate a kiss in a room full of people—he’s on cloud nine when you take his head in your hands and press your lips to his, murmuring praises about how well he played.
“It was all for you, baby,” he says, trying to appear cool even though a blush is creeping up his ears. 
“Not for the recruiter of the national team?” you asked with a smirk.
He smiles, shrugging. “Maybe a bit for him too. You’re the one I want to impress.”
“Consider me impressed.” You stand on your tiptoes to kiss him a second time.
You head towards your friends, hands warm against each other.
--
In classic mysterious Jay fashion, he organizes a New Year’s Eve party that he can’t attend himself.
He’s on holiday in some exotic country halfway across the world with his family, but he’s offered up their house for a celebration and tasked Jake with making sure no one trashes anything.
The party started three hours ago, and you’re sure it’s in full swing by now—you’re sure everyone is having a jolly old time, getting drunk enough to welcome the new year with a hangover, searching the crowds of people for the person they’ll want to kiss at midnight. You’re sure that people are having so much fun that whoever notices your and Sunghoon’s absence might think you’re missing out.
And maybe you are—but there’s nowhere you’d rather be than where you are now, straddling your boyfriend’s lap in the backseat of his car. He’s a little bit tipsy, you’re a little bit tipsy, it’s obvious in the way you kiss each other, messy, impatient, interspersed with giggles and with perhaps too much tongue. Your hands are not much more polite, harshly grabbing at his hair just the way you know he likes it, and neither are his, having snuck their way underneath your black satin dress long ago already.
When Sunghoon pulled you away from the party, you’d appropriately exclaimed, “But the party?”, to which he replied, “Fuck the party.” It wasn’t like him to curse, or to have anything but a bashful smile on his lips, like a guilty dog who’d been caught doing something it knew it shouldn’t, even though he was just standing there, so when you see his stoney expression, you think something serious must’ve happened.
The something serious turned out to be “that guy who was touching your shoulder.”
Clearly, it’d take Sunghoon a little bit more time to be entirely secure in your relationship. In the meantime, you didn’t mind letting him fuck his jealousy away.
Although he’d been the one to whisk you away, you’re the one who finds yourself begging for him to speed things up. Your flimsy thong does absolutely nothing, so you’re basically grinding yourself bare against his clothed erection—and it’s not like the fabric of his suit trousers is very thick, either. A girl can only put up with so much dry humping before having her boyfriend’s dick inside of her goes from being a want to a need.
“Need you, Hoon,” you coo against the shell of his ear. A few words usually do the trick, but Sunghoon has other plans tonight.
“What do you need, baby?”
“You.”
“I’m right here,” he says, punctuating his words with a squeeze of your ass.
“You know what I mean,” you say, practically whining.
“I’m not sure I do, actually.”
You pull away and, looking at him directly, say, “God, Sunghoon. I want you to fuck me.” His shit-eating grin simultaneously makes you roll your eyes and goes straight to your core.
“That I can do.”
He keeps one hand on your ass as he loosens his tie first, then undoes his belt and trouser buttons. His slacks and underwear pool around his ankles, and all he needs to do is hike your dress up around your hips and push your thong to the side. You wrap a hand around his dick, but your mind is too hazy to do much with it—he’s started rubbing circles on your clit with his thumb, the pressure and speed as perfect as it always is. You let your forehead fall against his shoulders and moan unabashedly, thankful he decided to park the car far enough away from the house.
“You like it when I touch you like this, baby?”
“I love it, Hoon.”
He hums his approval. “You’re so perfect. So perfect and so wet for me, isn’t that right?”
You start to say “yes,” but you interrupt yourself with a gasp. You hold onto Sunghoon’s arm, feel his muscles move under your palm as he slips two fingers inside of you without warning. “Please,” you choke out, a tight knot already forming in your stomach.
“Please what?”
“Need you. Need your dick, baby.”
He smiles as if endeared, but his words couldn’t be more different. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before going off with some random guy the one minute I was somewhere else.”
“He’s just-fuck, Hoon, he’s just a mutual friend of Jay and I. Fuck, right there, baby.” Forming coherent sentences when Sunghoon’s fingers flick against that perfect spot deep inside you again and again is no easy task, but you need to defend yourself.
“Right there?” he echoes, voice a whisper against your ear. When you nod, eyes shut tight, he slips his fingers out. You look at him, betrayed. “That’s too bad. Why don’t you ask him to touch you right there, hm?”
You don’t know how much of his jealousy is put-on to get you to beg and how much of it is real. You make a mental note to have a conversation with him about this later—right now, you don’t mind playing along if it means your boyfriend will deign to fuck you. You know he wants to, he’s just making you work harder.
You move your hand up and down along his dick, brush his reddening tip with your palm every now and then. “He couldn’t touch me like you, Hoon.” You lean in and trail kisses along his neck, his jawline, his ears. “Can’t fuck me like you, either.”
With exams, hockey matches and any other responsibilities out of the way for winter break, the two of you had had an obscene amount of sex in the past couple of weeks. You’d done other things, of course, namely having much-needed conversations with each other, your friends, your families. Sunghoon’s mother was overjoyed at the news, glad her “duckling had finally met someone” — her words — and his sister kept stealing his phone from him to talk to you when you were on FaceTime. You and Jake had gone home for two days for Christmas, and although Jake had needed to pep talk you into it for over an hour, you managed to tell them that you wouldn’t stand for being belittled for your life choices anymore.
But in-between these conversations, you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. You’ve grown more comfortable with each passing day, both of you bolder in vocalizing what you want and how you feel. And so, you quickly found out that your Sunghoon, your shy, sweet Sunghoon, got off like nothing else on salacious words. In line with his possessiveness, he loved hearing about how he and only he could do these things to you; in line with your need for validation, you could practically come from hearing his praises alone.
“That’s right, baby.” Like the gentleman he is, he fishes out the condom wrapper he had gotten ready from his trouser pocket, tears it open with his mouth and rolls the condom on with one hand, his other one still preoccupied with you. “Come here, my love,” he whispers, his sweet tone worlds away from his previous teasing, almost cocky one. He grabs your hips, guides you closer to him and lines your entrance with the tip of his dick. He lets you go at your own pace, rubs your thighs soothingly as you sink down onto him slowly and adjust to his size. You throw your head back, mind hazy with pleasure as you move your hips back-and-forth against him.
“You feel so good, baby. You’re doing so well for me.” His words make you pick up your pace, and you wrap your arms around his neck, fingers grabbing at his hair and sides of your faces pressed against each other as you start lifting your hips and sinking back down. Sunghoon’s hands hold your ass tightly, guiding you up and down. It’s hot in the car; sweat runs down your hairline and your back, air is running low, the windows are fogging up, but it only adds to the dizzying bliss growing in you. Even the seatbelt receiver digging into your knee doesn’t bother you.
“Feels so good, Hoon,” you moan.
“I know, baby.”
Your hours of studying everyday means your thighs aren’t the strongest—good thing for you that your boyfriend has enough stamina and strength for the both of you. As soon as he feels you tiring, your rhythm becoming slower and more irregular, he picks up your slack. One hand on your back, one arm around your waist, he presses you close to him, his hold on you so tight you can barely move. He bucks his hips harshly into yours, faster and faster, making you cry out with every brush of his tip against that spot deep inside of you. Your whole body shakes with pleasure as your moans grow higher and louder, until the tension in your stomach hits its apex and unravels. A gasp leaves your throat as you come around him, but he’s unrelenting, the overstimulation quickly making tears form in your eyes. Strings of curses and praises of how perfect you are spill out of Sunghoon’s mouth disorderly as he reaches his own end.
Together, you take your time catching your breath, his fingers roaming your back while you trail soft kisses all over his face and neck. “My pretty baby,” he whispers, and it makes your heart swell with so much affection for him that you press your lips to his, shutting him up in case he says something that actually has you exploding.
You wish you could spend some more time just the two of you before returning to the party, but when you check your phone, it’s already five minutes to midnight—he puts his clothes back on as you fix your hair in a rush, Sunghoon helping you wipe away traces of mascara under your eyes, and together, run back to the living room where everyone has gathered. You find Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jake, who has Jay on FaceTime. It’s only five p.m. where he is.
Everyone counts down from ten together. The first thing you do in the new year is kiss Park Sunghoon—and you’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do, too.
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amiableness · 1 month
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You’re the Closest to Heaven I’ll Ever Be
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Pairing: Theo Nott x Sweet!Fem!Reader
Summary: Reader is getting hit on and Theo is not a fan.
Word Count: 1.7k
Warnings: Jealousy, reader feeling uncomfortable from being hit on, kissing and language.
A/N 💌 I was going to end this in smut, but then I decided I wanted to see how this does since it’s my first Theo fic! So part two with smut is a possibility! Comments and reblogs with feedback are so appreciated! 🫶🏼
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
It was practically scripted at this point—finding yourself squeezed between Pansy and Theo as the familiar bickering began over who would fetch the drinks. The cozy corner of the pub hummed with chatter, but your group’s voices were the loudest, as they always were. You could feel the warmth of Theo’s arm draped casually behind you on the bench, and Pansy’s sharp elbow nudging your side in a silent complaint as the boys started their usual back-and-forth.
Every time, it played out the same way. And every time, you and Pansy would exchange a knowing, frustrated glance, rolling your eyes at how they managed to dodge the responsibility. The flickering candlelight on the table cast a soft glow over the table, highlighting the smirks on their faces as they each tried to weasel out of the chore.
“Who’s getting the drinks?” Pansy asked, her sharp gaze cutting across the table. Mattheo immediately sucked in a deep breath, turning to Draco as if suddenly interested in striking up a conversation. Pansy’s glare shifted to Blaise and Lorenzo, who both offered her sheepish smiles.
“One of you, go get them.” She demanded, her tone leaving no room for argument. Blaise shook his head with a disbelieving snort, while Lorenzo leaned back in his chair, casting an incredulous look at Blaise, as if he couldn’t believe Pansy was serious.
“Why don’t you?” Blaise retorts, a teasing edge in his voice. You can practically hear Pansy’s huff of frustration from beside you.
“Because I’m a lady,” she snaps back, her eyes narrowing. “Act like gentlemen, and one of you go.”
“A lady?” Draco echoes, feigning disbelief as Mattheo bursts into loud laughter. Pansy’s scowl deepens, aimed squarely at the two of them.
You sigh, the familiar routine wearing thin. “I’ll get the drinks,” you say, pushing yourself up from the bench. Theo’s gaze is trained on you as you stand and straighten your skirt.
“Aw, angel! I was just about to do it.” Mattheo says, feigning a look of disappointment. You shoot him an unimpressed look, not buying it for a second.
You know Mattheo’s using the nickname to tease you. You’d earned the name ‘angel’ from your friends not long after you started school—a sweet Slytherin was bound to stand out, and the nickname had stuck ever since.
“No, you definitely weren’t.” You mumble, rolling your eyes as you turn to walk away.
A chorus of “Thank you” and “I love you” follows you as you weave through the busy crowd. 
Your friends settle into easy conversation, relieved to avoid the task of getting drinks this round. Though it’s a minor chore, the trip to Hogsmeade often included the bickering of who should grab the drinks. It’s become a tradition really.
Mattheo leans back with a satisfied grin, happy to recount the fight he got into earlier this week. Pansy sighs, already familiar with the story from hearing it three times before. And Lorenzo and Theo, who were with Mattheo during the incident, drift into their own conversation.
He’s half listening to Lorenzo and half waiting for you to come back. He’d much rather it had been anyone else who went to get the butterbeers.
“Nott,” Draco calls loudly, as he jerks his head in your direction. “You paying attention to your girl?”
Theo sighs inwardly at the label of “his girl.” As much as he enjoys hearing it, you’re not really his. And he knows that’s his own fault. 
Though he understands why his friends call you his. 
His mind drifts to the moments when he let his hand brush against yours as you walked side by side in the hallway, feeling the warmth of your skin and the subtle electricity between you. He remembers the way you nervously bit your lip when you caught his gaze lingering on you in class the other day, and the softness of your eyes when they met his. Though he wouldn’t admit it to your friends, there had been a few stolen kisses in the dim light of the library, where the quiet intimacy of the space made every touch feel charged, and in the secluded corners of the common room, where whispered conversations turned into the softest kisses.
Despite these moments, his reluctance to officially ask you out is deeply rooted. He’s never experienced a healthy relationship firsthand and fears that, without the experience, he might unintentionally hurt the sweetest girl he knows.
He doesn’t want to end up hurting you because, if it didn’t work out, he’s not sure he would be able to get over it.
But he can’t help himself from glancing in your direction. He’s not about to admit how frequently he’s been checking on you, his gaze drifting toward you every few minutes. Each time he looks, he sees you still standing by the bar, patiently waiting.
But this time, you aren’t alone. Standing next to you is a guy Theo doesn’t recognize—a tall figure with an easy smile,dressed in a well-fitted sweater and jeans. 
It’s evident from his body language that he’s attracted to you. He leans casually against the bar, his body angled towards you as he listens intently to your soft-spoken words. His posture is relaxed yet focused, with his eyes lingering on you, darting down to your lips when you turn to glance at him. 
The way his grin widens and the way he maintains that close proximity makes Theo’s stomach tighten with jealousy. He can feel the muscles in his shoulders tense, his jaw clenching as he watches the guy lean in a fraction closer to you. Your eyes widen slightly, and the curve of your smile falters, turning nervous as you shift about.
The smile is nowhere near the nervous smile you send Theo when he flirts with you, but a smile that tells him you’re trulyuncomfortable.
“Oh, fuck,” Lorenzo mutters, clocking the uneasy look on your face. “Go help her out.”
“I shouldn’t. I should let her handle it herself.” Theo grits his teeth, refusing to take his eyes off you. Lorenzo and Pansy exchange amused glances, knowing that watching another guy flirt with you is getting under his skin.
Blaise grins, “Sure, like you’re really going to sit there and let that happen. You look ready to snap any second.”
“Fuck yo—” Theo’s sentence dies on his lips as he catches the guy stepping closer to you, his hand reaching for your waist with an all-too-familiar confidence. Theo’s vision narrows, his focus locked on the scene unfolding before him. Without a second thought, he’s on his feet, the chair scraping loudly against the floor as he pushes it back. His pulse quickens, and his jaw clenches, every muscle in his body tensing as he strides toward you, determined to close the distance before things go any further. The room around him blurs, his attention fixed solely on you and the guy who’s just crossed a line.
“My place isn’t too far from here if you wanted to—” He trails off, his eyebrows knitting together as he sees Theo walking toward you both, a hard, unyielding glare fixed on him.
When you notice Theo approaching, your frown melts into the sweetest smile he’s ever seen. The tension in your shoulders eases as you subtly shift out of the guy’s grip, taking a deliberate step toward Theo. Without a second thought, Theo closes the distance between you, his hand slipping behind your neck, and your hands gripping his biceps. The warmth of his touch sends a shiver down your spine as he pulls you closer, his eyes dark and intense. The kiss that follows is searing, claiming, and filled with an emotion that’s been brewing beneath the surface for far too long. The buzz from all around you halts, and all you can feel is the heat between you and Theo.
Your gasp of surprise gives Theo the opportunity to deepen the kiss, his grip on the back of your neck firm but gentle. When he finally pulls away, you’re left breathless, staring up at him with wide, adoring eyes. The room around you feels hazy and all you can focus on is Theo. ​​His thumb gently brushes your cheek, and pathetically, you tilt your chin up, subconsciously asking him to kiss you again. As your mind starts to catch up with what just happened, Theo’s gaze lifts to the guy still standing there, his expression shifting to something much colder. 
The guy, who had been so confident just moments before, now looks like he’s trying to figure out how to make a quick exit, clearly understanding that he’s no longer welcome.
“Fuck off, mate.” Theo snaps, his voice firm and cold. You feel the tension in his grip, and his assertiveness has you instinctively leaning into him. His protective stance leaves no room for doubt about his feelings. The guy holds up his hands and mutters an apology before disappearing into the crowd.
Neither of you say anything as Theo’s gaze shifts to you. You’re still glassy-eyed and stunned from his kiss, but for a moment, Theo worries he’s messed up.
“Fuck, I’m sorry. I should’ve let you handle it, dolcezza.” 
You smile at his nickname for you. He never called you “angel” like everyone else did.
“No, I’m happy with how it was handled.” You reply softly, your eyes meeting his with a reassuring warmth. You let your hand slip down to gently grasp his, fingers intertwining.
“Are you sure?” He asks, glancing down at your intertwined fingers.
“Very sure,” you affirm, leaning up to press your lips quickly against Theo’s. His lips are warm and soft, and the brief kiss makes your heart race. “You’re hot when you’re jealous.” 
Theo’s eyes glint with a mixture of amusement and affection as he smirks at you. He responds with a deep, toe-curling kiss that makes your legs turn to jelly. The sudden burst of whistles and hollers from your friends jolts you back to reality, causing you to pull away and bury your flushed face against Theo’s chest.
He wraps his arms around your shoulders, holding you close and pressing a tender kiss to your head. 
With a playful grin, he flips off your friends.
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peachesofteal · 3 months
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Through Me (The Flood) - secret baby fic Simon Riley / female reader - 18+ mdni - more vacation - smut
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Simon left the windows open last night.
He’s not sure what possessed him to take such a risk. The vacation flat may be on the third floor, picked for the view over the beach and shoreline, but the height is not something that would thwart someone with an objective. A mission to kill.
A person like him.
He supposes he left them open because he wanted to watch the thin cotton curtains wave in the breeze. He wanted to smell the salt and hear the birds. He wanted to memorize the sunrise’s painting across your bare skin, the broad strokes and dappled splotches of dawn that turn you into a living canvas, a work of art. The prettiest one he’s ever seen.
You’re hardly covered by the sheet, on your side, one arm above your head, the other stretched out towards his side of the bed. You slept like a dead woman last night, gone to the world, lightly snoring and tossing in the small hours. He stayed up for most of it, tracing the slope of your nose with his fingers, counting your spots, birthmarks, moles, the whole lot. You’re usually a light sleeper home, your subconscious skimming just under the surface, ready to wake you at a moment’s notice for the baby, an instinctive driving you to hover on the edge of deep sleep.
He says he’s not sure what possessed him to let the sun in so early this morning, but deep down, he’s aware of the farce.
He wants to catch it in the light. The small angular sapphire on a gold band, the one he slipped on your ring finger last night while you were lost in your dreams. It’s a simple thing. Unremarkable even. Unobtrusive, as it should be. It doesn’t call attention to its size, or you, or who may have put it there, but it sits so naturally, like it’s always belonged.
He slipped it on six hours ago and well, he’s tired of waiting for you to see it for the first time.
He pulls you into your body, little spoon to his big, and tugs the hand wearing his ring into his, carefully shifting your knee forward. You sigh.
“Simon?” He kisses your shoulder, your neck.
“Go back to sleep sweetheart.” The thick of your ass is plump at his hips, hard cock settled in the cleft between your cheeks.
“What’re you doin’?” You yawn, still not able to really open your eyes, and he nudges at your temple.
“Just a little cold mama, there’s a bit o’ a draft in here.” He traces down your slit, pleased to find you already wet, probably from when he played with you clit earlier this morning. He hefts up on his arm, lining up with you before slowly pushing his way inside your body. You’re wet and warm and perfect, and he groans into your neck, weaving his fingers between yours. His thumb strokes over the stone in your ring, cock still and sitting in your wet pussy. You moan.
“Ah-“
“Feel good?”
“So full.” Your lashes flutter. He kisses your cheek.
“Be good for daddy, sweetheart. Keep those eyes closed, stay nice and still. Keep me warm.” He’s savoring the moment, dragging it out, practically edging himself, waiting for the second you truly wake up and realize what he’s done, what’s happening.
You whine. He slaps your ass, lightly, enjoying how you jiggle and ripple afterwards. The sun tired you out yesterday, effects still lingering, and he rubs a soothing palm over the swell of your ass, shushing you. “My sweet girl, look’t you. Keepin’ my cock warm, hungry for it even in your dreams.” You whimper, clenching, and he starts to move, dragging in and out of your heat, holding you too tight to his chest. Your mouth hangs open in a permanent gasp, fingernails sinking into his thigh.
“Oh my god.” He directs your hand onto the pillow in front of your face, his fingers locked on yours. Another thrust, deeper this time, enough to make you squeak, and then he whispers in your ear.
“Open your eyes mama.” His heart is a sharp staccato, frantic snare drum rolling through his head. He waits, and waits, slowing the roll of hips until your brow furrows, confused at the stall of his pace.
The curtains wave, picked up by a breeze, and the sun skitters across the foot of the bed, slowly spreading up the mattress, over where he’s sunken deep inside you, to the pillow, your face, your hand.
The sapphire sparkles in the morning light.
A beat. Then two. The blood pounding in his ears-
“What… Simon… wait… did you-“ you’re babbling, confused, stunned, and he pulls away, almost completely, before bludgeoning back inside your pussy until there’s no room left, and your back arches.
“That’s a ring, sweetheart. My ring, on your pretty little finger.” He thrusts again, snapping into you with a snarl. The ring is clouding his vision, the clutch of your pussy trying to milk him deep into your womb. “My ring, my babies, my wife.” The plural slips, future plans laid bare, but he distracts you with teeth to your shoulder, playing with your clit, persistent, frenzied pressure screwing your face up until your eyes are clenched closed and he’s fucking you so hard his hips slap against your ass with a shuddering, satisfying sound.
“Daddy- fuck. ‘m gonna come,” you pant, spine curling, and he cups your jaw. He’ll never not be able to look you in the face now, he’ll always need to see you, watch you, drink in every expression like they’re his salvation.
Maybe they are.
“Good girl, there it is, come for me, come all my cock.” You choke, you cry, keening in his arms, sweet kitten turned feral, and he bands a forearm around your chest as he rocks in and out, faster and faster, meeting you blow for blow, release spilling from him and into you, a reaffirmation of the bond you’ll carry, he’ll carry, for the rest of your lives.
“This is crazy.” You’re holding your hand up, staring at the gem glistening against the backdrop of turquoise sea. “You’re insane. You know that right?” He barks a laugh, tugging you down onto the blanket.
“I do know.” There’s sand in your hair, sand littered across your collarbone, sand on your nose. He feels insane right now, sitting by your side, studying the ring he gave you, his ring on your hand.
Fuck. It makes his cock hard. Fills that ache in his chest, the ever present one that he’s had since the day he saw you on the sidewalk with his baby wrapped to your chest. Wild instinct that demands he possess every single inch, every breath.
You’re the moon. The silver light on the desert in the darkest hours of the night. The one gentling the primal deep of the darkest waters, pushing and pulling them in a rapturous tide.
He’s the sea. You’re the moon.
He glances around the beach. Finally. He overheard you and Cami giggling about skinny dipping the other day, and latched onto your admittance that you’ve never done it, but always wanted to try. “We’re alone.” You blink.
“Okay…”
“Want to skinny dip?” Your eyebrows raise, and he gives you a small half smile. There’s a little excitement in your eyes, balanced with caution.
“What if someone sees?”
“No one will.”
“But if they do… you’ll be okay with someone else seeing me naked?” His vision ebbs in red.
“No one will see us.” He doubles down, and you snicker.
“I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t… if someone saw you naked they’d probably call the zoo for an escaped anaconda sighting or something, they’d-“ He rolls to his feet, snatching you by your waist, walking towards the tide. You shriek. “Simon! Put me down!” With one hand, he rips your bottoms away and pulls his down simultaneously, before flipping you into the surf, careful to keep his hands on you even as you go under.
When you come up sputtering, you’re trying so damn hard not to laugh, affixing fake outrage on your face like a mask that won’t stay.
You’re so fucking cute.
He tugs the top free, and then you’re both standing naked, floating in the crystal cool water, rolling with the waves. Your feet leave the ground with each peak, and Simon swims after you when you’re on top of one, wrapping you up in his arms and turning on his back.
“I’ll drown you.” You protest, but don’t attempt to wrestle free.
“Mama you couldn’t drown me if you tried.” The two of you float there, toes to the sky in the sea, his hand on your waist, tethered, until your fingers are wrinkled and he's kissed each and every one.
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Paint My Kiss Across Your Chest by Kikiberoski16
or @larrysballetslippers
Harry/Louis | 6,9k😏| Girl Direction | Strap-on sex
“So desperate for my cock, eh?” Louis' hands started going upwards again, getting a gasp out of Harry. She wasn’t sure how to react but her pussy was starting to soak her dress. “I… I want…” Louis brought her lips close to Harry’s ear, like they were in public. “Wanting it anywhere, any time. Just like how you were begging for my cock at God’s house.” Or, Harry is desperate for a good fucking and accidentally finds it at a confession booth in church.
Part of the @1dreligionfest! This is a gift for @homosociallyyours, I hope you enjoy it!! I want to thank @enchantedlandcoffee for being my beta for this fic.
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notjustsmutficfest · 1 year
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round 2 of the not just smut fic fest is officially here!!
you can send in any prompt submissions you'd like here!
you can take a look at prompt submissions from round 1 here to see if there's any already submitted prompts you're interested in and/or to avoid submitting too similar of prompts! i have already removed all prompts that were used during round 1 :)
rules:
this is a nsfw fest, therefore you must be 18 years of age or older to participate.
any fics submitted this round will not be moderated content wise; please use common sense & best judgment when it comes to things like tagging your fic correctly/appropriately. whether the next round's fic content will be moderated is dependent on how participants do these things.
there is no minimum word count for this fest.
this will not be an anonymous fest; you can absolutely post snippets of your fic as you're writing. tag this blog & use the hashtag to be reposted as well!
fics are allowed to have more than one author - if you want to write with one or more friends, go for it
this is a one direction fic fest, so you can write about any pairing - or ot3/ot4/ot5 - you'd like!
you can write about any & all forms and variations of one direction; this fest thrives on inclusivity, variation & exploration!
schedule:
prompt submissions are open until october 24th
sign ups begin october 26th & end november 19th
posting begins: february 25th
if you have any questions, feel free to message me here or on my main @alwaysxlarrie :)
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etfrin · 9 months
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❝ ִִִִִִִִִִִִִֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶָָָָָָָָָָָָָ higher with my lover — coriolanus snow ִִִִִִִִִִִִִֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶֶָָָָָָָָָָָָָ ❞
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☆ Warning: NSFW | Snow is his own warning, pinv sex, creampie, unprotected sex (wrap it dumbfucks), riding, handjob, mentions of blood & blood sucking, Capitol! Reader, reader is mentioned to be a virgin, mentions of poison and death, district+lucy gray slander (necessary to the plot), mention of Sejanus, degradation & praise kink if you squint, dry humping | lmk if I missed anything!
☆ Pairing: fem! Reader x young! peacekeeper! Coriolanus Snow
☆ Summary: Lucy Gray left but you find him in the forest instead and shit goes down
☆ A/N: this fic is inspired by the fact that i imagined myself to be the one sucking the 'poisoned bite' and be like now we both die and i like you lmao, i hope you guys like it!
Ps. This is the official canon ending :D
Ps². Listened to this song mainly to write the smut, so i am just gonna leave it here. . .
| masterlist | taglist | bc: @cafekitsune |
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“Lucy Gray! Are you trying to kill me!?”
Coriolanus Snow yelled as he kept pointing the gun in random directions. It wasn't long after that he began shooting in the sky causing the murder of numerous mockingjays up in the air.
He had found the necklace, he had found the scarf. She left. She was a loose end. She needs to die, fucking die so Snow could have the life he deserved. The life he worked for, the life he was entitled to since birth. The life of a Snow.
“Lucy Gray! We can talk about this!” He yells out, “Just come out!” But Lucy Gray was nowhere to be found, as if she was a ghost. As if she was the Lucy Gray from the song, a mystery to never be found.
He pointed his gun in the direction where he heard the sound of a twig snapping. It wasn't Lucy Gray but you. Your eyes were wide, chest heaving as you slowly walked towards him with your hands raised. “Coryo,” you whispered, scared, your feet walking towards him with hesitation but never flattering.
He had no idea how you had found him. He wasn't sure why you were either here. It was already too much for him that Sejanus came (and now he is dead, dead, dead. The third person he had killed). And you followed him too, pulling in favors, deciding to be a medic along with Sejanus, serving time with your best friends (not his, he never considered you or Sej as his friend).
“Where's Lucy Gray!?” He yelled, walking towards you, gun still pointed. It makes you walk backward until your back hits the hard bark of a tree. The rough texture of the bark is uncomfortable due to your thin shirt. You scrunch your nose at the mention of her. You never liked her much. He didn't know why but perhaps it was all a ruse just for this very moment. This very betrayal from her.
“How would I know?” You scoffed, the haughty attitude of a Capitol citizen coming through despite having a gun pointed at you. He pressed the end of the gun at your chest. “Tell me the truth,” he growled. “That girl tried to poison me. Tell me where she is!”
“I don't know,” you hiss back, your eyes ablaze. “And get the gun out of my face. You should be heading to a fucking medic right now. Are you sure she poisoned you?” Your voice was now laced with concern, eyes softening as you looked at him, his t-shirt clinging to him with sweat, his cheeks flushed, eyes so wide that the blues were hidden with black instead.
Coryo gets the gun away from you to put his arm forward. Showing you his snake bite, the puncture wound oozing out beads of red blood on his snow-like skin. “It's probably non-poisonous,” you said, trying to sound optimistic.
“No, it's not!” He growls, and anger fills in every movement and word of his. “She's trying to kill me. She's district! I shouldn't have- shouldn't have-” You hold his arm, your fingers around his wound, trying to stop the bleeding.
“It's fine,” you whispered, trying your best that the tone you use with him is soft and gentle. You want to shake him out of the mental breakdown that was happening. He shakes his head and you press your fingertips into the wound.
“It's fine,” you whispered, “let's get you back. Come on.” You try to urge him forward, only for him to pull himself out of your grasp. “No! I need to find her. She's a loose end. She will tell. She's a snake, not a songbird,” he rambles.
Despite the confusion you felt with his words, you grit your teeth. “Come on, Coryo! We need to head back,” you said, your hand on his wrist, trying to drag him out of the middle of the green forest.
“No! We need to find her out before the poison works” he yells, pulling you back and pushing you. Pinning you effectively between him and a tree.
You glare at him before a moment of impulsivity takes over you. You take his arm, your mouth around the bleeding wound and you suck letting whatever ‘poisoned blood’ onto your tongue. His eyes widen as he sees the redness of his blood now painting your lips. “Now can we go back?” You said as you licked the blood clean. “Because if it's poison, we will both die.”
“Why would-” he visibly freezes. He doesn't want your blood on his hands. No- it would be on Lucy's hands. It's her fault. Everything is her fault. “Why would you do that?” He whispered, leaning closer to you, his face now mere inches away from yours. It was like he was seeing you for the first time. Like he never saw you for you until now. Someone like him. Unhinged (not that he's willing to admit it).
He hooks his fingers under your chin, holding your jaw and tilting your lips towards his. His eyes were searching for sanity but seemed to have found none as a smile (filled with insanity) spread on his face. “You're crazy,” he whispered, “Are you that desperate?”
“Desperate for your well-being, Coryo,” you whispered, hating the fact that your gaze fell on his soft-looking lips. “I don't know what's wrong, Coriolanus. But come with me, let's go back. Lucy Gray isn't worth anything.”
“Lucy Gray is worth everything!” He yelled, pressing his body with yours, pain in your bones flaring as he without noticing crushed you.
“I am sure she will have poison for you too. I am sure she will come back then,” you spit out. You felt outrageous at his behavior. “She ran, didn't she? To the North. You gonna go there too, Coryo?” you questioned, your eyes now meeting his. You try to find an answer but find something deeply tangled instead, neither a yes or a no.
You never felt such pity for Coriolanus Snow before as you did now. You put your palm on his cheek. “Come with me,” you said, softening your voice. “Back to the peacekeepers, the general told me about District 2 and I can put in favors so we can be back in the Capitol in no time.”
“You didn't choose Sejanus,” you whispered, the mention of Sej causing him to freeze. “Choose me,” you plead, feeling pathetic for being reduced to this. But it was for your Coryo so it was worth it. Wasn't it?
A chip from the bird makes him look away but you use your hand to make him face you again. Tears begin to pool in your eyes. You find your heart preparing itself for a rejection. “Choose me,” you choke out, a sob in your throat ready to come out when he says no, no, no Lucy Gray it is, never you.
You wait and wait for the rejection, your eyelids closing themselves so he doesn't see himself (or the way you looked at him with love) in the reflective tears. “Look at me,” he whispered, feeling his hot breath on your lips now. And you didn't want to listen but your eyes opened back up, light coming in and he's in your sight.
All glorious as you always thought of Snow.
Snow lands on top.
Haven't every Capitol child learned that from history? You were no exception. And you never planned to be. Even after finding out the truth about his situation, you never thought less of him, if anything everything you felt about him increased tenfold without your consent. Oh, how you should hate him. Oh, but how much you love him.
He leaned in and you didn't move. He stops for a mere second as if reconsidering his decision. But then decided to fuck it because the next thing you know his lips against yours.
He tasted like cheap alcohol, he tasted like ruin and danger. You ate it all up by parting your lips so his tongue could slip in. You let out a moan as his teeth bite into your lips. For a moment you think he's a snake and that he's the one poisoning you. His poison is more potent than an actual snake’s ever could be.
You were simple prey, that's it. Instead of a bullet, he was shooting your heart with a kiss. And it was working because in the future he will be the end of you. A slow, slow poison, he controlled the kiss despite the way his tongue slid against yours was clumsy but so perfect.
You kissed him back to the best of your abilities, wondering briefly if you tasted like the pastry you had in the morning. You let him take your bottom lip between his teeth to suck and bite however he wants. Your hands find his buzz cut instead of his golden curls and a whine leaves your lips from the frustration of the loss.
Your hand is on his nape and another is still on his cheek as neither of you breaks the kiss. It didn't matter that you were getting lightheaded. It didn't matter that you could feel your heartbeat increasing due to lack of oxygen. He was everything, you would be damned if you broke the kiss.
You gasp as the kiss is broken. You stare into his eyes, searching for something, anything. But you find nothing but ice blue. It sent chills down your spine but at least he had calmed down now. “Feeling better?” You asked and you got a rough nod as a reply.
“Come on, we have work to do,” he whispered as he pulled back. His dog tag dangles as he begins to walk towards the cabin again, navigating the path with his father's compass.
You find the cabin and the guns. Coriolanus looks at you waiting for a protest, disgust, expecting you to run away just like Lucy Gray. You didn't do anything except sigh, your shoulder wearing down as you realized the truth of it all. You didn't say a word but your hand finds his. He doesn't say anything either but squeezes your hand back. An unspoken promise. He had chosen you. You had chosen him. You were in this together now.
There's no going back.
Both of you row the boat and let the guns sink into the river, never to be found again. You find your way back to the cabin, the rain pouring down again. You sit beside Snow- no, no, still Coryo. Always Coryo. Your head on his shoulder, your knees pressed to your chest as you hear the tip tap of rain outside.
Not a single sound is made. But as time passes and the rain doesn't stop, you begin to crave his lips again. As if that one kiss was morphine, and you needed more to heal the ache of your soul. “Coriolanus,” you whispered.
“Coryo,” he reprimanded softly, his tone enticing as if he was trying to bewitch. You feel your palms sweat as embarrassment begins to nag your mind. You blurt it out before you can think about how pathetic you sound.
“Can I have another kiss, Coryo?”
The next few moments were a blur. Lips on lips. Clumsily tongues meeting each other and whining into each other's mouths. You were shamelessly grinding on Coryo's lap as your lips continued to stay locked with his. “I want you so bad,” you admit as you feel his cock harden underneath you.
“Since the academy,” you whispered against his lips, a moan escaping your lips when he held your hips and began to guide them to grind on his completely hard bulge.
“Oh, yeah?” He mocks, “It's pretty fucking obvious.” He choked off a groan coming out of his mouth, “You're willing to let go of the fact that I am a murderer, huh?” You let out a whimper as he mentioned that. But both of you knew the answer to that, a part of you knew what kind of predator he was. Ever since you knew about how he killed a tribute, you just called it. It never mattered to you how horrible he could be or in this case, is.
“Yes, yes,” you moan into his mouth. Was it an answer or a mere whine about how perfect the friction felt against your pantie-soaked pussy? You didn't know but Coriolanus thought of it as the former. “You gonna be my girl, then? A capitol princess being a peacekeepers’ doll to fuck,” he whispered, his tongue licking a strip of skin on your neck.
You moan as his teeth begin to harshly assault your skin, covering your neck with marks. “Yes,” you gasp, “as long as it's you.” God, how much more pathetic could you be? But it didn't matter, it got him higher and fed his ego after everything that had happened. He loved it and perhaps, he could grow to love you.
Not in the way, Coryo loved Lucy Gray but in the way Snow would love his First Lady.
Your hands tug off his wet t-shirt and throw it on the floor. His hands do the same with your peacekeeper's uniform. He grabs your hips, squeezing the plump of flesh there, his mouth panting into you and he looks at you with dilated eyes.
Time seems to have slowed down as you touch his dog tag, your fingers tracing the name carved into the metal. “I want this. You, right now, right here,” you whispered like it was the biggest secret of your life. “Do you?” You ask as your hands go lower to fiddle with the zipper of his pants.
He doesn't give you a verbal answer, only pulling you into another kiss with his fingers woven into your hair in a fist as his free hand goes down below to free his cock from the confines of his trousers.
You grip his length, stroking it and squeezing out pearly pre-cum from the tip. You savor the deep groan that leaves his lips. “Fuck… just like that, doll,” he instructed and you obey. Your strokes get faster and his pre becomes natural lube as you continue. He lets out a hiss when you twist your wrist and his hand snares around your wrist. “Wanna cum in your cunt first,” he said, breathless from the ecstasy of having your hands on him.
Within moments the remaining clothes on both of you were scattered around the cabin. You moan into his mouth, your fingers desperately clawing at his shoulders as you begin to grind your soaking wet pussy against his hard cock. You gasp, elated by how your folds pressed against his length, his cockhead being teased by your slit but unable to breach the threshold.
The kisses you shared with him were sloppy. Saliva coating his chin as neither of you was willing to separate your lips for a single unnecessary moment. You knew your lips would hurt by the end of this, that they were swollen and the inside of it bleeding because of how insistently his teeth loved to bite your lower lip. He was no better either. You tasted more blood from the kisses now than anything, and it didn't matter to you because somehow the salty, rusty taste felt like just him.
You let out a sound unfitting of a Capitol-raised woman when his cockhead slips inside your gummy walls. His tip now profusely leaks pre-cum inside your gummy walls. You pulled back, biting your lower lip to stop the whimper as you feel his cockhead stretching out your virgin walls.
“That's it, dove,” he lets out, all needy and heated. His hands squeeze your hips to be encouraging as you let yourself down on his cock slowly. “Take it all in. You can do it, doll,” he whispered, as his eyes were down looking at his length entering you, being surrounded by the wicked, addicting warmth of your tight cunt.
“I can?” You let out a whine, as the pain bleeds into the pleasure, the ratio of it throwing you off the dizzy full lust. He hums in encouragement as you finally fill yourself with his dick to the hilt. Your slick walls pulsate around his length.
“Atta girl,” he smiles at you, his eyes brightening up from how well you took him and without any complaints whatsoever. “That's a good slut,” he whispered and smirked when he felt your walls clench around him deliciously.
You tried to move your hips but gave up when the burn made your eyes water. He coos at you encouragingly, telling you to adjust to his girth first. He wasn't going to rut into you like a dog, you're a Capitol girl, not a district whore. He wasn't going to disrespect you like that, no matter how much he wanted you to begin rolling your hips.
So your lips latch onto his neck, while your arms are around him and your legs around his waist. You were clinging to him, as if afraid that if you ease up in your grip he will fade away from your life, from this moment and your reality together. The smell of sex and sweat begins to become stronger than the smell of gunpowder as you continue to give him hickeys in various places on his skin.
Coriolanus doesn't complain that you're marking him like this, not when he's doing the same task with his tongue tracing the love bites his teeth left. And you suspect he rather enjoys when you bite, as his cock twitches whenever your teeth dig into his flesh as if you're eating and your wet tongue licks over the bite as if you're tasting the flavor of his skin.
When you're finally comfortable with his cock being inside the most intimate part of you. You slowly but surely begin to make small, shallow thrusts that have you gasping, your eyes rolling back with how good it feels already because he was fucking into your g-spot with every roll of your hips. The thrusts were teasing, it had him groaning praises of you being a good girl and his hold tightening over your hips, surely leaving bruises.
You begin to relish the feeling of being stuffed, his cockhead kissing your cervix when you get the angle just right. Your folds coat him with your creamy juices, a ring of white forming on his base with how wet you were. Slowly but surely the pleasure begins to build up, your nails digging into his shoulders as you start to put up force with the way you rock back and forth on his cock.
You pant into his mouth, your lips letting out sharp moans when his dick strokes your walls just right. He lets you control the pace, his mouth busy latching onto your nipple to suck. His tongue swirls around the bud, hardening it inside his mouth and he nips your nipple just to have you jolt from the bite and squeeze down on his cock.
One of his hands now kneads the other breast he wasn't giving much attention to, his fingers rolling the nipple, pinching the bud, and playing with it. His other hand goes between your bodies and finds your clit. You soon realize he was working with a pattern that was driving you insane, turning your cunt into a hotter slicker mess.
When he swirled his tongue around your nipple, his fingers did roll the other bud. Meanwhile, his thumb would drive small, rapid circles onto your swollen bundle of nerves. When he bit into your nipple, his fingers pinched your clit making you gasp with thunderous pleasure filling your veins.
He continues at this and tension begins to build up in your tummy. You close your eyes as animalistic instincts begin to take over your body. The need to cum overrides everything else as you begin to roll your hips faster and harder. Desperate to cum around his cock for the first time of many times in your life. He feels the same way because he encourages you with his hips bucking into you, thrusting perfectly inside of your slick walls.
“So close, Coryo!” You moan, your nails leaving red lines in their path on his shoulders. He latches off your breasts to whisper, “Cum then, my slut. Let me feel you milk my cock like a good cockwhore would.” You let out a louder moan at his words. His condescending tone snaps the tension that had formed in your tummy, you begin to cum.
Your pussy spasming around his cock, triggering his orgasm. He empties his balls inside of you without any hesitation, filling you up with his thick, hot cum. “That's a good girl. Look how well you took me. Look at the cum leaking out, dove,” his tone teasing, like many times he has teased in classes but the context of this was entirely different.
You look down, your pussy clenching around his cock again when you see his seed ooze out of you. Your body slumps into him, tired from all of this. Both mentally and physically. The storm was still going on. You lay in his arms, his cum now coating the insides of your thighs.
“You're smarter than Lucy Gray,” he said, “I pray you know better than to run. I won't miss the next time.”
You shake your head, trying to hide the smile forming on your face. Others would have run from his words, anyone sane would. Lucy Gray did after all. But you were just you.
“If I wanted to run, I wouldn't have found you in the first place,” you whispered, sealing your words with a soft kiss on his lips.
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solbaby7 · 3 months
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I love your work, and I’ve been creeping on your master list and it’s so good 😭❤️❤️❤️… pls do one with Azriel and AFAB reader who finds out first that they’re true mates but says nothing at all, too scared that he’ll reject her cause he’s in love with Elain and she witnesses the whole necklace gifting/almost kiss between them and runs away, tries to avoid both of them for days and gets sick or injured or something and that’s when Az realizes it too and smut ensues 🫶😭❤️
Since You Have A Lover
pairing : azriel x afab!reader
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warnings: angst babe, torture too (oops👀🤣), not proofread, swearing, probs typos, mild smut at the end, testing out the longer fics and then we’re gonna figure out if longer or shorter is better 🫣
thank you for the request bean! i switched it up a little to add some much needed angst but i’m so happy you’ve been enjoying 💗💗
oh and…educate a girl. wtf is afab?👀 respectfully ofc
Deep breaths and a lowered gaze is how you make it through family dinners as your stomach lurches uncomfortably.
The feeling never got easier, even after months of enduring the debilitating emotions that ensued from watching your mate love another.
It’s instinctual to be jealous—to compare yourself to Elain when Azriel refused to tear his eyes away. He was supposed to be your equal and yet the longer dinner went on with overhearing their hushed conversation and not-so-sneaky touches under the table; you felt anything but suitable in comparison.
Drowning those thoughts is surprisingly easy, a plethora of wine bottles are scattered about the table and not a single person bats an eye when you snatch one up for yourself. They’re too caught up in each other to realize you’ve slipped away; abandoning the suffocating love that permeated from every direction besides your own.
Fresh air helps a little, the stolen bottle of wine aiding in keeping you warm from the unforgiving nighttime chill. Eventually the cool bite doesn’t send shivers down your spine and you barely even flinch when bare skin meets cold stone, your gaze dipping down to lively town below.
Time moves too quickly as the observer, seconds bleeding into minutes until hours have passed and the bottle has nothing left to offer. There’s a brief moment where your foggy brain contemplates the effort it would take to retrieve another when your solitude is broken.
Two bodies burst through the balcony doors on the furthest side, mostly concealed by trees and flowers but you’d recognize those wings anywhere. A hand smacks over your mouth to conceal any sound, body freezing in place as you witness Azriel press Elain into the wall, his hands cradling the sides of her face lovingly.
A part of you shatters when you catch that sparkle in his eye, the eagerness in his movement to have her closer until her cheeks go flush and thick lashes flutter closed in preparation for the sweet kiss Azriel is sure to grant her.
You’re unable to stomach another moment and neither of them even flinch when you shuffle from your spot and make a bee-line for the exit. Tears cloud your vision, shoulders shaking and steps unsteady as you all but run through the halls, darting up the stairs and colliding right into another body. “Oh,” The startled sound is all but whimpered out of you and red eyes and splotchy cheeks are the first thing Nesta sees as you look up. “Gods, I’m sorry.” You scramble to your feet, retrieving the book she’d dropped in the collision. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t watching here I was going.”
“That’s not like you.”
A weak smile quirks at the corner of your mouth, unbound hair in unruly strands down your shoulders. “I’m not quite myself at the moment.”
Nesta hums in response, slender arms crossing over her chest and the fabrics of her nightgown shifts with the motion. Her gaze is scrutinizing, picking apart the truth from the lies and you’re infinitely grateful that she doesn’t call you out on your state of disarray. “Want me to walk you to your room?”
“No.” You whisper, hastily wiping your cheeks and attempting to smooth down stray hairs and wrinkled silks. “No, I think I’m going to go for a walk instead. I could use the fresh air.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
Nesta's neck cranes, slowly turning on the balls of her feet as you swiftly slip past her and make way for your chambers. Perhaps, it's the defeated slump of your shoulders that catches Lady Death's attention; that emptiness in your eyes that couldn't even be filled by the overflowing tears that stained your cheeks.
She considers waking Cassian--he always was better equipped to handle the emotions of others but you're already gone, disappearing behind the door without even saying goodnight. Something about the interaction forces her to linger, smutty book long forgotten as she waits to see you creep out that same room ten minutes later.
You're dressed to better accommodate the weather now. Thick leathers insulating body heat while subconsciously providing much needed compression--the tight fabric mimics comfort in its attempt to hold together the broken bits of you shoved inside.
Nesta's lips part, a million possible words resting at the tip of her tongue but you're quick to intercept, tone numb and alarmingly empty. "Don't wait up."
--
Being alone was supposed to be relaxing.
Distracting, at the very least.
But, all you could feel was the cool prickle of awareness at the back of your neck the whole time you sat at the edge of the mountains that overlooked the Sidra. Each time you'd slow your breathing and attempt to regulate the unusual beat of your heart with the captivating view of Velaris at night. While most were inside, the homes that resided there were full of life; lights glowing golden through their windows, laughs ebbing through the woodwork and creating a sense of serenity that refuses to wash over you as well.
Eyes narrow, shoulders squaring and fingers twitch for the sharp daggers strapped to your thighs. The thick trees you’d come through seems far less attractive now, branches craning out like grabbing hands with gaps of murky darkness that resembled giant mouths waiting to swallow you up. “Nesta?”
The chuckle that breaks through the clearing is anything but feminine. “Not quite.”
It happens too fast--the hand that smacks over your mouth to mute the startled scream that rips free. You push against the solid wall of a body stationed behind you, attempting to sway his stability in order to break free but a sharp sting in your neck renders you still.
The burn that follows is instant and before you can stop it, the unforgiving darkness becomes all you know.
--
The palpable tension at breakfast is suffocating.
Azriel's seething brood casts angsty shadows along his strong build, creating a visible wall between himself and his High Lord after the stern conversation he was forced into the night before. It runs on repeat in the shadow singers mind, the order given to back off on his affections towards the middle Archeron sister.
It seems cruel. A sick form of punishment that Azriel can't quite wrap his mind around because who was really in charge of the tragectory of his life? Azriel ? Or his High Lord?
The mere thought has his teeth grinding in silent contempt, his gaze flickering around the table before landing on the bare spot directly across from him. His brows furrow, confusion briefly sweeping away the rage as he considers the time--your usual schedule and the words leave his mouth before he can stop them. "Where is she?"
A brief pause, the casual conversation slowing to a halt until Azriel catches a glimpse of something on Nesta's face--a strain of guilt he'd seen a million times on a trillion different faces. "Left earlier this morning." Polished silverware scrapes at fine china, pushing aside food that her body refuses to indulge in. "Said she was going for a walk."
Discontentment settles into Azriel's bones--a feeling he struggles to understand and Nesta's answer only exasperates the unsteady sensation.
"In this weather?" Grey clouds are thick in the sky, shades of slate and granite completely masking the sun as relentless rains pour down from above. "When was this?"
"Around three."
Cassian swears lowly from beside his mate, a sturdy hand resting at her shoulders but the regret lacing his features speaks plenty about the decision to stay quiet for so long. It was too dangerous, especially after the last few meetings Rhys had with Kier in Hewn. Change took time and the Steward and his men were complaining about that change taking too long. Hateful words were thrown in the name of the people of Hewn City and how they had desires too; dreams of a better world for themselves and their children but the High Lord’s better judgement rose question to the other consequences that could arise from giving what they were asking for. "Ness that was nearly eight hours ago."
The screech of Azriel's chair draws attention, a sudden boost of fuel being injected in his veins. "Did she tell you where she was going exactly?"
Nesta’s tone turns into vitriol, a subconscious reaction to the guilt that gnawed at her bones for not seeking for you sooner after finding you in your state. The reminder of tears streaming down your face flashes behind her eyelids; the choppiness of your words through labored breathing. How desperately you’d attempted to wrangle it together just long enough to make it to your room and suddenly the eldest Archeron feels that familiar uselessness creep beneath her skin. “She didn’t leave me a map with a drawn out route—she just said she needed air.”
“While crying?” It wasn’t intentional, Rhysand seeing the flash of memory that Nesta had unknowingly projected; her mental walls caving for just a fraction of a minute before the iron doors had regained their formidable security. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Silverware clatters against the table, staining table linen in strawberry jam but no one seems to give a shit when the severity of the situation behinds to settle over the room. Nesta runs a hand against the material of her dress, smoothening out wrinkles and creases in order to avoid all of the eyes settling over her face. “I was just going to the library to read and we bumped into each other. She came from the balcony—I offered to walk her to her room but she just…” A sigh pulls free, jaw setting tightly. “I let her go.”
“Nesta.” Feyre’s slow shake of her head holds enough disappointment to have Nesta’s shoulders squaring on the defensive.
“I’m not some evil bitch, I waited up!” She seethes, the beginnings of those silver flames lapping at the steely grey of her eyes but the fight within isn’t truly directed towards Feyre or anyone else but herself. Because she’d felt the exact moment that you walked from the doors and winnowed away, that she’d made a grave mistake. Nesta’s shoulders sag, fingers bunching unforgivingly into the inky linen cloth until she felt the tips of her nails digging into the polished mahogany underneath. “I waited.”
Azriel’s already out of the room without a word.
He didn’t have a right to shame her because Azriel had a feeling he knew what sent you running.
His teeth grind together when thinking back to the night before when he and Elain had scuffled off onto the balcony at the witching hour; hoping their sins would be shielded by the dark cast of night. Too caught up in one another to consider another already occupying the space.
And, no matter how many times Azriel brushed his fingertips over the soft curve of Elain’s cheeks or vyed for a fleeting touch when passing in the hallways—the kiss he thought he wanted lacked the spark he was sure would flicker to life when lips grazed.
He’d pulled away so abruptly, brows furrowing in a stark line discontentment that was visible to anyone with eyes and then he heard the broken whimper of a gasp.
It’s been too easy to pass it off as Elain and far easier for him to forget about it altogether after Rhysand had found an embarrassed Elain rushing back to her room with flushed cheeks and an unsteady gait. He’d never heard his brother shout so loud, the veins in his neck protruding as he ordered Azriel to never even look her way again. That if a quick fuck in the dead of the night was what he desired then Azriel should wander along the cobblestone streets of Velaris and find himself a suitable pleasure house and pay for it.
The words act as fuel, Azriel’s senses working on overdrive; shadows scrying for information faster than ever before until they’d returned with something he could work with.
Dropped neatly in his palms were the cool steel of your twin blades that never left the secure holsters forever strapped to your thighs.
And they were soaked in your blood.
You recognized the suffocating dank smell that tended to fester when stuffed so far beneath the earth—the perfect dungeon.
One you’d been in countless times before, wearing that shadowy mask of indifference when masquerading as the soulless monster that became necessary to survive while in Hewn City. It took decades of assistance by Azriel’s side; an apprentice of sorts when the bounds of your affections had just begun testing its limits—wondering to see just how far you’d go just to be near him.
To get him to notice you. Your mate. Yours. Yours.
All of that seems so foolish now. Insignificant compared to the dire situation you’d found yourself entangled in.
Sharp twinges of pain throb up your neck, aches settling in from the uncomfortable position and it’s a strain when you shift in attempts to take in your surroundings. Fear lurches in your chest when your hands don’t move, restrained by chains that had you hung up like a prized hog after a fresh hunt.
Not good. Not good. Not good. So, not good.
“I always did love that look.” Immediately your spine goes ramrod straight, fingers clenching into fists over the cool bite of the chains as that voice washed over you like a bucket of water. Refreshing on your own terms and a horrible wake up call when it wasn’t. “When panic shifts into realization—truly a sight worth capturing. Especially when attached to such a delicate disposition.”
Delicate?
You’d never once used that word in ordinance to yourself.
Hearing it now, under such circumstances makes your heart lurch, it’s beat untamed against your ribcage and it takes every bit of strength left to smooth that look of utter calm across your features. “Come a little closer, let me show you how sweet I can get.”
The underlying threat is easily palpable and Kier is wise not to follow the bait; aware of the wounded animals ability to put up a considerable fight and he’s too coward to brawl fairly. “As tempting as that is, it won’t be me who plays with you tonight.” Your teeth bare into a snarl, pure promise rumbling from your chest and the sound encourages a chuckle from the male.
He’s not close enough to injure; to swing the brunt of your weight around for a well-timed kick that you knew would disable long enough to figure a way out of these damn restraints. But even with the distance between you, the resemblance between this male and Mor was striking. She’d inherited the shape of his lips, even if the words she spoke were far sweeter than the shit spewed from her predecessor. More similarities are spotted during your scrutinizing evaluation of him; the line of his nose, the shade of his hair, the confident air that oozed from his form—no matter how misplaced it was.
“I’ll kill anyone who dares lay a finger on me.”
“So much fight in you,” Kier all but croons, his eyes raking across your body in a way that was less than savory. “I can’t wait to see how long it lasts.”
Breathe.
Years of training beside the spymaster had prepared you for this very moment and it’s easier to drift back into the memory of just another session; before things had gotten so complicated and he’d just been a friend eager to teach if you were willing to learn. Countless times you’d been in a similar situation—you, waking up tied up to some chair with ropes securing every possible joint in place and Azriel would leave you there as long as it took for you to figure your way out of it.
Allow the thrum of your heart be the beat that keeps you focused.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
Relax and take in your surroundings. Notice things no one else thinks is important because that could be the one thing that keeps you from an untimely death.
The cell wasn’t very large, four stone walls covered in grime and mildew with just enough space for two grown men to fit semi-comfortably. No windows. One door with a thin slot at the top large enough for two eyes to peer inside. No fire. No light. No warmth. No breeze, just stale, dank air that tasted of iron when your breathed in too deep.
Just stay alive long enough to get help.
“What do you want from me?”
Kier inhales a greedy breath, his chest expanding in the ornate armor worn. It glistens even with no light—proving that even with his privileged title, he was never the one who got his hands dirty. “Many things,” He finally confessed, the words airy and nonchalant. He’s too cocky. Too comfortable. “But first, I want you to tell me about the Cursebreakers sisters.” He dares a step closer, arms crossed casually behind his back as a dark look begins to worm its way into his eye. “I want you to tell me everything you know about the Made ones and the power they stole from the Cauldron.”
Breathe. Focus on your heart beat. Stay alive.
Breathe. Focus on your heart beat. Stay alive.
Breathe. Focus on your heart beat. Stay alive.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A smile works its way across his face—one so familiar it taints good memories with its stain. “I hoped you’d say that.” Kier walks past, the smell of his cologne burning your nostrils and you couldn’t imagine ever smelling tobacco and ash, bergamot and oakmoss without gagging ever again.
One knock on the thick steel door and slender male with hair like soot and eyes like a raven enters.
Your face remains a blank slate. Even as you take in the rubber material of his apron and the sturdy material of his leather boots. Well used gloves cover his hands and tucked under his left arm is a rawhide holder filled to the brim with all kinds of terrifying treats.
Breathe. Focus on your heart beat. Stay alive.
“Who are you?”
He takes his sweet time answering. Making a show of neatly setting down the holder and undoing the braided leather straps holding it in place. “You can call me the Butcher—everyone else does.”
“How original.” A thick swallow to quell the nerves; to shove away the shake that threatened to disturb your carefully curated cadence. The chains rattle as you shift, the tips of your toes just barely skimming the cool ground beneath you but not quite enough to relieve your wrists of the burden of bearing the entirety of your weight. “Well, Butcher—come make yourself useful and loosen my chains, will you? It’s starting to chafe a bit.”
His head shakes in his denial, barely acknowledging the departing Steward and the heavy thud of the shutting door—a lock sliding into place. “You don’t really want me to do that.” For donning such a threatening title, the Butcher is deceivingly soft-spoken. It sends your nerves into a fritz, triggering your fight or flight and for the first time since your eyes had opened and the darkness had waned; that delicately woven web of control slips from your grasp. “If you’re as stubborn as I think you are,” The sharp ring of metal twangs through the air and in his grasp is a perfectly polished knife a little too curved to be considered a scalpel. “You’ll need something to hold onto. It helps with the pain…for a time.”
Breathe.
“Then let’s just get this over with, shall we?”
Butcher chuckles low under his breath, full lips concealed by an ever fuller beard—the only thing about him that wasn’t perfectly trim and proper. “Not a fan of foreplay?”
Fingers curl around the cool bite of thick chains, your chest rising and falling in a steady pattern as you began to dissociate. An attempt to keep your mind as protected as possible from whatever was to come. “I’m more of a rip-the-bandaid kind of girl.”
Death clings to the pristinely polished rubber of his apron, the creak of his gloves filling the space as worn fingers ready around the hilt of his weapon. “You know,” Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Disappear off into that numb place deep, deep within your mind. Ignore the bite of the blade poking around already sensitive wounds. “Under entirely different circumstances, I think I might’ve actually liked you.”
The switch flips so fast—too fast for you to catch but it’s impossible to miss the devastating burn that ripples through you as flesh is severed, muscle flayed and so, so much blood spilled.
It’s hard to keep track of how much time passes down here without access to windows and you’re certain that it’s intentional, aiding in the psychological aspect of their torture.
Relax and take in your surroundings. Notice things no one else thinks is important because that could be the one thing that keeps you from an untimely death.
The masculine baritone of Azriel’s teachings repeated like a mantra in your mind until it becomes the only thing distracting you from the sound of your flesh tearing, your blood drip, drip, dripping a misshapen puddle beneath you.
You force yourself to keep conscious, mentally noting anything your eyes are able to latch onto. Insignificant things; ebony hair, umber skin, a brand burned into the middle of Butcher’s left wrist in a symbol half-obscured by his gloves.
There’s a block on your powers, not quite faebane in its most lethal dose but paired with the wards humming against the walls, you knew using magic wouldn’t be an option for you. “Tell me about the Made ones and I can stop.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Just stay alive long enough to get help.
“You live there with them,” Butcher goads, crooked teeth exposed when gritted into that grimace of a sneer. Leather creaks under the playful twist of his wrist, the sharpened blade carving at muscle and obliterating sinew until you swear it reaches bone. “You share drink and food, you fight beside them in battle and you expect us to believe that secrets aren’t shared as well?” Every breath is ragged, a sheen of sweat coating your skin and unruly hair sticks to the curve of your neck. “Tell me what you know before I decide to get a little more creative in my methods.”
“Even if I did know anything, why the hell would I tell you? What would Hewn scum do with such knowledge?”
Your words have nicked a nerve, robbing the Butcher of that soft-spoken charm and replacing it with something more sinister. “You say the same thing to that bastard Illyrian you’re always seen around?”
A brow quirks, furrowing ever so slightly as it became more and more apparent that this was more than some spur of the moment kidnapping. Their questions, the desire to keep you immobile and battered but not enough to render you unconscious—not enough to be fatal. For whatever reason, they needed you alive and judging by the desperation that claws its way to the edges of Butchers voice, his curses and demands falling on deaf ears as your mind runs on overdrive to accumulate all the information you could before it was too late.
Each breath grows more labored, lashes fluttery and thick with exhaustion but just when it feel like too much—when you feel like giving up and succumbing to the sweet oblivion.
The rake of talons brushes against your mental walls. A cautious prod, testing your durability and utter relief washes over you when that feline lilt floods your consciousness. “We’re coming, just stay awake.”
The syllables barely reach your ears, sound faded by the obnoxious ringing that refused to subside—a side affect from all the fucking screaming and shouting. Swears slurring together the longer you snapped at the male before you, knees jerking and wounds barking in agony when the heel of your foot smashes so hard into his nose, his skull caves in; limp body dropping to the floor with a thud.
It’s all the strength you have in you and the death-grip you have around the chains is released all at once. Time moves in slow motion as you dangle there, vision darkening at the edges and that thrum of your heartbeat loud enough to distract you anymore. “Rhys they want— they want…”
So much blood oozes from your wounds, drenching your leathers all the way through and you were definitely feeling the affects. Your vision blurs, lids going lazy with just enough time to hear that voice—Azriel’s voice bellowing your name. “Stay alive.” He mutters over and over and over when he’s finally reached you, adrenaline pumping so high that he breaks the chains from their bolt with nothing more than his bare hands. “Do you hear me? Don’t you dare fucking die on me.”
You swear you try to obey the command, desiring nothing more than to keep Azriel's attention after finally being front and center in it. But it just felt so safe held in his grasp, tucked so close to his chest while he rids you of your restraints and applies pressure to gaping wounds.
All you wanted was one second. If you closed your eyes just for a second to gather your wits then you'd wake up and everything would be okay.
It sounds like a good idea-- so good that you allow the peace to wash over you like a cool tide washing over the shore in the early days of the burning summer; ignoring the desperate shouts from a vignette of voices that fades in the background like the haunting final notes of a song.
Confusion crashes at you in unforgiving waves, memories --or were they dreams?-- flash behind your lids with each blink. A dull throb pounds behind your lids, aggravating your mental shields to the point where you feel them wobble with each breath.
"You should stay still." Azriel's saying without giving you time to clear through the dense fog plaguing your mind. Instead, he busies his hands with fussing over your blankets, carefully tucking bare toes and pressing a five finger grip on your sternum when you attempt to rise from the soft cushion of a mattress that certainly did not belong to you. "It took Madja a while to get you all stitched up. Are you in pain? She left ointments and a few tinctures."
He's graceful enough not to mention the owlish blink of your eyes and their befuddled examination of his room until the crackly rasp of your voice cuts through the space; both of you refusing to address the elephant in the room. "My head hurts a little."
"Yeah," Shadows fuss with warm rags, sweeping it over your forehead and dabbing it along your cheeks while others occupy themselves with filling a glass of water to offer. "Rhys will be by later to apologize for that, I'm sure."
Your brows furrow deeply, nose scrunching when you sip your water. "Apologize for what?"
"You were in distress. We thought you were going to--" Azriel abruptly cuts himself off, fingers curling into fists at his sides. "Rhys went in your mind, said that before you'd gone unconscious that you were trying to tell him something that seemed urgent enough to bypass the usual request to wait for permission."
Your heart begins to pick up speed in your chest and suddenly the desire to rise from this bed and run away was becoming horribly intense. Legs shift under the weight of a duvet that didn't belong to you, attempting to hide the way your sore muscles sink into the overwhelming scent of night-chilled mist. "Okay...and what did he see?"
"He saw you get taken," Azriel turns his back to you, expertly avoiding your eyes but the nervous energy buzzing off his skin was unmistakable. "He watched them carve you up and torture you for information about Nesta and Elain." The stabilizing breath he takes shakes his shoulders, the strong line of muscle barely concealed by the tight stretch of his leathers--leathers still stained in the blood of those who'd spilled yours, no doubt. "Rhys said that you didn't say a word. You didn't give them a thing."
"That's good, right?" A pillow is fluffed behind you, shadows doting on every need. "Then, why do you sound so upset?"
"Why do I sound so upset?" Azriel cruelly mocks, his aurate gaze positively smoldering with rage when they land on you. "Because, you almost died! You almost died in my fucking arms before I ever got the chance to—. What the hell were you thinking?"
The beating you'd endured does nothing to quell your fiery spirit, eyes lighting with life and lips running a mile a minute—too fast for your logical brain to keep up with. "I was thinking that they wanted information on your precious, little girlfriend." You all but spit out, childishly pushing away the comfort the duvet from your legs as you attempt to shuffle from Azriel's bed without disturbing the tight wrap of your bandages. Why the hell were you in here anyway? "I was thinking that maybe, it'd be easier for them to fucking butcher me rather than watch what would happen to you if it were Elain there in my place."
Silence stretches along the hardwood floor, cloaking up the length of the walls and muting out the low crackle of the fireplace; its flame gentle and calm in the midst of an emotional storm. "I almost wish you would've let it be her." Azriel fills the void, finally mustering up the courage to face you. "I could've survived that and whatever consequences came along with it because my mate takes precedence above all."
Just like that, all the spitfire you’d prepared in retaliation absolutely dissipates after hearing those two words. “Your mate.”
Azriel doesn’t confirm with words. Instead, he searches inside for the humming gold thread wrapped taut around his ribs, just above his heart and pulls. Fucking yanking at it with all his might and something sparkles in his eye when your body jerks in retaliation.
“You know?”
“How long have you known?”
Your heartbeat hammers against your ribcage, threatening to carve out a hole if that’s what it took to get to its other half. “A while.”
“And you’ve said nothing.” He says, tone sounding almost defeated. “Why wouldn’t you have said anything?”
“Because, Az,” The shadows have seized their tireless caretaking, sliding back into place beside their master as you lose the ability to accept the tender affection. “You wouldn’t have chosen me. Not before Mor and certainly not before Elain.” You’re quick to bristle over that part, not leaving any room for the spymaster to interrupt no matter how expressive his face became. “Besides, the bond is a choice not a burden and that’s what it would’ve been for you if I spoke up about it.” Pure determination is what allows you to bear the brunt of your weight , willing yourself to appear strong in the face of the male who could render you to cinders if he so pleased. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d really like to shower the dungeon smell off of me.”
A childish whine of a noise is ripped from your throat when Azriel huffs out a breath, murmuring something about you being stubborn as hell before carefully picking you up and carrying you to the bathroom. It's embarrassing, a furious blush burning at the apples of your cheeks as he starts the shower, adjusts the temperature and slowly sets you down. "Thank you for that but you don't have to do this. I can handle cleaning myself."
"You can barely stand on solid ground on your own."
"I'll manage."
"I know. What I'm saying is that you don't have to." You nearly faint on the spot when Azriel crouches down in front of you, his hands shaky but sure when unlatching the difficult ties of your fighting leathers. His teeth grit together when the fabric is loosened and carefully worked down your thighs, over your knees and tugged away from your ankles. "Just let me help."
Azriel is nothing short of respectful, you notice. He doesn't sneak salacious peeks at the endless expanse of bare skin that he exposes. Doesn't once mention the tremble of your breath or the way your fingers seem to bite into the flesh of his arms whenever a new article of clothing is removed and dropped to the floor. Even after he's eased you into the shower stream; standing before him, perfectly presented on a soaking wet platter—he keeps his eyes trained on your face.
Shadows thicken over sensual bits, providing a shield between you and the male diligently applying soap to rag. Each drag of the slightly rough material against your skin releases a tension you hadn’t noticed you’d been carrying and all you can do is watch as he rids your skin of the thick film left behind when magic was used to clear away muck.
Eons must past before words are spoken, a this time Azriel is more intentional when he chooses them--more intimate when he relays them. "I'd always hoped for a mate. Ever since I was a boy and my mother told me stories about two halves scouring the world to finally become whole again." You're malleable under his care, pliant when he lifts your arms to scrub underneath and damn-near boneless when he turns you with slippery hands to slowly work the knots from your back. "I had always hoped that one day, I too, would find my equal." Azriel clears his throat, returning back from whatever memory he'd been sucked into but the massage doesn't stop; it only drags lower. "Then so much time had passed and I started to wonder if I couldn't find them because I wasn't being forward enough but that only lead to misplaced affections and unfulfillment."
"Azriel, I'm not sure if I really understand--"
"I felt something for you—something stronger than friendship but I pushed it away. I ignored it and looked elsewhere because I can bare not being as close with Mor and it’s as easy as breathing to never see Elain again but losing you—ruining the peace I feel when I’m with you would’ve broken me.”
Tears well in your eyes, a thickness welling in the back of your throat and your skin burns where his fingers touch, lingering near the dip of your back and just barely curling around the curve of your hips. “Az, you don’t have to say any of this to make me feel better. I just wanted you to be happy. I want you to be happy.”
“Then, please don’t reject it.” His warmth ripples over every inch of you, your neck craning to make room for the forehead he helplessly drops in the crux of your shoulder. The perfect line of his nose drags along the curve of it, inhaling the soothing notes of your scent mixed with his body wash. “Don’t reject me—this is all I’ve ever wanted.” Finally his fingers curl around your hips, the grip gentle but oh, so claiming. “Can’t you feel it? This rightness.”
Raw emotion swims in the amber tones of Azriel’s eyes when you turn in his arms; searching within those rich shades to find any detection of a lie.
Not one reaches your radar.
The line of your vision drops, creeping down his nose until it fixates on the plush pink of his lips. Instinct takes over, offering a gentle nudge until the space between two is eaten up and breath becomes shared as a line was about to be crossed—a prophecy fulfilled.
When Azriel’s lips finally brush against yours, it’s like a coil snaps, unleashing an animal he hadn’t known existed. Sure, he had plenty of experience with childish crushes and boyish infatuation. But this, Cauldron, it nearly takes his breath away with its intensity—the burning desire that rips through his veins like a forrest fire.
One kiss bleeds into two hands desperate to acquaint themselves with your body until all that mattered was you, your spymaster and the sentient shadows protectively surrounding you both. “Azriel,” You all but keen in his ear, chest heaving and hips rolling into the hardness of him pressed against you.
“Mate.”
A whimper cuts through your throat, neck craning to make space for the perfect bruises he was sucking into the skin there. “I want you.”
“You have me,” He promises over the frantic beat of your heart, tongue laving over the soft fat of your breasts. “Even when my bones are rotting in the dirt, I’ll belong to you. My mate. Mine.”
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bucks-babe · 5 months
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Change My Ways For You
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Pairing: College!Fuckboy!Bucky x college!fem!reader
Summary: One of the only girls in school that didn’t want Bucky Barnes was somehow the one he fell in love with
Warnings: Smut, fluff, reader doesn’t take any of Bucky’s shit, himbo!Bucky, Bucky being a fuckboy,a bit of forced proximity, small part where Bucky is fucking someone else (ew), pinning, Bucky proving himself to be a sweet boy, non consentual kissing, Bucky being tooth rottingly sweet, Bucky calling reader sweets sweetheart and sweetcheeks, Steve is a dick (sorry not sorry), PROTECTED p in v (they are responsible in this one), fingering, fluffy smut, dirty talk, cockwarming?, so much praise, talk about STDs, delayed aftercare, talk about no aftercare, Bucky learns about aftercare so all is good
Word Count: 14.6k This is a long one
A/N: Thank you to @buckys-wintersoldier for beta reading and helping with the direction; however, any and all mistakes are mine and mine alone. This fic is the most adorable and full of emotions. The angst, the fluff, the feelings and especially Bucky. The way they act around one another — it’s absolutely great and definitely a read worth it!
“I have to admit, some of your grades in this class are less than I expected. Some of you have excelled in my class, but there are quite a few students to which their performance, to put it nicely, has been subpar.” A few students in the room look around, trying to see who looks guilty of having shit grades. You couldn’t care less; you know your grades are great so it’s not your problem if someone else is failing. 
All you want to do is get out of class and go back to your dorm to sleep, having stayed up way too late to finish a research paper for a different class. Your professor walks back over to his desk and leans back on it, sighing and taking off his glasses to wipe them on his sweater. 
“Now, while I understand that this course is not for the faint of heart, I still expect all of you to put in effort, and based on these,” he holds up the essays that were due last week, “I can tell that some of you just don’t care. Not even mentioning those of you who didn’t turn in your paper.”
You hear a scoff a few rows behind you and you know it’s Bucky Barnes without having to turn your head. He is the resident fuckboy, not caring about school or his education, just going to parties and fucking every living thing in sight. Sometimes you think that the only reason he is even in college is to have the “college experience” of “being free and having a bit of fun.” 
He’s never turned your head, rather just been a thorn in your side three times a week when you go to class, always joking with his friends next to him or talking about his latest trist. You don’t want to hear about how loud a random girl screamed when she came on his cock. You were here to get your degree and finally move out of this shitty town you were stuck in.
Honestly, you doubt that Bucky was even giving anyone orgasms. In your experience, men who brag about how good they were in bed were nothing but a disappointment, giving you about 30 seconds of mediocre sex until they came inside a condom and rolled over only to ask you, “did you cum?” The answer was always no. You didn’t have the patience to stroke any man’s ego when they couldn’t even make you wet. 
Bucky did nothing but make you roll your eyes, annoyed by the absolute gall of himself. “Now, because I don’t want my class average to go down because of a few dumbasses, I have sent some of you an email to meet me in my office after hours in which I will pair you up with another student in hopes that it will give you a kick in the ass since I cannot be bothered to spend more time teaching you.” You like your professor, you really do. He was one of the chillest professors you’ve had, but a twinge of fear goes through you. You fucking hope that he doesn’t pick you to help another student, especially Bucky.
You hang on to the sliver of hope that he won’t pick you. He knows that you’re busy, right? Between work and school you don’t have any time to tutor anyone. The topic stays on your mind long after you leave class, delaying looking at your email just in case he picked you to help another student. 
As the hours went by, however, you knew that you had to check it. You cursed when your laptop had battery; if it didn’t, it would have given you an excuse to not show up if you were picked. Nonetheless, you opened your school email, only to find out that you had been picked and you needed to go down to your professors office in a half hour.
Getting dressed, you had the most intense scowl on your face. This was the last thing you needed added onto your plate. You only hoped that he would pair you up with someone who didn’t need that much help, but you were proven wrong when you walked in only to find Bucky sitting down looking like he would rather be anywhere else.
“Take a seat, please.” You huff and sit down, moving your body away from Bucky as much as you could. You didn’t really feel comfortable around him. He’s never done anything to you per say, but you’ve seen his shameless flirting and it makes you uneasy and never want to be on the receiving end of it.
You don’t pay attention to anything your professor says, something about helping Bucky over the next few months until he’s passing or fails out of the course. You’re too lost in thought to care. On top of everything you have going on, now you have to help the one person you can’t stand.
Your professor dismisses the both of you with instructions to meet at least twice a week to study together. Bucky walks out before you and you assume that he has sprinted away to go to another party given that it was late afternoon, but you find him right outside the door. 
“So, sweetcheeks, I guess you’re gonna be seeing a lot of me now.” His eyes run up and down your body, like this was the first time he’s seen you. It makes you shift and wrap your arms around your middle, trying to soothe yourself. Bucky clearly takes this the wrong way and thinks that you like his hungry eyes and steps closer to you. “How about I give you my number and we can meet up, ya know, to study? Or if you ever need something, I’m sure we can figure something out.”
You don’t want to give him your phone, thinking about where his hands have been. Ever since his step closer to you, you can smell the scent of sex on him. If you look closer at his beard you can see the glisten on it, most likely from some girl he ate out right before he came to the meeting. 
“Just tell me your number, James so we can get this over with. I don’t want to help you and you don’t want my help. Clearly you don’t give a shit about this class and you only want to get in my pants.” He raises his eyebrows at your tone, a little shocked that you spoke to him like that. Before he opens his mouth you continue, “I mean, look at you. You’re flirting with me when I can fucking see that someone’s pussy was on your face, and that makes you think that I want to have sex with you?”
He opens his mouth one more time but you aren’t finished, finally able to snap at him for all the times he’s pissed you off. “I’m not going to be one of the girls you add to your roster so you can get that idea out of your head right now. The only time I am going to interact with you is when I have to, okay? Now give me your number so I can go back to my dorm and fucking sleep.”
Bucky is shocked, not having anyone talk to him like that. It pisses him off that you rejected him. Everyone wanted a piece of him, but he has time to change your mind. He can’t lie, your sass was making his pants tighter, but he relents and gives you his number before you walk away while he watches your ass, palming his dick through his pants. 
He needs to relieve the pressure in his groin and he’s sure as hell you’re not going to help him and his hand is nowhere near good as a pussy, so he goes out to Steve’s party, knowing that he can get a girl in minutes.
“Fuck, yeah baby, that pussy feels so good wrapped around my cock. Shit, love that ass too, you gonna let me fuck it? Yeah, I bet you fucking would too.” Bucky doesn’t know how the two of them ended up in the bathroom, fucking each other’s brains out, but he’s not complaining. When she offered to get on her knees and suck his cock he pulled her into the nearest room, cumming on her face before pushing her into the mirror, smearing her makeup and his cum all over the mirror.
The slam of his hips was brutal, surely going to leave bruises on her hips but he didn’t care, as long as she wasn’t complaining, he would do whatever he wanted with her, fucking her like she was a slut. “Fuck, baby, gonna make me fucking cum. Pussy is so fucking tight.” He lets a groan out, close to cumming. 
 Usually he didn’t make much noise during sex other than dirty talk, only breathing heavily and groaning when he was about to cum, but he was always composed. Sex felt great, but he never felt the need to moan. He never understood why men would moan like a slut just over some pussy, and he doubted that he would ever embarrass himself like that during sex.
“Love the way that ass bounces, so fucking hot.” This was the way Bucky fucked - from behind watching the girl’s ass jiggle. He wasn’t one to fuck any other way. Bucky didn’t give a shit to watch her face or look into her eyes, he just wanted to cum as fast as possible so he could move on with the rest of his day. He thought missionary was quite possibly the most boring position ever created, not like he ever made it to a bed anyway.
“Shit, gonna take my cum, bitch? Yeah, you fucking are, just a little fucking cumdump for me, letting me fuck you in a dirty bathroom, too horny for my fat cock.” He was babbling, just wanting to cum so he could go back out to the party and have another drink, maybe even pick another girl up for later.
Bucky lets out a low groan, filling up the condom with his cum. Once his orgasm is finished, he pulls out, taking the rubber off and throwing it away. Pulling his pants back up, the girl turns around, clearly affronted. “I didn’t even cum, baby.” Her voice was high and annoying, making Bucky roll his eyes. 
“Sorry, but your pussy made me bust early.” He chuckles knowing damn well that it was a lie. He just couldn’t be bothered to make her cum. Why would he put in the extra work to make her cum when he was just having fun? If she wanted to cum so bad she could have handled it herself. He wasn’t stopping her from using her own hands. Bucky either ate a girl out until she came to get her nice and wet if he was feeling generous that day or left her to her own devices while he took his own pleasure from her body.
She blushes, “oh, thanks, that’s sweet of you.” Bucky just wants to get the fuck back to the party and she’s talking too fucking much. “Maybe we can do this again.”
He can hear how hopeful she is and he felt just a little bit bad so he decided to humor her. “Sure, Sherry, whenever I’m free. You know college life and all, working hard in classes every day. Gotta keep up that 4.0 GPA.” As he heads for the door, he hears her squeak out, It’s Sally!
The next day is when you’re supposed to meet Bucky in the library to study, but it’s been a half hour and he still hasn’t shown. You decide to study what you need to. If Bucky wanted to fail you weren’t going to go out of your way to help him. You weren’t his mother; he was a grown man and he was responsible for himself. 
Nearly an hour later, Bucky stumbles in, clearly reaping the effects of the alcohol binge he must have been on the night before. It was no wonder  why he was failing his classes. When he sees you, a smile graces his lips, trying to make you forget that he was more than fashionably late. “Heeyyyy, sweetcheeks. You been waitin’ on me long?” The closer he gets the more you can smell the musk of sex and alcohol.
“James, are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday?” You know he is and you fight the urge to turn your nose up at the offensive smell coming off him.
“Huh? Oh, shit, I am. Well would ya’ look at that?” He laughs before plopping down in the seat next to you, his smell even worse than before. He tries to give you what you assume is a sexy look, but he just looks like he just awoke out of a coma. “How about you help me change them then, sweetcheeks? Maybe even give me a good scrub, make sure I’m real clean? Oh, and sweets, call me Bucky since we’re gonna get real close.”
There is no way that he is trying to have sex with you when his stink is filling up the entire section of the library. Anger bubbles up in your chest. You were here to help him and he is taking this whole thing like a joke. “I don’t have time for this, James. Unlike you, I actually care about my grades and don’t think with what’s in my pants.”
As you go to walk away, Bucky tries to grab your wrist, wanting to mess with you some more, but his motor skills haven’t come back yet and he was too slow. “C’mon, sweetheart, I was just messin’ with ya’, don’t get your panties in a twist.” Bucky holds his tongue about wanting to sniff your panties, not wanting to antagonize you further, but you just keep storming away and soon enough you’re out of Bucky’s sight.
Bucky huffs, annoyed that you walked away from him. Not because he actually wanted to talk to you, no of course not, it’s because no one has ever walked away from him. He walks away from girls after he fucked them, not the other way around. Grabbing his shirt, he lifts it up to smell it, turning his head away when the stench hits him. “Damn, no wonder she fucking sprinted away from you, Barnes.” Bucky stands up, almost falling over when gets lightheaded, the effect of drinking all night with no food catching up to him.
He slowly makes his way back to his dorm to shower and get out of his grimy clothes, feeling it stick to his skin in the worst way possible. He realizes that he only gave you his number and you didn’t give him yours so he has no way of texting you to see when your next session is. Maybe he would have made it on time if you texted him. It wasn’t his fault he was late. Honestly, you should have reminded him since you are supposed to be helping him.
The next day Bucky sees you in class and luckily he doesn’t reek this time. Instead of sitting in his usual seat, he goes down a few rows and plops down next to you. “So, sweetheart, I don’t mean to question your teaching methods, but seems to me like you’re a pretty lackluster teacher, runnin’ out on me like that.” You slowly turn your head, completely shocked at the sheer audacity of this man. How dare he say anything about you when he showed an hour  late and proceeded to ogle you like a piece of meat?
“Excuse me? You wanna say that again, James? Because I don’t think I heard you right, because you better not have just said that I’m the problem.”
“I was just teasin’ ya, sweets. But if this is gonna work ya gotta help me a little bit. I mean, you’re the teacher and all.” You wanted to slap that smug smirk right off of his face.
“If this is going to work, James, then you need to try. I’m not going to pull my weight and yours so get that idea out of your head right now. I’ll be in the library at 4:30. If you’re so much as a minute late, I’ll tell the professor to get someone else to deal with you.” With that you got up and changed your seat, not wanting to be around him for another second. 
Bucky felt his pants tighten again. He really needs to do something about your attitude, like fuck it out of you. It wasn’t a lie that he found you attractive and the thought of bending you over your desk and watching your ass bounce made his cock even harder. Bucky was contemplating asking the girl next to him for a handjob but the thought of her hands around his cock didn’t seem as good as what he thought your hands would feel like.
So instead of that, Bucky moved his seat to the back of the room so he could jerk off. A man has needs after all and Bucky has never had to worry about someone taking care of his boners until now.
Bucky decides not to push his luck and he actually shows up to the library on time, sans all of his books, but at least he’s there. He sees you in the corner, hunched over your laptop, typing away. You look cute too, with your tongue slightly passed your lips in concentration and eyebrows pulled together. Reading glasses perched on your nose. His sweetheart was working hard. What the fuck, Barnes? Bucky is taken aback by his own thoughts. He has never looked at a girl like that, when none of his thoughts are about how many different ways he could fuck them.
You roll your eyes when you see that Bucky didn’t bring anything with him, just the air of arrogance that seems to follow him wherever he goes. “Would ya’ look at the time, sweets? I’m early. See I happen to take my education very seriously.” You swear, if you roll your eyes anymore because of this man, they’re going to be stuck in the back of your skull. 
“Yeah, yeah. What did the professor say you needed to work on?” You want to get straight to business. The faster you get this done the faster you can leave.
“Uh, well. I don’t exactly know what.” He tries to smile to soften the blow of his incompetence as he sits next to you, but you are almost vibrating in anger at how useless he is.
Huffing, you angrily click at your laptop, going to check the email your professor gave you, knowing that Bucky couldn’t be trusted to remember. “James, please tell me how your grade is a 13% and you’re still in college?” You had no idea that someone could have a grade that low and not be kicked out of the entire course.
“What! No way, let me see that.” You slide the laptop over to him, showing the proof of his negligence. “Well, damn, we have a lotta work to do then, sweetcheeks.” You ignore his comment and pull up his most recent essay, surprised that he turned it in at all, but not shocked to see how terribly he did.
“James, what did you even think this essay was about?”
“Uh, nature and care?” Your mouth drops open and you just stare at him for a minute, making him squirm under your gaze.
“James, this was an essay on Frankenstein, and you were supposed to analyze the difference between nature versus nurture. You wrote about the fucking trees!”
Bucky clearly didn’t understand the problem with his essay. “Yeah, that’s nature!”
“No, James. Nature as in how you are, like how you were born, not how you were raised. You were supposed to compare how Victor was nurtured all his life but was full of hate and spite, but the creature never had any care but he was benevolent until everyone who encountered him abhorred him!”
You were talking too fast and Bucky didn’t understand a word of what you said. You were using words that he had never heard of before. “So, you can fix it, right, sweets?” That same sly smile was on his lips. The look on your face was enough to make him backtrack. “Uh, so we can fix this right? You know, since we’re a team now.”
The resting bitch face you gave him had him shifting his eyes around the library, trying to avoid it. As soon as he did, however, he regretted his decision when his party hook up locked eyes with him. His eyes immediately went to your laptop, typing random words onto the document you pulled up, trying to seem busy.
“So, sweetcheeks, I’m picking up what you’re putting down. So Victor is a bitch and Frankenstein is cool.” The sound of your voice correcting him by calling the creature Frankenstein is drowned out by the shrill voice of his past trist.
“Hey, baby, haven’t seen you since that party. See you're working hard, keeping up that 4.0 I see.” She lets out a giggle and strokes his bicep. You raise an eyebrow but don’t say anything about his supposed GPA. You’re taking great pleasure in watching Bucky squirm, clearly not wanting anything to do with her now that he’s gotten his rocks off. 
“And who is this? I bet my smart baby is helping her study, right? That’s so sweet of you to help out, really. Not everyone would want to help the ugly girl.” You wheeled your head back, about to bite her head off for daring to say shit about your looks when the foundation on her face was three shades lighter than her chest that was almost spilling out of her way too small top. Now you were never one to judge, but if someone comes for your looks, you come right back at them.
Before you got the chance to tear her a new one, Bucky interjected. “Ya’ know me, always helping out where I can, even those less fortunate than me.” His eyes were glued to her chest and you doubted that he even knew what she said to begin with. “Listen, Sandy, how about we catch up after I’m done and I can help you out too?”
The “sexy” look on her face dropped. “My name’s Sally, nevermind, you can have the ugly bitch!” Bucky cringes slightly at getting her name wrong again; he was never good with those. You don’t know why you were involved with their lovers quarrel, but a twinge of hurt sprouts in your heart. You didn’t even do anything to her and she had to come at you for your looks, and Bucky didn’t say a fucking word.
Grabbing your things, you pack them with more force than necessary, but you don’t give a fuck. “Sweetheart, where are ya’ going? Don’t listen to her, she’s just a bit jealous that I’m with ya’.”
How does he not see what he did wrong? You just glare at him before turning on your heels and walking away. There is no way that you’re going to spend anymore time or energy on him when he isn’t going to try. If it was anyone else, maybe you wouldn’t be so hurt, but for just one second you thought that Bucky wasn’t as bad as he made himself out to be.
“Sweets, c’mon, we still have that essay to write.” Was this man really following you down the hall? Yes, yes he was. 
You spin around, eyes ablaze just to walk back up to him and push his chest. “You have an essay to write because I. Am. Done. You don’t give a fuck about this and I refuse to put myself through this for nothing.”
“What did I even do?” Now you were shaking with anger.
“What did you do? You haven’t tried at all, showing up late, trying to get me to fuck you, and worst of all, you let someone talk about me like that right in front of you and didn’t say a fucking word. You know, for a second there I thought you might be a nice guy, but you proved me the fuck wrong.”
Bucky had the nerve to look angry at what you said. Pushing you against the wall, he stares into your eyes. “Sweets, you’re really starting to piss me off. I’m fucking trying and it’s not good enough for ya’. I ought to fuck that attitude right outta ya’.” His eyes drop down to your lips and you’re too stunned to speak, not expecting him to push you up against a wall. 
He was starting to scare you, getting into your space like this, but before you could tell him to back off his lips smashed against yours. It was rough and fast. Your lips stayed still but your eyes were wide open, shocked at what he was doing. You tried to push his chest, but he only got closer to you, wrapping his arms around your waist, one hand dropping to your ass.
You struggled to free one of your hands, but as soon as you did you slapped Bucky in the face as hard as you could given your angle. He pulls back, shock on his face at the fact that you hit him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing! What made you think that I wanted to kiss you, asshole!” You try to wipe your lips, wanting to get the memory of his lips against yours off.
Bucky just stood there, not knowing what to say. He didn’t know what came over him. You shook your head and practically ran away to your dorm so you could shower and wash his touch off of you. The next day you were glad you didn’t have class with Bucky, but the remains of his kiss were still lingering. You didn’t even want to help him to begin with and this is how it ends up? With him forcing you to kiss him.
You didn’t want to tell anyone what happened, just wanting to forget the whole thing. But you couldn’t avoid Bucky for long since you did have to share a class together. He tried to come up to you, but you saw it out of the corner of your eye and switched seats before he could reach you. The entire hour and a half lecture was spent making sure Bucky wasn’t making his way any closer to you.
Instead of rushing out when class was over, you made your way down to your professors desk. “Professor, could I talk to you in your office for a minute? It’s important.” He might be relaxed most of the time, but your professor always made sure everyone in his class felt like they could talk to him if needed. 
Nodding his head, he leads you to his office and closes the door behind you, but not before you catch a glimpse of Bucky looking like a kicked puppy. He knew what you were about to talk about in that office, but there was nothing he could do about it. “Have a seat and tell me what’s going on. You’ve seemed off the past couple of lessons and I’m starting to get worried.”
You gulped, not knowing why it was so hard to say that you don’t want to tutor Bucky anymore. You didn’t want to let your professor down. Maybe it was because he reminded you of a father that you never had, but you just wanted to make him proud, showing him that you were capable of what he entrusted to you. He was looking at you, waiting to listen.
“Um, well, I have been distracted, but I think that it would be best for James to-” You can’t finish the rest of your sentence when you look at your professor. He trusted you to help Bucky and you can’t throw his trust away. “I think it would be best for James to have a more structured plan and I wanted to discuss that with you.”
The pride in his eyes was undeniable and you forgot about all the shit Bucky has put you through over the last few days. “Of course, what did you have in mind?” When you get out of his office, Bucky is still waiting, most likely missing the next party one of his friends is having.
You don’t even look at him, only grabbing the front of his shirt and dragging him with you all the way down to the library. “Sweets, listen, I didn’t mean to make ya’ feel-” Turning around, you cut him off and he stumbles to a stop.
“No, I don’t want to hear it, James. You listen to me. We will meet in this library every other day at this exact time and you will keep your mouth shut and work. Do you hear me?” Bucky feels his pants tighten, but doesn’t say a word about it, slightly scared to talk back to you. 
He just nods his head, finally noticing how beautiful you were. How your eyes held so much emotion in them, even when you didn't let it show on your face. Or how your lips form a small frown, the sides pulling down giving you an adorable pout. The small belmishes on your face, the tiny imperfections, created the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
“A nod is not an answer, James. Use your words.” Bucky swears that he could have cum in his pants at that exact moment. No woman has ever been so dominant with him in or out of the bedroom. 
He gulps before finding his voice again, hoarse but still working. “Yes, ma’am. I won’t let ya’ down again. I swear.” You stare into his eyes for a few seconds longer, determining if you believed him or not, giving Bucky more time to appreciate every part of your face he didn’t notice before.
You let go of his shirt and keep walking and Bucky follows you like a lost puppy, eyes downcast to your ass but not being able to see much with your hoodie going down past it. Instead of going to the corner of the library you were at last time, you walk to one of the private study rooms. “Sit and get your shit out.”
Bucky wastes no time following your direction, loving how brazen you were. You sit down next to him, giving him the opportunity to smell your perfume, the light scent intoxicating. “So, teach, what are we working on first?” His eyes are bright and attentive, taking in your facial expressions. He’s trying to butter you up, make you less angry at him.
“We have to fix your atrocious essay. It’s worth the most amount of points so hopefully it will bring your grade up.” You root through his binder, nothing organized at all. When you find it and pull it out you sigh, not knowing where to even start. “Okay, first things first, you need to at least understand what this is about.”
You explain everything to him, stopping to see if he is still following along, surprised to see him paying attention, going so far as to interrupt every so often to ask questions. For the first time since he got to college, Bucky is trying. The two of you sit there for a few hours, going over the essay line by line, fixing his mistakes. To your surprise, his grammar wasn’t too bad. At least he had something going for him.
The next few lessons go by the same way, Bucky working hard to not piss you off, but also to improve his grades. There were no flirty comments, no complaining about you being bossy. He was falling for you, something that Bucky never thought would happen to him.
He didn’t know how it started. Maybe it was that day you told him off, grabbing his shirt and putting him in his place. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. You were so beautiful and smart. God you were smart. It amazed him how easy it was for you to explain the assignments to him. 
Bucky stopped going to parties, too. For once he didn’t find interest in getting shitfaced drunk and sticking his dick in a random girl; although it was giving him his first ever case of blue balls, it just felt wrong to have sex with another girl. He tried once at the last party he went to before he decided to stop going, but her hand on his cock didn’t make him pulse with need. Bucky ended up faking a phone call, saying that his friend was in the hospital and he needed to go see him.
As the weeks pass, Bucky can tell you’re getting soft on him, especially when you called him Bucky for the first time.
 “C’mon, sweets, it can’t be that bad helpin’ me out.” Bucky leans back in his chair, his signature smirk plastered on his face. 
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, James because from where I stand, I’m losing IQ points by the minute with you.” You still try to sass him but Bucky can tell you’re fighting off a smile. The two of you talk like actual friends now - no more jabs at his promiscuity and no more ogling.
“Ah, I think it’s the other way around. I can feel myself gettin’ smarter with ya’.” Bucky puts his head on the table in front of you, moving so he could look at your face. His eyes glisten, showing the sweet man hidden underneath his tough exterior.
“Oh, give me a break, Bucky, you’re just trying to butter me up so I’ll do all the work for you.” You smile, looking down at him with the same adoration he’s giving you. His name leaving your lips felt right, smooth and sweet.
Bucky’s eyes widen, not expecting his name to sound so damn good coming from you. He doesn’t say anything in fear of you going back to calling him James. Now that you’ve called him Bucky, he never wants to hear his first name come out of your mouth again. He wants to be your Bucky.
You can’t deny the feelings you’ve developed for Bucky. The man charming his way into your heart, but you know you can’t act on them. You doubt that Bucky has ever been in a serious relationship, only going for one night stands. Even though you’ve seen first hand how sweet of a man he can be, you still aren’t convinced that he would be interested in dating.
But Bucky doesn’t share the same sentiment. Today is the day he’s going to ask you on a date, hoping that you’ll say yes and give him a chance to prove himself to you, prove that he can be the man you deserve. Like always, you’re in the library before him, already set up and waiting. When you see him walking over you wave, the same gorgeous smile he fell for gracing your lips. 
You could tell that he was nervous, stuttering and not meeting your eyes. “Bucky, what’s going on with you? Don’t tell me that you forgot to turn in the essay that we’ve been working on.”
Bucky smiles sheepishly at you. “No, sweets, I remembered to turn it in. I, uh, well, ya’ know. I got a question for ya’.” Mentally slapping himself in the face, Bucky blushed.
Staring at him suspiciously, you pushed your laptop away, giving him your full attention. “Well, sweets, you’ve been so good to me over these past few weeks. Really turned me around. I didn’t think that I would be able to do all this college shit, you know?” It wasn’t a question that he wanted you to answer. “You made me change my ways. I don’t want to go to parties and get blackout drunk anymore. To be honest, I’d much rather spend my time with you.”
Bucky takes a deep breath while you gaze at him with a blank expression on your face, making him even more nervous than before. “Doesn’t matter what we’re doing, s’long as it’s with you I don’t care.”
You cut off his rambling, afraid of where he is going. “Bucky, what are you trying to say to me?” You know what he is trying to say, but you don’t know how to react to it. It’s not like you haven’t imagined what it would be like to go out with him, but that’s just not the man he is.
“I’m tryin’ to be romantic right now, sweets.” He lets out a little giggle, playing with his hands to try to calm himself down. “What I’m tryin’ to say is, would you like to go on a date with me?” Bucky feels his heart drop when you only stare at him, not even blinking. His knee starts to bounce, the anticipation becoming too much for him.
You sigh, thinking about what to say to him. The two of you have a good friendship, one that you never thought you would have, but starting a relationship with him is terrifying. “Bucky, listen.” Just from the way you started your sentence, Bucky regrets saying anything. “It’s not that I don’t like you, I really do, but I can’t deny that your past scares me.”
“What do you mean, sweets?” For a man so observant, he can be a little dumb.
“You don’t do relationships, Bucky. You’re used to no strings attached and dating includes a lot of strings.” Bucky clenches his jaw, of course his past would come back to bite him in the ass.
“I don’t want no strings attached anymore. I want to be with you and only you.” You close your eyes, putting your head down slightly. You want to believe him, you really do, but you don’t want to get your heart broken. Gently, Bucky’s hand grabs your chin, moving you to face him. “Let me prove myself to you, sweets, just give me a chance and if I blow it I give you full permission to kick my ass.”
That brings a small smile to your lips, but you’re still not convinced. “What if you get bored of me? Being with the same person over and over again?” Bucky’s heart aches at your words, not used to seeing you unsure of yourself. How could he ever get tired of you? He knows that he is the one who caused your insecurities. If he didn’t sleep around as much as he did, then you wouldn’t worry about his loyalty.
“Sweetheart, ever since you put me in my place, I haven’t touched another woman, can’t even think about someone who isn’t you touchin’ me. Just one chance is all I’m askin’ and I promise that I will show you how much I care.”
Closing your eyes, you lean into his warm palm, letting yourself feel him. His eyes hold so much vulnerability and you feel yourself losing the ability to say no to him. “Just one chance, Barnes. And if you hurt me I swear to God.” You’ve never seen Bucky smile so wide, pure joy adorning his face. 
The smile never left his face, only growing wider. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweets. What about you come over to my dorm and we can have a movie night? Maybe you could even stay over?” He looks sheepish, worried you’ll turn him down. At the quirk of your brow he rushes to explain himself. “Not like that! Just to hang out.”
You head back to your dorm to get a change of clothes while Bucky waits outside so he could walk with you back to his. As soon as you walk out, he is rushing to grab your bag from you, insisting that he carries it. “Bucky, I can carry my own bag, you know. I’m capable of that much.” He loves your little attitude, never accepting his help.
Throwing an arm over your shoulder, Bucky leads you away, not giving you your bag back. His dorm is just what you expect from a college frat boy: trash can overflowing, clothes on the floor, food left out, bed a complete mess. Scratching the back of his neck, Bucky shyly looks at you. You decide to only give him a little bit of grief for the mess. “Am I allowed on the bed or have you fucked someone here?”
Bucky’s eyes widen, frantically shaking his head. “No, never brought anyone back to my dorm.” Toeing your shoes off, you ask him where the bathroom is, changing your clothes before you flop onto the bed, letting yourself sink into the fluffy mattress. For a minute, Bucky feels his brain malfunction. The sight of you in his bed is probably the hottest thing he’s ever seen. He would give his left arm to have you naked right now, his cock buried deep inside you, your pussy pulsing around his cock, moaning when he rubs little circles on your clit.
“You just gonna stand there, or are you gonna put on a movie, loverboy?” Shaking his head, Bucky nods and heads over to grab his laptop before climbing into bed, leaving space in between the two of you in case you didn’t want to be too close. “I didn’t know that hanging off the side of the bed was your style, but if you want to leave me to freeze feel free to do so.”
Bucky doesn’t know how to act around you, this whole dating thing is uncharted territory for him. He just moves over, your thigh pressed to his. Bucky had to will his cock to not get hard, the softness of your body was making it hard to think straight. The fact that he’s only jerked off for the past month isn’t helping either.
You move to get more comfortable, which so happens to include you snuggling into his side, curling your arms around his bicep. Bucky has no clue what the movie is about, the image of all the things he wants to do to you in this bed are too much for him. He doesn’t know what the feeling passing over him is. He likes this. He likes the feeling of your body pressed to his. Not in a sexual way, although he wouldn’t mind that either, but in a completely innocent way. Bucky never stayed around after he came, always getting dressed and leaving. He’s never had a woman press their body against his just to find comfort.
Somehow, Bucky is following along with the plot of the movie, but he knows that it was just because of how you interacted with all the characters like they could hear you. Bucky would usually hate that, he hates when people talk through movies, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry with you. If anything, he was glad that you kept talking, giving him the opportunity to hear your voice.
Halfway through the movie you stop talking. When Bucky looks down he sees that you fell asleep on his chest. Of course at that moment Bucky’s bladder decided that he needed to pee urgently. He tried to hold off for as long as he could, focusing on the part of your mouth and the bit of drool leaking from it. But try as he might, he needed to use the bathroom. 
He tried to maneuver you to not disturb your sleep but you woke up as soon as he moved. “Where you going?” Shit, he’s going to have to pee with a boner because your sleepy voice sent blood right to his cock. 
“Just gotta take a leak, be right back.” You just snuggle deeper into the pillows, humming in understandment. Bucky has to put one hand on the wall in the bathroom, leaning over the toilet at an awkward angle trying to push his erection down with his other hand so he could pee. It took a bit of work, but he was able to go without making a mess. Now, Bucky might be a lot of things, but unhygienic isn’t one of them and before he goes back to bed he washes his hands.
Once he walks back into the room he sees that you’re more awake than before but still laying in bed. He hits the lightswitch on his way over and turns on the lamp, letting the soft glow illuminate your features. “What took you so long? Almost fell back asleep.”
Before he could answer, you wrap your body around his and feel his hard cock through his sweats. Pulling away slightly, your face gets hot. That’s why he took so long. “Shit, sweets, I’m sorry. It’s just, well, you were in my bed, and you look so gorgeous. Not that I’m expecting anything! But the image of you is fucking hot. Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Your giggle catches him by surprise. “It’s okay, Bucky. Can’t imagine going from having sex all the time to being abstinent for a month.” With the soft glow of the lamp, you see Bucky’s blush. “Just don’t think I’m going to fix it for you though.” He shakes his head and chuckles lowly, pulling you back into him, keeping his pelvis away from yours even though his dick was begging for release.
Bucky doesn’t say anything back, but his hand moves to your waist, resting over your shirt. His thumb rubs small circles before he trails his hand up to your ribs and you can feel the heat of his palm through your shirt. For a few minutes he keeps his hand there, feeling your heartbeat, all the while moving his face closer.
He can feel your heartbeat pick up the closer he gets. You can feel his breath on your lips, warm and inviting. You’ve never been this close to his face, seeing all of his freckles up close. You don’t want him to pull away, not when your whole body is thrumming with need. Never in your wildest dreams did you think that Bucky could be this gentle.
He moves his hand up to your arm, delicately trailing his fingertips up and down, giving you goosebumps. Bucky is waiting for you to make the first move this time. The first time he kissed you was crass and unwarranted. The little gasp that leaves your lips when his palm rests on your cheek makes his cock jump.
Eyes fluttering shut, you lean in first. His plump lips meet yours and you moan into his mouth, not expecting his lips to be so soft and warm. You move your hands to his chest, pulling him closer to you, wanting to feel his whole body pressed to yours. You ignore the erection pressed against your stomach, completely lost in the sensation of his mouth on yours. 
Bucky frees his other hand from under him and wraps it around your waist, pulling you on top of him. The pressure of his hand caused you to arch your back, gasping when your core meets his hard dick. Bucky doesn’t waste the opportunity to put his tongue in your mouth, groaning at the taste. He has to use every bit of self control in his body not to buck his hips up, but he doesn’t have to because you grind down onto him, searching for friction. The harder you kiss him, the more his will slips from him and he was the first to break the kiss, a trail of saliva still connecting you to him.
Both of you gasp for breath, having deprived yourselves of oxygen for too long. “Why’d you stop?” God, you were perfect. Eyes wide, pupils blown, kiss swollen lips - Bucky knew that he wanted to keep you like this all the time, having you look at him like that was addicting and he was already hooked.
“If we keep going I won’t be able to control myself and I told you that I’m going to prove to you that I’m in this. That I don’t want you just for sex. I’m going to treat you right, make sure you know how much I care first.” You have to bite your lip to stop the moan leaving you. That was the hottest and sweetest thing you’ve ever heard. The fact that Bucky, the resident fuckboy, is denying sex because he wants to show you what you mean to him first has your cunt clenching around nothing.
You can’t think of words to convey how much that means to you, so you just slam your lips against his, kissing him with as much passion as you possibly could. Bucky has to use every morsel of restraint to move you off of him. “Sweets, you’re going to kill me with this.” The giggle you let out makes leaving his throbbing dick alone worth it, but you take pity on him and ask if he wants to go to the bathroom to fix his issue.
At first he declines, but he eventually caves and goes into the bathroom, shuts the door and handles his business. You scroll on your phone for a bit but you’re surprised when he comes back so fast. “Loverboy, this better not be a sign that you don’t last in bed, because when we do have sex, I want you to fuck me properly.”
As he flops back down on the bed, he groans. When, you said when, not if, when. “Sweets, if I hadn’t just came my dick would be rock hard again. You can’t say shit like that to me.” He rolls over, stradling you. “And sweets, I promise you, I’ll fuck you so good you won’t remember your name.”
You just raise your eyebrows, choosing to tease him a bit. “Well, based on the time you spent touching yourself, I’m not convinced. Hope your reputation hasn’t gone to your head because I’ll be honest if you can’t fuck me right.”
Bucky squints his eyes at you before leaning down, like he was going to kiss you again, but at the last moment, he pulls back and tickles your sides. Your laughter is easily one of his favorite sounds. “Bucky! Stop or else I’ll never have sex with you.” That makes him pause, even though he knew it was an empty threat and lays back down next to you.
“Okay, okay, sweets, I’ll leave you be. But I wouldn’t be opposed to you tickling me.” 
“What, is this a kink that you have, being tickled?” He scrunches his nose while he laughs, knowing what he was going to say next.
“No, but I would love it if you would tickle my pickle.” He smirks like it was the best joke ever told, proud of himself. You groan and turn away from him so he can’t see your smile. “C’mon, sweets, that was a good one.”
If you turn around you know you’ll see his puppy dog eyes. “Buck, that was the worst joke in the history of jokes.” 
“Ah, ah, I can hear your smile. You loved it.” You don’t respond, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing that you liked his joke. It’s silent for a moment and you are about to turn back around but Bucky talks before you can. “Do you mind if we spoon? I mean, you don’t have to stay overnight, but if you want to, ya’ know.”
“Well, it is pretty cold outside, and I would hate to have to walk all the way back. And who knows, I could freeze to death at my dorm. Better be safe than sorry.” Bucky knows what you're doing and plays along.
“Of course, sweets, can’t have my girl freeze. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t keep my girl warm.” You skooch back, pressing against his chest and his arms circle your waist, chin resting on your head. “Night, sweets, I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Only if I don’t run away, loverboy.” You feel the vibrations of his chest as he chuckles before leaning back to turn the lamp off, falling asleep with your soft body pressed to his.
Over the next few months, Bucky proves himself to be the perfect boyfriend, always asking you how your day was, remembering all the little things about you, kissing you and holding your hand around campus, not giving a single fuck who saw the two of you. He wasn’t embarrassed to admit he was whipped.
“Buck, c’mon, this is the best fucking party of the year, you have to go. It’s gonna be packed with girls in slutty costumes, Halloween man, everyone wants to fuck everyone.” Bucky only rolls his eyes at Steve.
“Dude, how many times do I have to tell you, parties aren’t for me anymore. Hangovers suck dick and I have better things to do in my free time.” Steve doesn’t seem to understand how much Bucky loved you. He’s never said it, at least not yet. 
“Like what, hanging out with the nerd who hasn’t put out in three months? C’mon, I know you want some pussy and it’s gonna be on a fucking platter tonight.” Bucky sees red, not giving a shit that Steve is his best friend. No one talks about his girl like that, no one.
“Steve, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, but you fucking know how much I care about her. If I ever hear you call her that shit again, I’ll put you in the fucking hospital. I couldn’t give less of a shit about how long I have to wait for her to know that I don’t just want a pussy to fuck, not anymore. I’m done with the parties and the random girls, okay. So get that through your thick skull.”
He doesn’t wait for Steve to answer, storming out of Steve’s dorm and walking away, not even caring where he was headed. He doesn’t know how he got there, but he stands outside of your door, raising his hand to knock. You always answer the door for him and this time is no different.
“Bucky, what’s wrong?” You were so tuned into him, reading him like a book. Without waiting you pull him into your dorm, shutting and locking the door behind him, leading him to your bed. His jaw was clenched, eyes set. If he was a cartoon, steam would be pouring from his ears.
“Fucking Steve.” He kicks off his shoes and gets comfortable in your bed, you following right after. You would go anywhere he goes.
Cuddling up to him, you pull him into you and his muscles relax at your touch, body responding to yours without thought. “What about Steve? You two get into a fight?” You never really liked Steve, but he was Bucky’s friend and you would listen to whatever he had to say about Steve. He was just like Bucky was before he met you.
“Being a fucking asshole. You wanna know what he said to me?” Bucky doesn’t wait for you to answer, only turning his head to see you better before continuing. “Wanted me to go to the Halloween party tonight, talking about all the girls that want to fuck as if he doesn’t know that I’m with you.” That doesn’t seem as bad as you thought, thinking that they got into a fist fight. It doesn’t surprise you that Steve was still trying to convince Bucky to go back to his playboy ways.
But Bucky wasn’t finished. “He had the fucking nerve to say that I should go because we haven’t had sex yet, like I give a shit about that. Fucking disrespected you right to my face.” You couldn’t deny that you were turned on by the fact that Bucky was defending your honor even when you weren’t there, not letting anyone bad mouth you.
“And what did you say, Buck?” Fuck, your voice was breathy, heartrate picking up. You wanted to hear what he said, how he told his best friend off. Bucky didn’t seem to pick up on your arousal, still too heated from his argument.
“Fucking told his ass that if he ever says that shit again, I’ll fuck him up. No one talks about my girl like that, don’t give a shit who it is.” You swear you could cum right now. Why was that so hot? Maybe it was because you’ve never had a man that didn’t let anyone disrespect you, or maybe you just liked to see him mad.
“I want you, Bucky. Want you to fuck me.” It just comes out, shocking the both of you. Bucky whips his head around, eyes as wide as your own.
“What?” 
“I want you to fuck me. I’m ready, know you don’t just want to use me.” Bucky’s dick is rock hard in seconds, all the anger in his body disapparating instantly. 
“Are you sure you want this, sweets? Because I have no problem waiting.” Throughout the course of your dating, Bucky can’t count the amount of times that he’s been hard and left his cock untouched. It’s gotten to the point where the two of you knew he was going to get hard when he was around you, not that it bothered you, knowing how much you were affecting him, but Bucky’s used to ignoring his erection now and he has no problem waiting for it to go away if you don’t want to have sex with him.
“Yes, Bucky, I think I’ve made you wait long enough. And to be honest, if I make you wait any longer I don’t think you’ll last more than a minute.” The mouth on you marvels Bucky every time. 
“Excuse me, sweets, but I’ll have you know I’m no two pump chump.” You only raise an eyebrow and Bucky huffs before kissing you again. It’s slow and hot. Bucky’s never kissed like this before, but with you he just can’t help but savor the feeling of your lips on his. He doesn’t want to rush, if he could he would kiss you forever, stuck in limbo, floating with only your touch to ground him.
You whine, hands pulling at his shirt, trying to get him to take it off. Bucky moves back, smirking at you. “Desperate, aren’t we? Just wanna feel me ‘gainst you, huh?” Teasing hasn’t been something Bucky really did, always hurrying to the main event, but he wants to make you crave him as much as he does you. 
The glare you give him holds no heat, not able to be mad at him when he’s looking so damn hot above you. Bucky relents, just this once, and takes his shirt off, revealing his toned stomach. He sucks a breath in through his teeth when your hands land on his abs. “Holy hell, woman! Your hands are fucking ice cubes!” You giggle but don’t pull away, sitting up and moving your hands across his back, slipping them into his sweats, finding his bare ass and squeezing.
“Well, loverboy, warm them up for me.” Bucky shakes his head in disbelief, chuckling at you. He takes your hands out of his pants and lays you back down, letting his warm palms circle the soft skin of your belly under your shirt. 
“Can I take this off, sweetheart? Gonna let me see those pretty tits?” Your cunt pulses at his words. Men that you’ve been with before haven’t talked to you like this, making you yearn for them.
“I mean, you can take it off but they’re not that pretty.” Bucky wheels his head back, clearly offended by your statement. For the first time, you shy away from his gaze. You weren’t exactly insecure about your body, but you also weren’t the most confident and you doubt that your body is better than the surplus of girls Bucky’s had.
“I beg your fucking pardon, sweets. I’m gonna need you to run that by me again.” Bucky lowers his face to yours, and you’re sure he is looking right through you. 
“Well, I doubt they’re the best pair you’ve seen, Buck. Don’t roll your eyes at me either.” You catch the eye roll Bucky gave you. He wasn’t rolling his eyes at you, but rather the words you were saying.
“I can’t believe my ears, sweets. The smartest girl I’ve ever met is saying what is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve heard. And that’s coming from the guy who is friends with Sam.” It’s your turn to roll your eyes and instead of saying anything back to him, you grab the bottom of your shirt and take it off, revealing your naked chest to him, foregoing a bra.
Like any man, Bucky gets distracted by the sight of your breasts on display for him. It takes him a second, but he shakes his head and comes back from his daze. “Fuck, sweetheart, you got the prettiest set of tits I’ve ever fuckin’ seen. Fucking perfect.” Bucky isn’t lying either, he really does think that you’re the most beautiful woman on the entire planet, every part of your body is perfection. “Should be a model, sweets, let everyone see how gorgeous you are.”
You feel the heat creep up your neck and rest on your cheeks. You aren’t used to being looked at like this. The look he’s giving you is so much different from when you first started working with him. It’s not filled with lust, although you can tell it’s there, but filled with awe and love. “Uh, uh, don’t look away from me. Want you to look at me while I make you cum.”
He pressed a chaste kiss to your lips before moving down to your neck, sucking on your sweet spot that he found the first time you made out. The little gasps and whines that leave your lips has his cock begging to be touched, but right now it isn’t about him, it’s about you.
You arch your back, pressing your soft breasts against his solid chest, drawing his attention away from your neck and to your tits. Trailing kisses down your chest, he swirls his tongue around your right breast, purposely avoiding your sensitive nipple. He doesn’t listen to any of your protests so you take matters into your own hands and grab a fistfull of his hair and jerk his head to where you want him to be. 
 The moan that leaves Bucky is pornographic, having no idea he liked his hair pulled that much. Bucky abides and takes your nipple into his mouth, sucking on it. “Oh, Bucky, just like that, feels good.” Bucky has to buck his hips into yours, never hearing something so sexy in all his life.
His other hand comes up to grab your other breast, rolling your nipple in between his fingers, every so often switching to give each one the attention they deserve. The longer he plays with your breasts, the more you feel your panties soak and you can’t take it anymore, needing some type of release.
Bucky pulls away with a pop, the cool air hitting your wet nipples makes you gasp. “Baby, I need you to touch me.” You can sense the words about to leave his mouth and answer his unspoken question. “Touch my pussy.”
Letting out a deep groan, Bucky grabs the hem of your sleep shorts, pulling them and your panties down when you nod. Your hand jets down to cover your pussy when you remember that you haven’t shaved, not expecting to have sex with Bucky tonight. “Wait, I have hair right now, maybe we shouldn’t.”
Bucky just blinks at you. He can’t believe that you would deprive him of your pussy because of a little hair. “Sweets, I have been a patient man, but I swear to God if you don’t move your hand and let me see my pretty pussy I’m going to lose my mind. You really think I give a shit if you have some fucking hair?”
You just smile sheepishly at him before removing your hand. “There she is. Look at her, so beautiful ain’t she? Yeah, she’s dripping for me, knows who she belongs to.” Fuck, you didn’t expect him to be so enamored with your cunt. “Ya gonna let me touch my pretty girl?”
You gulp before giving a breathy yes and Bucky spreads your legs a little wider and brings his right hand up to your pussy lips, gently tracing them making you twitch and giggle. “Bucky, that tickles.” Bucky smiles and his nose scrunches before his thumb goes from your hole up to your clit. “Fuck, Bucky, rub my clit.”
He just stops his movement, resting his thumb on your bundle of nerves. “This is where I’m in charge, sweets, and I don’t think that was a very polite way of talking to the man who is touching you.” You huff, not used to taking orders from anyone, but you want him to keep touching you so you relent.
“Will you please, rub my clit, loverboy.”
Bucky clicks his tongue at you. “Now, sweets, that didn’t sound very genuine but I’ll let it slide this time because I want to see this pretty pussy soak your sheets.” 
He starts to rub your clit from side to side, making you jerk your hips away. “Don’t fucking DJ my cunt. Circles, Buck, circles. You’re making me lose faith in you, babe.” Heat makes its way up his neck, his selfishness finally catching up to him. He doesn’t say anything, but switches up his method to what you said and you giggle at his confidence wavering.
His little slip up doesn’t slow him down, though, quickly finding the pace and pressure that seems to work best and draws those pretty sounds from your lips. Bucky knows that he isn’t going to be able to get enough of this, of you laid out before him, consumed by the pleasure he is giving you. 
“You want my fingers inside ya? Cause I wanna feel my pretty girl cum around my fingers.” You can feel the coil in the pit of your stomach, and you can’t remember if you’ve ever gotten to the edge this fast. All you can do is nod, moans and gasps the only sounds leaving your lips.
When his first finger slips inside you, your back arches and somehow the moans leaving you get even sexier and Bucky slips another finger in. “That’s it, pretty girl, suck my fingers in. Doing so good for me, knew you’d treat me so well. Don’t ya think, sweets?” The way he talks to your pussy has you leaking more arousal out.
“Please, Bucky, don’t stop, keep going just like that. M’gonna cum.”
A jolt of excitement shoots up Bucky’s spine. He wanted to see you cum so bad. Using every bit of self control in his body not to speed up, Bucky kept the same pace, curling his fingers to find that spongy patch. “Wouldn’t fucking dream of it, sweets, need to feel my pretty girl cum on my fingers. Promise I’ll feed her my cock after.”
Bucky groans with each clench of your cunt around his fingers, more desperate than you for your orgasm. “C’mon, sweets, give it to me. Can feel your clit pulsing. Be my good girl and give me what I want.” That was all you needed to fall off the edge, trusting that Bucky would catch you. 
Bucky’s sure that the sight of you cumming is the greatest thing in the world. He couldn’t dream of fucking you and not seeing you fall apart for him. He never stops moving his fingers, riding out your orgasm, only relenting when you push his hand away. It takes a few minutes, but you come back down, an open mouth smile on your face, eyes closed and Bucky falls even harder for you.
Blindly, you search for his pants, wanting to see his cock. “Bring him out, Buck, wanna see my new friend.” If it wasn’t for the orgasm he just gave you, Bucky would have been positive that you were drunk off your ass. Doubling over, Bucky cackles, not expecting to hear that come out of your mouth. “Don’t you laugh at me, loverboy, know your cock is huge. Let me meet him. Wanna put him in my mouth.” You give him a lopsided smirk.
“Don’t worry, sweets, you can meet him.” Bucky struggles to hold back his laugh. In all fairness, he did refer to your pussy as her, but the thought of you calling his dick him is hilarious. Nonetheless, Bucky strips the rest of his clothes off and you practically drool at the sight of his dick.
A little over average length, but thick as hell. You don’t think you’ve ever seen a cock that thick and you know he is going to destroy your cunt. Under his cock, his balls were heavy and full, the amount of cum in there building up just for you. Wrapping your legs around his waist, you pull him into you and Bucky has to catch himself with his arms so he doesn’t crush you with his weight. 
You both gasp when his bare cock rubs against your soaking cunt. Bucky has to close his eyes and think about all the assignments he still has to complete to stop himself from cumming on the spot. “Want it inside me, please, Buck, give it to me.” Bucky is near the verge of crying when you grind your cunt on him.
All you want is for him to fuck you until you can’t see straight and so does Bucky, but it takes everything in him to put away, knowing that the next words to come out of his mouth aren’t going to be sexy. “Hold on, sweets. I have to get a condom first.”
You don’t like that one bit, wanting to feel him inside you with no barrier. “Don’t need one, ‘m on the pill.” That has Bucky about to cum all over the sheets and your pussy. He knows that he needs to be responsible, not only for him, but for you too.
“Sweets, I, well, I haven’t been tested since my last partner. I’ve never done it without a condom, but I don’t want to risk it until I get tested.” He hangs his head in shame, yet again his promiscuity is coming back to bite him in the ass. What he wouldn’t give to feel your sopping cunt choke his dick, hell only knows, but his statement seems to sober you up.
“Oh, yeah, that’s probably for the best.” You can’t meet his eyes, the conversation awkward enough even if you weren’t about to fuck. Bucky takes in a deep breath and huffs out, clearly not knowing what to do next so you decide to lighten the mood. “Well, loverboy, you better wrap that bad boy up so you can prove that you can actually fuck me like you said you would. Top drawer. I got the good ones.”
You got Bucky to crack a smile before he gave a small smack to your thigh and walked over to your nightstand to get a condom. You wolf whistled when you saw his toned ass. “Damn, baby, you’ve been holding out on me?”
Bucky wheels around and says some clever retort, but you don’t hear it, not when his cock swings around with him, bobbing at the sudden change of direction. Not only that, but with each step he takes, his dick bounces up and down. “Sweetheart, it’s all yours. Stare all you want but close your mouth before I put somethin’ in there.”
Bucky rolls the condom down his length, giving it a few pumps while he admires you laid out on the bed, naked and ready for him to fuck you. Before he climbs back into bed, you stop him. “Wait, loverboy, do a little spin for me, let me see him move.”
Throwing his head back, Bucky lets out a belly laugh, and he just so happens to make his cock and balls bounce. “C’mon, s’all I want.” When he calms down, Bucky relents and circles his hips a few times, his cock, although stiff, moves with his hips and you have to close your legs to try to relieve the ache in your core. “Fuck, need you now, Bucky.”
“Yeah, sweets, you need my cock? Does my pretty girl need to be stuffed with my cock?” No smart retort comes to your mind, only the need to have him fill you up. It’s been way too long since you’ve had sex and you know Bucky’s cock is going to ruin you for anyone else.
“Please, Buck.” Fuck, the way you’re looking at him, with wide, pleading eyes, and a pout on your lips has Bucky’s dick pulsing. He climbs on the bed, in between your legs. “How do you want me?” You’ve overheard Bucky relive his one night stands more than once in class, before he fell for you. He was always adamant that the only positions worth doing were the ones where he could see the girl’s ass, and how boring positions where he could see her face were. 
Bucky stares at you for a second, cupping your face and leaning down to give you a tender kiss. “Want you just like this, sweets, wanna see you.” You swallow hard, willing yourself not to cry at how intimate he’s being. Despite your best efforts, tears well up in your eyes, making Bucky panic.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” His eyes hold so much love, something Bucky never thought he would feel for a partner. You wrap your legs and arms around him, clinging like a koala.
“Not a damn thing, Buck, just love you. Love you so fucking much it hurts.” Bucky feels his heart swell. If this is what it felt like to love and be loved, Bucky would spend the rest of his life trying to keep you, show you how perfect you are, love you as hard as he can and then some.
“Sweetheart, I can’t even put into words how much I fucking love you. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, made me change from the asshole I was.” Bucky had his own tears welling up in his waterline.
“Buck, make love to me, show me how much you love me.” Reaching down, you wrap your hand around his dick, drawing a gasp from his lips, and line him up with your pussy. He presses his forehead against yours, gazing into your eyes as he pushes in, cock stretching your cunt with every inch.
Crashing his lips into yours, Bucky tries to hide his moan, whiny and long, never feeling such intense pleasure. Neither of you can kiss, just gasping into the other’s mouth. When his hips are flush with yours, balls resting against your ass, Bucky has to stop. If he moves he’ll cum; he knows it. He’s never felt like he would cum on the first stroke, but the way your cunt hugs him has him doubting that he’ll last more than a few minutes.
You can’t handle it, the stretch of his cock almost too much, but you needed him to move. “Please, baby, move, need it.” The moan that leaves him is sinful and you involuntarily clench around him.
“Sweets, can’t. Need a minute.” His arms go to your waist, and he pulls you up, groaning when his cock shifts deeper inside you, and sits with his back against the headboard, keeping you wrapped in his arms, bodies pressed so close together you could feel every muscle. Bucky closes his eyes, resting his head in the crook of your neck, breathing in your scent and relishing in the intimacy of the moment, with your breasts squished against his chest, feeling every breath you take, loving your soft hands scratching his scalp.
“Do this with all the girls, loverboy?” The breathiness in your voice has his cock pulsing against your walls.
“Never, sweetheart, never. You feel so fucking good.” Bucky sounded like he was about to cry with how hard he was trying not to cum.
You wanted him to fuck you, pussy leaking down his thighs. You decided that if you annoy him enough he might just fuck you dumb. “Guess I was right then, loverboy can’t last in bed. Gonna tell everyone how I broke your cock, how fast you came for me.”
That seemed to strike a nerve and Bucky rolled over, pining you to the bed with his body. You gasped at the quick motion and the jostle of his cock. “Sweets, now is not the time to tease me. Use your mouth for something better.” He could already hear your, like what, so he cut you off before you could get anything out. “Like moaning my name while I fuck you.”
He doesn’t pull his cock out far, wanting to stay as close to you as possible. Pushing back in, he groans, having to will himself not to cum. You feel so good, pussy wrapped around him perfectly. “Sweets, love you so much, never wanna leave this pussy.” You whine, a jolt of pleasure going through your clit at his words. 
“Love you too, Buck. Want to stay like this forever, want you.” It’s Bucky’s turn to whine, rutting into you, the coarse curls at the base of his cock rubbing your clit, the sensation of your breasts pressed against him new. 
He can’t help it, you just look too pretty underneath him, grabbing both of your hands in his, lacing them together and putting them above your head and pressing his forehead to yours, staring into your eyes. His lips meet yours, both of your whines and moans mix together. 
The constant roll of his hips is pushing you to the edge faster than ever before. You take one of your hands, still laced with his, and place it over his heart, feeling the erratic beat. The coil in your stomach is curling tighter and tighter. “C’mon, sweets, can feel you clenching ‘round me. Give it to me, cum on my cock.” 
Bucky is doing his best to hold on, wanting this moment to last, to relish in the bubble the two of you have created. His moans get louder, his own orgasm creeping up on him. Wiggling your other hand out of his grasp, you run your fingers over the back of his head, crashing your lips on his before you fall off the edge, eyes rolling back and body quivering, his body the only thing grounding you.
He had to pull out, your pussy almost milking his cum out, but he didn’t want to cum just yet. He wants to make you cum again, this time while he looks at your face, seeing it scrunch up in pleasure. You didn’t seem too happy at him for pulling out, needing him to be as close as possible. “Keep fucking me, Bucky. I need you to cum for me.”
Bucky groans before guiding his cock back home, squeezing his eyes shut when he feels your pussy somehow got even tighter. Not wasting any time, he starts thrusting again, this time much faster, still rolling his hips, hitting your sweet spot every time.
Pulling his body away from yours, Bucky sits up, resting your thighs over his, keeping his dick inside of you, not missing a single thrust. With the new position, he can see your breasts bounce, but more importantly, how beautiful your face looks screwed in ecstasy. “So fucking beautiful for me, sweets. Love the way your pretty tits jiggle, look gorgeous when your getting fucked dumb on my cock, gonna keep you like this all the time.” 
In this position, your clit is being neglected so you reach one hand down, desperate to cum again. Bucky quickly swats your hand away, replacing it with his own. “Ah, ah, I’m gonna make my girl cum. Just want you to lay there and look pretty for me. Can you do that for me?” You just moan in response, thumb rubbing quick circles on your clit, bringing you to the edge again. “Use your words, sweetheart.”
“Yes! I’ll do anything you want.” You feel Bucky’s cock pulsing inside of you, thrusts becoming sloppy and losing their rhythm. “Cum for me, Bucky, fill me up with your cum.” You both know that he is wearing a condom, but the thought of his cum rushing into your pussy, stuffing you to the brim, is enough to have Bucky emptying his balls into the rubber, groaning deep, almost whining your name.
He can’t stop thrusting into you, still rubbing your clit, desperate for you to cum around him. “Sweets, so much fucking cum for you, know you can take it. Fuck, cum for me, milk my cock, get every drop out.” Bucky was right, you looked absolutely divine when you came. At that moment you’ve never looked prettier.
Bucky never felt an orgasm that intense, leaving him weak in the knees. Collapsing onto your chest, not able to hold his own weight up. You huff, air being pushed out of your lungs, but you don’t mind, his weight soothing, helping to bring you back down from the high of your orgasms. You both lay there, hands stroking each other until you fully come back to reality.
“Gonna pull out, sweets, okay?” Bucky has never had his cock in a girl this long after he’s came, and it was getting too sensitive. Words don’t come to mind and you just nod your head dumbly, both of you hissing at the sensation.
Without a word, Bucky gets up and heads to the bathroom to dispose of the condom and clean himself up. All of a sudden tears well up in your eyes, body cold and craving his touch. He’s been so sweet to you for the past months, proving that he didn’t just want sex with you, but now he’s walking away as soon as you’re done. 
The buzzing of your body goes away, dread filling you. Rolling over, you burrito yourself under the covers, facing away from the bathroom, not able to stop the tears from streaming down your face. It only takes a few minutes, but to you it feels like a lifetime, until Bucky comes back, sliding under the covers himself. 
“So, sweets, what do ya’ want to do? I could go for a bite to eat myself. Don’t know when the last time you ate was though.” Bucky, on the other hand, was basking in the afterglow of the best sex of his life, already thinking about all the things he could do with you, all the ways he could get you to cum for him.
When you don’t respond right away, Bucky thinks you fell asleep. Leaving a kiss to the back of your head, he gets up and puts his sweats on, not bothering with anything else and heads to your kitchen. He doesn’t feel like making a full meal so he decides to just make a quick sandwich and head back to bed after eating.
You burst into full blown sobs when Bucky leaves, assuming that he left your dorm all together, having no idea that he was just outside. How could you have been so stupid to think that he really wanted you? Bucky goes to take a bite out of his snack when he hears your sobs, immediately thinking the worst - he hurt you, did something you didn’t like.
Rushing back into the room, Bucky climbs back into bed, rolling you over without warning. “What are you still doing here? Thought you left?” How could you ever think that he would leave you?
“No, sweets, just went to make a sandwich. What’s going on? Why are you crying?” Bucky has never been so fucking scared in all his life, terrified that he hurt you.
“Thought you left after you got what you wanted. You just left me in the bed after we were done.” Bucky’s eyes widened, not expecting you to say that. He doesn’t know what he did wrong. He’s never stuck around after sex, confused at what’s going on with you.
“Sweets, I’m so sorry that I made you think that, but I don’t know what’s going on. Need you to talk to me. I don’t want you to think I don’t care.” Your bottom lip wobbled, of course he didn’t know about aftercare. It wasn’t his fault that he never had a relationship like this. It meant so much to you that he was asking how to fix his mistake.
“I get really sensitive after sex. It’s annoying actually, but I need to be held and told that you still love me.” You avoid his gaze, more tears making their way down your face, Bucky wiping them away. How could his perfect girl think that her needs were annoying or an inconvenience to him.
“Oh, sweetheart, come here.” Bucky pulls you into his lap, almost petting your hair. “You did so good for me, you know that? I love you so fucking much and nothing is going to change that, okay?” He pulls your head back to look into your eyes.
“It’s just that my last boyfriend said that he couldn’t look at me after sex, said he couldn’t see me the same way.” What in the fuck. 
“Sweetheart, I need you to understand that I know that I’m the fucking luckiest man alive to be able to be with you any way you let me. When I look at you I’m so proud to call you mine.”
You bury your head in his shoulder, letting him hold you and whisper sweet words in your ear. For his first time doing aftercare, Bucky is doing great and soon you come all the way down. Pulling away from him you giggle. “Love you too, Buck. Thank you for that. I know some men don’t care about that. After they get what they want they leave.” Bucky hangs his head in shame, thinking about all the girls he made feel like they were worthless. “I know that you did the same thing, but the fact that you were so willing to change means a lot to me.”
Bucky knows that there’s a lot he has to learn about being in a relationship, but he wants to learn it all to be the man you deserve. He is going to treat you like the goddess you are for the rest of his life, he knows it, already planning on picking out a ring, because he’s gonna love you for a long, long time.
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glitchfiles · 10 months
Text
only 'til dawn. [ljn]
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pairing ⋆ badboy!jeno x inexperienced/goodgirl!reader
wordcount ⋆ 2.7k+
warnings ⋆ SMUT MINORS DNI!!!, softdom!jeno, smoking, shotgunning, car sex, big dick jeno, corruption, praise, light degradation, oral (m receiving), cowgirl, spanking (once), light choking, creampie...
note ⋆ i had to leave this one in my drafts for some time first because i didn't want to upload two car sex fics in a row then i wanted to rewrite it then i couldn't be asked to do that fully... so yeah, enjoy :D
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"fuck," jeno drawls out as his head lolls to the side, "you're shit at this." he chuckles at your feeble attempt to give him a blowjob.
you look up at him, he seems totally unphased by your attempts to get him off, even going as far as to fish a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of the inner pocket of his leather jacket. the scowl that forms on your brow shows how much it dents your pride; he smirks down at you tauntingly.
"open your mouth a little more." he places a cigarette between his lips and lights the end. "you don't mind if i smoke, right?" you roll your eyes, he could have asked before. at least he had the courtesy to wind the window down.
there was no reason for you to debase yourself like this, the whole situation is beyond demeaning. you’re on your knees in the back of jeno’s car, struggling to please him and now he’s having a smoke mid-head?!
it felt as if your jaw was about to unhinge at any moment, you didn’t know it could stretch this far. the girls in the videos made it look so easy, compared to them, the way you were slobbering all over his girth was far from sexy. not to mention how you were clumsily pumping the rest of his length. not to toot your own horn, but you picked things up easily, this was a whole different ballpark to academic work. 
"you're too big," you whine. your lack of experience definitely didn't have anything to do with the shoddy head you were giving. how he was still hard was a wonder, you’re sure he’s seconds away from going flaccid.
normally, he would have put an end to the whole thing. it's not like he wasn't one text away from a few girls that could suck the soul out of him. however, considering how unsavoury his reputation was, the fact that you, the university’s golden girl, and much-revered student union president, were so eager to please him behind closed doors inflated his ego more than anything else could.
he couldn’t help but find humour in how ardently you refused to acknowledge him in public at times like this; if you spotted him on campus you looked the other way. but the moment he shot you a text, you were swooning and giggling, begging to meet up. so, here you were, in the dead of night, at the back of an empty parking lot a couple of miles away from campus.
“you’re lucky you have a patient teacher, i’m going to turn you into an expert!” jeno directs you between drags of his cigarette, blowing the smoke out of the windows as he laughs at you being unable to get the hang of it. saying you feel frustrated would be an understatement.
"i don't want to do this anymore," you sit up, finally admitting defeat and letting his heavy cock flop down against his abdomen. if jeno were a better person, he would have stopped you a few minutes ago, but you were so eager to please him and he loved the adorable pout on your lips and how your brows furrowed whenever you were exasperated.
"then what do you want to do?" you can think of a few things, but they would be super embarrassing to say. so, you refused to answer. he sighs before slotting his cigarette between his lips, leaving his hands free to pull you onto his lap.
"wanna try?" you don't know what possesses you, but you nod. 
how bad can it be? 
he taps the burnt end off, letting the ashes fall out the window before setting the cigarette between your lips. it feels childish to admit, but the fact that you had shared an indirect kiss makes you smile. this doesn't last long, though; after a short pull, you end up choking.
"god, that's awful!" you squeak as he belly laughs, only stopping when you hit his chest. all he's done tonight is tease you.
"i thought so too when i first tried." he soothes you, so as to not incur any more of your light-handed wrath. "why don't we start with some baby steps?" 
you're unsure what he means until his large, rough hand is placed gently under your jaw and his thumb brushes over your lower lip, "open up for me, angel."
he takes a long drag before tilting his head to the side and filling your mouth with a thick cloud of smoke. you're not sure what this is, but it feels intimate. it feels as if he’s breathing life into you. your whole body warms and tingles, your head spins, and a fire lights in your core.
once his lungs are empty, he seals it with a kiss. it's slow and passionate. his hand slides round to the back of your neck, pulling you closer. maybe it’s the nicotine running through your veins, you feel lightheaded. you let him slip his tongue past your lips to dance around your own.
the sweet flavour of your strawberry lip balm he was used to intermingled with the bitterness of his cigarette. he can't help but groan at the fact you taste a lot more like him now. 
the cigarette he's momentarily forgotten in his hand gets flicked away to burn to a butt somewhere on the tarmac outside. his now free hand comes to rest on your hip. it guides your body forwards, bringing your clothed centre flush against his bare cock.
you mewl into his mouth, he swallows down the sound. he’s greedy for more and starts rocking against you. grinding out then gulping down your noises, they go straight down to his cock. it’s throbbing, you can feel how painfully hard he is underneath you. only when he’s met with an uncomfortable stickiness due to his precum seeping through his shirt does he put an end to his gluttony.
a begrudging whine fills the car as he pulls your lips away from him. the look in his eyes alone was almost enough to make you cream, it was different to the cocky, yet lewd, eye fucking that seemed to be his default. those dark eyes of his turned into endless pits of boundless desire.
warm hands glide under your sweater, tugging it over your head, off your body to let it land somewhere in the front of his car. he does the same with his own shirt, sitting back to let you admire the rippling muscles on his torso. you delicately placed a hand on his chest, sliding it down to his abdomen; it seems he doesn’t have to have his dick in your mouth to have you drooling over him.
“like what you see, baby?” the smug look on his face makes your stomach twist.
“shut up,” you smash your lips against his again before he can speak again. 
jeno rushes to unclasp your bra, pushing the fabric out of his way so he can knead at your breasts; not before long, his mouth leaves you to pepper kisses down your neck then it encloses around one of your pert nipples. 
“mmm, jeno!” you mewl as his tongue laps at the bud, causing your back to arch in search of more stimulation. a hand weaves itself into his inky, thick locks, pushing him to give attention to the other side. “jeno, more!”
“i love hearing you say my name,” he growls against your chest, “wanted to hear you say it all week, but you don’t even spare me a glance unless i have my cock out.” 
you ignore the slight bitterness in his tone focusing on how he nips at your skin, leaving dark marks he hopes will last until he next sees you. marks that he hopes others will see and know you belong to someone; you’ll probably chastise him later over text but he doesn’t care, anything to keep him on your mind like you're always on his. 
reluctantly, he detaches himself from your chest and sits back, eyeing the drying traces of saliva he left with a dazed smile. 
“what next? tell me.” his hands delicately caress your hips, your cheeks begin to heat up and you avoid his eye contact. “don’t act all coy now, where’s the girl that begged me to drive her out here and fuck her dumb?” 
you were still clinging onto the last dregs of your virtuous good girl persona - the last white spots on a canvas he had first found unsullied. your first sin had been naivety, too easily seduced by a good-looking face and the sweet nothings he whispered in your ears but he had been more than happy to lengthen the list.
you wondered if this was how you had always been - or was he corrupting you. he broke down every conception you had of yourself and no one outside of the car you both sat in would believe this was you - you barely did yourself. some would say he was ruining you, but he’d never make you do something you didn’t want to, this was all you.
“please…” you let your head fall onto the crook of his neck, voice barely above a whisper. “want you inside.”
“a smart girl like you can be more descriptive than that.” he strokes a finger down your back, leaving a trail of heat on your spine, in hopes of prompting lewder vocabulary. you take a moment to chew your bottom lip and swallow down the last bit of dignity you had.
“please, fuck me.” you weep against the shell of his ear, “fill my pussy up, i need you so bad, jeno.” 
“sound so pretty when you tell me what you want.” his low-toned praise makes you shiver as he flips your skirt up and raises your hips. he pushes your panties to the side to position his cock at your dripping entrance. taking a second to tease your slit, making sure to brush over your swollen clit, only to hold you still when your hips jerk forward.
“look at me, angel.” you perk up for him, “so beautiful,” he tucks a stray lock of hair behind your ear. his gaze holds yours firmly as he brings you down on his bulbous tip, stretching you out slowly.
you struggle to keep your eyes from shutting. your mouth hangs open letting out hushed gasps as you sink down an inch at a time. he thinks you’re the prettiest creature he’s ever laid eyes on. 
“keep going... yeah, just like that... so good...” his soft gaze, light touch and encouraging words make things easier. he can feel your walls begin to relax and hungrily accept his girth. 
“‘s so fucking big,” you wail out, not even having taken him fully. you couldn’t quite yet without his help, though you’ll get there eventually - he’d make sure of that. 
“i know, baby, but you take me so well. can you move for me?” you nod shyly, lifting yourself and dropping back down as far as you can with a long whine. up and down, you split yourself open over and over. 
jeno’s hands press into your flesh, silently encouraging you to take more of him. you work your hips faster, earning a deep groan from him as his head falls back. instinctively, your mouth attaches itself to his neck, mimicking the way he had kissed and sucked at your own earlier.
“for such a sweet, innocent girl, you sure do ride like a slut.” he breathily laughs as his hand comes down on your ass with a sounding slap. “like the way my cock stretches this tight cunt out.” there’s no hiding the way your walls clench at the sharp sting. you try to find refuge from your embarrassment by hiding your face in his shoulder, but he quickly takes ahold of your throat, forcing you to sit up straight.
“don’t hide from me,” he tells you warningly and squeezes your neck lightly. once again your eyes lock, his stare as intense as ever. your teeth sink into your bottom lip and you rest your hands on his strong chest, adopting a faster pace. 
he lets out moans which you naturally reciprocate, however, you embellish yours with his name; you feel his cock twitch at the sound of it. the look in his eyes turns wild as his fingers dig deeper into the meat of your ass, forming a nearly bruising grip; with the other hand, he’s careful not to cut off airflow but forms a hold that leaves you feeling dizzy. 
“you know exactly what you do to me.” he chuckles, “you were fucking made for me, made for taking my cock, weren’t you? yeah, so perfect, angel.”
your legs begin to shake, his words and his cock are quickly pushing you towards the pinnacle. you try your very best to work through the overwhelming pleasure and the ache in your thighs, wanting to get him off since you failed at sucking his dick. but you can't seem to power through it, tears well in your eyes as everything becomes too overwhelming, it's far too much.
“need help, baby?” his soft spot for you wins, “did such a good job for me. i’ll take care of you, make you cum all over my cock. want that?”
“please, need to cum so bad.” his hand leaves your neck and places itself and your other asscheek. he plants his feet firmly and then rams up into you.
your brain goes blank in an instant. 
he’s deep. so deep. too deep!
you cry out, nails digging into his broad, muscular shoulders to anchor yourself. the tears that had threatened to leave your eyes before stream down your face, staining your cheeks. your whole body quivers as his cock lays kisses on your cervix with each thrust. 
“jeno, oh my god, right there!” you practically scream. his face screws at the feeling of your walls constricting, getting tighter by the second and making it harder to move; he powers through by jackhammering into you with more force. 
it feels like you could break at any moment, he's bouncing you on his cock like you're a ragdoll and you're too weak to do anything but take and enjoy it. all it takes is a few more thrusts before you’re creaming all over him. your body seizes as your eyes roll back, and his name tumbles from your lips incessantly in pleasured sobs. 
it’s hard to keep you in one place as he continues to fuck you through your orgasm, but he handles your squirming body with ease using his strength. the most ungodly wet squelches fill the car as he races towards his own release, your sticky mess clings to both of your thighs. 
“shit… pussy’s sucking me in so deep, gonna cum.” his chest rises and falls dramatically, he can barely breathe. his thrusts get choppier as he loses himself to the feral urge to paint your insides pearly white.
a heavy groan rips through him as his balls tighten, he nestles his cock nice and deep as he pours hot spurts of cum into you. he fills you with warmth; you feel complete for a moment. unfortunately, all good things must come to an end eventually. 
you could almost start crying again when he pulls you off of him. his praise on how well you took his cum as it dribbles out of your cunt makes up for it, though. his tongue swipes across his lips as he watches it drip all over his cock, unbothered by the fact half of it is soiling his leather car seats too. 
the sound of your wild breathing is all that fills the car for a moment until his lips find yours one last time. breathlessly kissing you, there is less vigour than before but just as much passion. your heart warms for a moment at the almost bashful smile on his face as he rests his forehead against yours and wipes the tears that still cling to your soft skin.
this feels right, perfect even, but it only takes a few words for him to fuck it all up.
“wanna come over to mine?” jeno regrets his words immediately, the expression on your face sour at the thought of someone spotting you walking into his dorm or one of his loud-mouthed roommates blabbering about you spending the night together.
give jeno a hand and he’ll end up taking the whole arm.
you pull away from him suddenly remembering who you are.
“don’t be ridiculous, you know i can’t even be caught dead with you.” you grimace at the mess between your legs as you reposition your panties; then, you search for the clothing he had strewn around the car.
you don’t even look at him when you demand him to. “just drop me off where you usually do.”
jeno grins even at your cold-hearted rejection. not just anyone could say they had a place between your legs; he’s sure he’ll have a place in your heart too soon enough…
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