torgawl · 11 months ago
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i think what hits most about nobara's backstory is everything that's left unsaid and peaks from between the lines. it's the fact you can easily infer that something was wrong without ever having clear answers on what exactly was wrong. but if you can relate to the feeling of wanting to escape a place and the alienation from everyone around you, especially when you're brought up in small communities, then you can certainly understand, if not fully then partially, nobara herself and the struggles she might have had to face all by herself for a very long time; maybe even the importance fumi and saori had in her life and the pain from having to part from them; and, perhaps the selectiveness in letting people in that she later on develops as well.
#the way her story is told from fumi's point of view is quite interesting#nobara's backstory is like a silent whisper without a lot of obvious context and told from someone else's perspective#someone who until the end never really understood her fully despite their obvious close bond#someone who we weren't even aware was part of her life#and nobara's peak emotional moment and the last person she thinks as her life is in danger is her and the promise she didn't accomplish#a promise to reunite with the friends that shaped her and her life#ah.#i find her last line so... powerful?#she definitely struggled growing up and the only two people she kept in her heart from her life before jujutsu were people that#moved to where she lived. saori didn't even stay in that place for long. and then she moves somewhere new and she meets people#and a group that actually feels like home a community where she fits in and suddenly they kind of break through making place in her heart#just for everything to come to a halt. to turn to shit. for her to see that shatter away little by little. and in the end she's put in a#position where she knows she will not be able to hold on to what she cares for the most. that she will hurt people that truly cared for her#for not being able to go back to fumi and rekindle the friendship with saori and for being forced to be another punch in the guts for yuuji#and everyone else that up until that point were forced to go through losses already and traumatic events#and she decides to encourage yuuji to go on a good note and she truly believes the people she met made it worth it#even if it was for a brief moment in her life#i am not being coherent right now but it pains me :')#she deserved so much better#and i will hang on tightly to the line saying that she had a small chance of survival until the end#because she deserves it she deserves to live 😭#i'm taking her from that stupid anime and putting her in a slice of life anime watch me#yuuji too. and everyone else. i'm taking the kaisen out of the jujutsu and you can't stop me#jjk spoilers#nobara kugisaki#jujutsu kaisen#jjk 💭#my post
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twdnonsense · 2 years ago
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Genuine question, how tf did Carl always have clothes that fit him? Cause teenagers (especially teenage boys) grow like crazy and there were multiple instances throughout the show where the characters would be wearing the same clothes for weeks or months while they were out on the road.
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steelthroat · 3 months ago
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Ooooooh how I love small town politics, they're so juicy and they're no different than gossip and middle school drama.
Ah the deputy mayor that suggests they don't have any more elections because the same people have been voted for the last... 18 years?
Which is not at all illegal or anticostitutional... at all lmao????
Or why not make the small lake surfable???? *wheeze*
God it's just so funny, I'm so glad I live here for more or less than a month every year
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bl00dw1tch · 1 year ago
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You should become a muslim.
I don't ever plan on joining any kind of organized religion, because i already know that the stuff i believe won't mesh with any specific one. Um. So thanks but no thanks !
#horse.txt#i believe everything has a soul#reincarnation is real#theres no afterlife (good or bad)#so existence isn't about earning your way into a vip club in the sky#it's about collecting as many experiences as possible#good and bad big and small#kindness is natural and so is cruelty--all creatures will be inclined towards one or the other and theres no way to change that fact#so its best to just focus on whatever you can manage. no one is required to try to change the world for the better#that is an opt in activity. the natural way to live is to seek your own happiness--so if thats all you can manage#then just do that#organized religion has never worked for me; i grew up going to christian churches and i hate it#and even doing group pagan events feels off and disingenuous to me--and its strictly a Me thing its not to do with the religions themselves#though i do genuinely hate christianity with a fiery burning passion that grows with every passing day#i do not care that not all Christians are 'bad' because its becoming increasingly obvious to me that even still#being Christian Keeps those people from being as good as they COULD have been#'hate the sin love the sinner' or you could just learn to have compassion for your fellow man and quit being a debby downer#sins don't fucking exist theyre just activities that you don't like. just say thats what it is. applying morality to everything under#the sun is just semantics. you are wasting our time when we could LITERALLY be outside eating fruit and watching the clouds#grow up#sorry didnt mean to get aggressive my train of thought just does whatever sometimes
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todayisafridaynight · 1 year ago
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YEAHYEAHYEAH see I had no actual thesis and knew I must've been missing things... this is why I love writing in... you may feel like you're just restating but you always cover for my blind spots and reinforce points I'm not too confident in...
I did kind of gloss over the instances where Arakawa really had any agency though huh, but if you think about it, his love for Ichiban is what caused most of the post-timeskip events of the plot in the first place. And he had to make some of the biggest gambles of his life in sending Ichi to prison and shooting him and just hoping Ichiban would pull through okay...
Ough... that's exactly it, it's so tragic specifically because he does overcome his upbringing and even his profession, has so much heart and kindness despite or perhaps even because of it, but it just hurts him in the end :( I've always seen a sort of Kiryu-and-Mine comparison with Arakawa and Jo there with how their struggles early in life took them down completely different paths. Two came to be compassionate, altruistic people with "heroic" qualities while two came to incredibly self-reliant and jaded while treasuring the few bonds they did form deeply...
i guess it does help getting anyone to look over your thoughts, so im glad i can provide some substance when i can (❁´◡`❁)
in regards to the kiryu/mine comparison, mine and kiryu have always been interesting characters to compare for me, esp when the comparison is made so much (though that more specifically is something else to talk bout another time ig). its a fair parallel to make nonetheless :]
#snap chats#when it comes to the love relationship between ichi and arakawa its kinda funny#i cant really expand on why- i thought i had a point but i nullified Said Point when i tried to expand on it#its just an interesting subject itself i guess#onto mine and kiryu though i rambled bout it months ago but im always free to talk bout it again since it picks at my brain a lot#its an unfortunate comparison honestly. sure kiryu and mine were both orphans but they had incredibly different upbringings#after mine's father passes that's it: he's on his own henceforth. meanwhile kiryu still has the orphanage and kazama#in that he has a solid support group and thus can grow up in a loving home whereas mine obviously was neglected that#in regards to jo and arakawa i can see where that comparison comes fro#while they both had abusive parents arakawa was still able to feel that love from his father whereas jo-#as far as we know- never experienced that kind of care from anyone and didn't until joining the arakawa family in his 20's#and presuming arakawa's patriarch did treat him with some form of tenderness until The Betrayal#then yeah the comparison between mine and kiryu is pretty potent and noticeable#that despite his unfortunate start arakawa still had someone to love him meanwhile jo was mostly on his own#as is kiryu losing his parents but still having kazama and co and mine being by himself after losing his father etc etc#its all these sorts of small seemingly-inconsequential things that can really determine the outcome of someone#and thats shit always fascinates my pseudo psychologist ass
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samwisethewitch · 7 months ago
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Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group
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It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.
Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.
In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.
Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:
Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)
Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)
How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)
Gardening
Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)
Country/Rural Living:
Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)
"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)
Sewing/Mending:
Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)
Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)
Sustainability/Land Stewardship
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)
Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)
Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"
Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.
"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)
Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)
These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!
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staff · 1 year ago
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Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy
Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.
The Diagnosis
In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 
Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 
To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.
Our Guiding Principles
To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.
Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Retain and grow our creator base.
Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.
Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.
Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 
We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.
Actions & Next Steps
Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.
Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.
Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.
The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.
Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 
Actions & Next Steps
Deliver great content each time the app is opened.
Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 
Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 
Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.
Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.
Actions & Next Steps
Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.
Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 
Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.
Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 
Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 
Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 
Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.
Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  
Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.
The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.
It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.
Actions & Next Steps
Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 
Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.
Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.
Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.
Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.
Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  
Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  
Actions & Next Steps
Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.
Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  
Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 
Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 
Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.
Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.
The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.
Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.
Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 
Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.
Conclusion
Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.
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fuckingrecipes · 7 months ago
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Wait, which animals raise livestock?
Several species of ants will 'herd' aphids around (a type of plant lice)- even picking them up and putting them back with the group if they wander off. The ants will attack anything that approaches their aphid herds, defending them. The aphids produce a sugary excretion called honeydew, which the ants harvest and eat.
Some ants will even 'milk' the aphids, stroking the aphids with their antennae, to stimulate them to release honeydew. Some aphids have become 'domesticated' by the ants, and depend entirely on their caretaker ants to milk them.
When the host plant is depleted of resources and dies, the ants will pick up their herd of aphids and carry them to a new plant to feed on - a new 'pasture' if you will.
Some ants continue to care for aphids overwinter, when otherwise they'd die. The ants carry aphid eggs into their own nests, and will even go out of their way to destroy the eggs of aphid-predators, like ladybugs.
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Microhylids – or narrow-mouthed frogs - have an interesting symbiosis with Tarantulas.
While the spiders could very easily kill and eat the much-tinier frogs, and DO normally prey on small frogs, young spiders instead will use their mouthparts to pick up the microhylid frogs, bring them back to their burrow, and release them unharmed.
The frog benefits from hanging out in/around the burrow of the tarantula, because the tarantula can scare away or eat predators that normally prey on tiny frogs, like snakes, geckos, and mantids. The tarantula gets a babysitter.
Microhylid frogs specialize in eating ants, and ants are one of the major predators of spider eggs. By eating ants, the frogs protect the spider's eggs. The frogs can also lay their eggs in the burrow, and won't be eaten by the spider.
So it's less 'livestock' and more like a housepet - a dog or a cat. You stop coyotes/eagles from hurting your little dog/cat, and in return the dog/cat keeps rats away from your baby.
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Damselfish grow algae on rocks and corals. They defend these gardens ferociously, and will attack anything that comes too close - even humans. They spend much of their time weeding the gardens, removing unwanted algaes that might overtake their crop.
The species of algae that they cultivate is weak and and sensitive to growing conditions, and can easily be overgrazed by other herbivores. That particular algae tends to grow poorly in areas where damselfish aren't around to protect and farm it.
Damselfish will ALSO actively protect Mysidium integrum (little shrimp-like crustacians) in their reef farms, despite eating other similarly sized invertebrates. The mysids are filter feeders, who feed on zooplankton and free-floating algae, and their waste fertilizes the algae farms. Many types of zooplankton can feed on the algae crop, and the mysids prevent that.
While Mysids can be found around the world, the only place you'll find swarms of Musidium integrum is on the algae farms that Damselfish cultivate.
Damselfish treat the little mysids like some homesteaders treat ducks. Ducks eat snails and other insect pests on our crops, and their poop fertilizes the land. The ducks can be eaten, but aren't often, since they're more useful for their services than their meat.
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There are SEVERAL species of insect and animal which actively farm. They perform fungiculture and horticulture: deliberately growing and harvesting fungus and plants at a large-scale to feed their population.
Leaf-cutter ants and Termites both chew up plant material and then seed it with a specific type of fungus. The fungus grows, and the termites/ants harvest the mushroom as a food source.
Ambrosia beetles burrow into decaying trees, hollow out little farming rooms, and introduce a specific fungii (the ambrosia fungi), which both adults and larval beetles feed on.
Marsh Periwinkles (a type of snail) cultivates fungus on cordgrass. They wound the plant with their scraping tongue, then defecate into the wound so their preferred fungus will infect it and grow there. They let the fungus grow in the wound a bit, and come back later to eat.
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chiscaralight · 29 days ago
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cw: nsfw sukuna x fem!gamer!reader. i hc that sukuna would like prsk and dti lmfao. overstimulation. choso and gojo ver linked at the bottom!
college athlete!sukuna who spots for for the first time on the field. you’re sitting in the bleachers, alone like a loser. most people tend to come with their friends to watch them play, but even in the sweltering sun, you’re still what, playing a game on your phone? he scoffs under his breath and turns his head back to his teammates, locking in for the rest of the friendly match.
college athlete!sukuna who starts to see you everywhere, nose deep in your phone, laptop, switch, whatever it is. it pisses him off for some reason and he can’t pay attention to the group of girls trying to get his attention. what is so important about those damn games?
college athlete!sukuna who slides into the seat next to you a couple of weeks later. you don’t say anything, eyes focused down on your device while the light from your screen reflects off your thin-framed glasses. he clears his throat, but no answer from you. his brows furrow.
college athlete!sukuna who finally gets your attention once you clear the level.
“what the hell are you always playing?”
the question alone has stars sparkling in your eyes as you explain the well thought out lore of your current favorite game franchise. he rolls his eyes at first at your enthusiasm, but he ends up actually getting quite invested in the storyline.
college athlete!sukuna who lets you download games on his phone, only agreeing to play them if you teach him. it leads to a couple of days where the two of you just sit together, his thick fingers trying to maneuver the small device that infuriates him so much it makes you laugh. there’s a solution you have for that, so you tell him to come over later in the evening.
college athlete!sukuna who’s not that outdated, he has a ps5 himself. he plays a sports game with his friends once in a while, but it’s not something he’d say he does often. so he’s a little unsure when you slide the controller into his hand and nudge him to play for a bit while you go change.
college athlete!sukuna who can’t focus on the game, he’s practically undressing you with his eyes. you’re wearing such thin clothing, a slightly loose tank top, and some much too short shorts. unlike him, you’re much too concentrated on the game, missing the way he licks his lips at the sight of your thighs.
college athlete!sukuna who places the controller down practically 4 minutes after you join, claiming he has something else he wants to play.
college athlete!sukuna who ends up with his hand down your underwear, toying with your clit. he makes sure to drag his fingers up and down your slit extra slow so you can focus on your game. but you’re shifting around quite a bit, mouth ajar and eyes struggling to stay open when he slides one in. you're clenching around him a couple of times, before finally letting out a shaky moan.
college athlete!sukuna who’s managed to drag you away from your game with his tongue, fail screen displayed on the tv while his head is deep between your legs, holding your thighs apart while he eats you out. those talented fingers of yours are scratching at his scalp and tugging on his hair, pulling him closer as you start to hump his face.
college athlete!sukuna who’s a little more surprised when you ride him with such ease, your pace fast and steady while he grips the fat of your ass. his eyes are moving between your face and tits that are bouncing oh-so-well, and he just can’t help but fuck up into you, matching the rhythm you’ve set.
college athlete!sukuna who smirks at you across from the class when he sees you the next day. you’re not playing anything this time, eyes surveying the students in the lecture hall until they find his. even with your shirt covering you up so well, he knows just where all the hickeys and bite marks he left are placed, giving you a wink when he sees your smile grow.
college athlete!sukuna who comes over more often, only agreeing to actually play if his cock is sheathed in that ‘gamer pussy’ of yours. and he’ll lean you back, making sure your legs are resting on his arms while his controller is under you. you whine, telling him this isn’t a good position to play, but he retorts by telling you it’s a good position to fuck. your silence is enough for him to fling the controller away and drill into you full nelson just like he wanted to.
college athlete!sukunawho won’t tell you that he does play those games on his phone when the two of you are apart. he’s taken a special liking to one:
Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!
what? he’s an athlete. it’s brain-stimulating and it’ll help him keep up his rhythm in the field!
speaking of stimulation, college athlete!sukuna just loves to overstimulate you. he takes pride in the fact that he's one of the only things that can draw you away from an intense match, and he'll make sure you as many times as he sees fit.
college athlete!sukuna who will hand you the disc version of a game you’ve been waiting for for months but couldn’t camp out to get, claiming it wasn’t a big deal. it was actually, he stood in line for almost 8 hours and missed a class, but the way your smaller body was brimming with excitement was enough to put it behind him
college athlete!sukuna who won’t refuse your lips wrapped around his cock as a form of thanks, heavy hand pushing you further down his thick cock while your tongue struggles to move around. such a nasty thing you are, but he’s cumming in your mouth all the same when you moan around his cock.
college athlete!sukuna who suggests that you play roblox tonight while he watches. you agree, knowing it’s just a ploy for him to tell you that you're bad at outfit picking and pick up his controller (yes his, he has a designated controller now) to show you how to get first place in Dress to Impress. and he won. such a clean victory deserves a reward, right? so you’ll have to sit on his face, but not now. he’s about to start another round.
college athlete!sukuna who’s face is blank while he watches you sleep. your shirt is ridden up and your controller is barely hanging from your limp fingers. he’ll turn the console off before scooping you into his arms and depositing you in bed. he’s about to shut the door and go home, but your whiny voice calls out to him to stay.
college athlete!sukuna who bites at your shoulder softly to wake you up. he has an early practice today that he has to leave for but he wants to see you there later on. and no devices, he wants you watching him the whole time.
choso ver here!
gojo ver here!
geto ver!
another sukuna linked to this one here!
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heegyukeluv · 2 months ago
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I offer you my everything (lhs)
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pairing: heeseung x afab!reader
synopsis: You never cared about sex, until you did. You grew too afraid of it, scared of disappointing the other person or showing your inexperience. But then you met Heeseung, the hot basketball captain that stole your heart and became your biggest fantasy. 
my's note: i loved working in this so much. also i wanna emphasize that for god’s sake do not “lose” your virginity due to pressure or anything related to others. do it because you want to!! take your time, there’s no such thing as being too old for it neither need to rush. you have to enjoy it! that being said, i hope you enjoy this writing 🤭
warnings: fluff, pet names, explicit language, reader is insecure about having sex and some other things, SMUT - so minors DO NOT interact!, virginity loss, kinda pillow princess reader (she doesn’t know what to do, so she just lay down and enjoy), protected sex 💪🏻, fingering, oral sex (f. receiving), quick handjob. lmk if I missed something!
wc: 21k
NOT PROOFREAD.
taglist 💖: @yvnempire
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Entering college was your dream come true. 
There was a whole fantasy of how your life would change for the better, the new ways of seeing life, dealing with problems – new problems!, meeting new people, going to university parties, starting your adult life. Everything sounded ethereal, almost utopian, and although you were a very down-to-earth type of person, you never stopped your imagination from flowing through the excitedly new unexplored area.
You used to have a very simple and ordinary life in your hometown, going to school everyday, getting great grades, not really engaging with romantic relationships and having a normal amount of friends and people who cared about you. 
Your parents were good people but quite strict with how you should live your life. It wasn’t much of a problem because whatever they were afraid of you getting into and “losing yourself” wasn’t really your cup of tea; you never really cared about having a boyfriend or a girlfriend – and your dad vehemently explained to you how disappointed he would be if you started to date someone with no goals in life or whatever. Doing drugs was way out of your interests, but you were very curious about the whole alcohol thing. And well, you wanted to become a journalist one day, so you pretty much studied for it and made your parents proud of you.
Overall your life was very… vanilla. And a strong part of you wanted it to be a bit spicy.
Not in an exaggerated way – and you had no problem with who wanted their lives to be –, nevertheless you wanted to really live the university experience, so your first months in college were actually dreamy, especially for being away from your parents’ grip and finally trying the taste of what freedom felt like.
You met your classmates and respectives professors, you got to know better about the available clubs and how to enter them, and you met your roommate, Ryujin, which thankfully ended up having enough common interests with you to make a healthy friendship grow. 
Making friends wasn’t a big problem to you as well, because even though you normally showed a very reserved version of yourself at the beginning, people around you just fell for your charms naturally, wanting to be close to you for your aura at first and then because of how supportive and funny you were once they got to know you better. 
Now, in your second year, you already had a spot on a small group of friends, who everyday would try to meet during lunch time to catch up on things and not freak out with the amount of assignments they were dealing with. 
The conversation always flowed nicely, you never felt insecure about sharing a piece of your mind with them since they listened to you well. You were really glad to have people like that in your daily life.
However, there was a single topic that you often would shut up about to avoid being the center of attention, and the said topic was an ongoing conversation right at that moment.
“I need to get laid,” Julie, one of your closest friends, said in a very dramatic way. You forced a smile that you were pretty sure that looked very awkwardly placed on your face. 
You could feel your heart beating fast with the idea of you becoming the subject in that conversation.
“What you really need is a good night's sleep,” Yunjin added with a chuckle, patting Julie’s head who shot a slightly upset look back at her. 
“For that I need to sit on someone. Like, I can literally feel my body aching for a dick,” she explained, keeping the drama in her tone as if she was sick. There was a reason for Julie to be in the theater club afterall. 
“For God’s sake,” Yunjin muttered, rolling her eyes but not really bothered by her friend’s behavior. She was pretty much used to it at this point, and well, quite the same but with girls.
You just watched as they both bickered with each other, hoping for you to stay out the fire and wondering when that conversation would finally become just a reminiscence of your day.
There was no shame on you for being a virgin. It was quite literally your choice since having sex was your last priority during your teenage years although you had guys interested in you in that aspect.
You weren't expecting the right one, your prince charming, nor to get married before. You just never cared much about having sex, and once you started to care you never felt comfortable enough with someone to show yourself so vulnerable, so openly like sex seemed to be.
Once your university life started to kick in and attending parties became a part of your weekends, you really thought that you would finally be able to free yourself enough to have someone with you in a bed, naked, doing sexual things or whatever. But what really happened was you feeling endlessly frustrated with yourself for panicking, finding lame excuses to run away from the possibility of having sex every time a makeout session started to be a bit more intense.
Alongside that often reaction of yours, you went through a tough moment with a specific guy, one you let yourself comfortable around, leading to you one day being in his bedroom while sharing a passionate kiss. With the amount of reassurance he showed you through the whole moments you were just flirting, you thought that sharing that you never had sex before wouldn’t be a problem. He was about to undress you from your bra when you told him, and then he halted his movements, overreacting as he said “I’m no sex teacher to teach college girls how to have sex”.
You never felt so humiliated in your whole life. Not only it became a trigger but also a new thing to overthink; the fact that some guys would see you as too innocent for their sex drive, refusing to do anything with you.
Nevertheless, you were still a woman with desires, with a libido waiting to be directed and mostly, curiosity. 
Your mind would flee to dirty, lascivious places whenever you saw a character you found attractive, such as actors, singers or even real life crushes, sometimes doing the bare minimum but still sparkling in your sexual self, wetting your panties – and in those days you blamed your ovulation. 
But the moment you tried to fulfill your fantasies with real people, your body refused to relax, your mind never stopping from the constant overthinking about either disappointing or just showing how inexperienced in the practical area you were, ending up embarrassing yourself. 
Since you also never looked out for the help of your friends, none of them knew about that part of your life and you always shared a silent feeling of gratitude for the lack of their interest in that area. 
The whole theme being a main focus on conversations constantly made you pretty uncomfortable, because everyone showed to enjoy their sexual lives fully, without any problems like you.
Although you had very incredible friends that you could rely on, you couldn’t help but feel the anxiety of being judged by them, so you always opted to stay quiet or managed to redirect the discussion.
As if someone had listened to your prayers, you noticed another friend of yours – Jake – coming in your direction with a big smile, his backpack hanging loose off his shoulders and someone a bit too familiar alongside him.
You waited for them to be closer to try to recognize the strange and… Shit. 
Your breath got stuck in your airlines when you realized that the guy with Jake was Lee Heeseung.
Your eyes followed how he took a seat in front of Jake, who sat beside you. None of your friends stopped the playful argument when they both arrived at the table, and for a little while you were glad for that, because you for sure couldn’t hide your surprised face and sudden dizziness for having Heeseung that close, looking unnecessarily attractive with his usual sly grin, messy black hair and strong presence.
Heeseung was the basketball captain of your university team.
You harbored a love for sports since childhood, not in a way of being a player but a watcher. During the first weeks of college you discovered that your university had a basketball team and you got really intrigued. Since then, it became your hobby to go over and watch them practicing during your free time or just to study for a while using the sound of balls bouncing on the floor as a background.
It was during one of your study days that you first met Jake, when he accidentally threw a ball in your direction and although you safely dodged, he insisted on taking you to what he called a date, but you weren’t much interested in him like that so you two became friends. 
Jake was definitely hot, but, well… You had a big crush on the very much attractive ace of the team. 
His movements looked meticulously calculated as if he had control of every part of his body, his pretty smiley face whenever he scored a point making your heart miss a few beats, not to mention the shameless winks he gave towards the girls who were watching the match just to make them scream. His overall performance was just sensational, making you wonder if the hands that were harshly used to grip the ball would grip your hips the same way.
Yeah, one of the in real life crushes you would get wet just by thinking about.
You forced yourself to believe that you had everything under control, since crushing on Heeseung was a waste of time and a sentence to have your heart shattered. You knew about his fuckboy reputation and definitely wasn’t planning on being the talk of the week of the “lucky girl that Heeseung fucked” or anything similar, neither wanted to face the consequences of getting involved with him – the amount of gossips going around with your name would increase considerably as people would try their best to destroy your self-esteem. 
Or at least that’s what you heard from your friends, wondering for a long time if people were exaggerating just because of jealousy. 
You weren’t that desperate to lose your virginity, although the thought of losing it to Heeseung seemed quite interesting – but, again, impossible.
Heeseung's existence in your life always resembled to be like an idol. Not in a sense of you idolizing him, but as someone you were intrigued by, loving to watch him by far, never getting close enough given that nothing could even happen between you two, especially because how would two different worlds collide like that? 
So in your own defense of how your body was reacting, no one prepared you to be so close to him without a previous warning, even with the fact that Jake was friends with Heeseung. Your brain just insisted on forgetting that eventual possibility.
“What are you guys talking about?”
And then you really panicked.
You also forgot that Jake was pretty much a gossiper and would rather know what the table was talking about instead of bringing another new subject to it. And now there was Heeseung sitting with all of you, making it harder to breathe and to focus on any other thing. You could feel the sweat dampening your armpits, the idea of you having to talk about your sexual life haunting you to death at that moment.
“Me getting laid,” Julie answered with a cheeky smile. 
“Oh,” Jake was taken back with her quick and honest response, you could notice by the way he slightly widened his eyes. Heeseung just laughed. And what a pretty fucking laugh. 
“Don’t act like you never fucked in your life, Jake,” Yunjin said narrowing her eyes skeptically, adding to the fuel.
You felt your cheeks and the top of your ears burning. And not only that, there was a very intense gaze right towards you that you refused to look up to meet. The scrunched napkins on the table looked way more interesting than anything else at that moment.
“I’m still not used to all your… Openness,” he motioned with his hands as he explained. You mentally cursed Jake’s oblivious self for giving Julie the right words for her to be even more blatant in her dramatic speech. 
“Oh boy, I really wish I’d be open–” 
“Julie!” Yunjin now screamed flabbergasted with Julie’s audacity, laughing loudly and smacking her friend's shoulder while you hid yourself in your hands, fully embarrassed. You couldn’t hold back a small, kind of a relieved laugh because the topic apparently was about to end.
You heard Heeseung chuckling with them and decided to search for his eyes just to meet them already on you, shamelessly checking you out. You instantly avoided his not a little soft glances at your chest and lips, but not with enough time to fail to perceive how he bit his bottom lip while still smiling.
“Care to present your friend?” Yunjin directed the question to Jake when she stopped laughing.
“I thought you already knew Heeseung,” Jake sounded confused.
“We do, but I don’t know if Y/N do,” she explained, pointing to you.
Now every pair of eyes on the table was on you and normally that wasn’t a big deal, you loved the attention your friends gave whenever you were the one speaking. But Heeseung being the owner of one of those pairs made it difficult for you not to blush harder.
“O–oh,” you damned yourself for stuttering, swallowing nothing. “I actually know him too, yeah. I– I watch the uni basketball practices sometimes.” You tried to sound cool, forcing a very awkward smile, but your voice was so obviously nervous you just wished no one would notice. 
However, Heeseung’s lips curved into a smirk told you that he, at least, noticed. And was enjoying seeing you so flustered.
“I’ve seen you there a few times”, it was his first words since he sat with your group, his voice sounding quite different from when you normally heard him – screaming in the basketball court with his teammates to hype them up. 
Your heartbeat was loud inside your chest, and you wondered if the reason behind was because of Heeseung’s intense presence, or how dreamy his voice sounded, or the fact that he had perceived you in his games. All the options sounding very unnecessarily smitten to you, who usually knew your place, grounded with your feelings, but apparently not with Heeseung and his charming face.
Jake nodded, smiling cutely at you. But not a cutely you enjoyed seeing; it was a mischievous grin. You gulped.
“Heeseung insisted on sitting with us today, saying he wants to get to know you better,” Jake nudged your shoulder with his’, wiggling his eyebrows while the girls hummed teasingly at you.
You widened your eyes, your cheeks with a tone of red spreading all over. You noticed Heeseung’s cherry colored lips still with a petty grin, his eyes slightly hooded as he faced you. That alone was enough to get yourself worked up, sending signals directly to your cunt. 
You literally clenched around nothing just because Heeseung smirked at you while holding eye contact.
Of course you would react like a teen that just got a confession from her crush mixed with a pervert that never had sex in her life and got horny by little things – which, in part, was true.
Nevertheless, hearing Heeseung laugh along with Jake’s next words completely dashed your hopes and your arousal away. 
“I’m joking. It’s funny and cute how you always react with things like this.”
You now had to blink a few times to recompose yourself just enough to fake a smile, trying not to demonstrate that your panties were a bit damp and you, frustrated.
“Not funny to play with a girl's feelings, Jake,” Julie uttered when she noticed your slight discomfort.
Now it was the time to take your realistic persona and act out of the situation, as you pulled your best facial expression in order to cover your kind of hurted heart. “There are no feelings,” you urged to say with a forced laugh, failing to notice Heeseung’s smile dropping for a second. “Yeah, it’s funny now, but I’m pretty sure you were on the verge of crying when I refused to go with you on that date,” you cocked your head with a raised eyebrow facing Jake, watching his expression contort in all the five stages of grief at once, his lips parted with widen eyes at the end.
“You’re mean,” he whined and you laughed.
“Only for you,” and you gave him a little wink before standing up and gathering all your things on the table to put back on your backpack. “I gotta go now, see ya later?” You looked at your girl friends who just nodded and said a cute goodbye to you, avoiding eye contact with Heeseung as you did so.
As you made your way to your upcoming class, your mind automatically flooded with thoughts about what just happened; you yourself questioning for how long you would be able to hide your inexistent sexual life from your friends, or even if you should keep doing it, due the fact that they could help you get over your insecurities and apprehensions.
Besides, it was becoming quite unbearable to cope with the frustration of wanting, yearning, and desiring, yet never being able to make a move beyond it.
And since when would Heeseung pay genuine attention to you? You couldn’t deny that even with your head making sure to remind you of the unrealistic nature of things happening with Heeseung, your feelings seemed to have been crushed in a very hurtful way.
There was a part of you that believed a bit in the fantasy of him being a very warm and approachable guy who would do cute things with you, respect your space and time and also be the one who you have sex with. 
On the other hand, you constantly reinforced the thought of being impossible and somehow weird. You felt weird. Like a true pervert of some kind. 
You spent the whole class thinking about what Jake said and how Heeseung's eyes wandered your features with something very similar to what you saw in some other guys. Desire. 
But at that point you comprehended that your mind had started to like to make things up. Jake was lying after all.
You just wished for your sentiments and needs to vanish quickly, or at least for you to be able to replace the person. In any case, you decided to avoid the basketball court for a few days. 
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Not showing up to watch the team’s practice and games did not prevent you from running into Heeseung almost everyday, which was the main reason behind your decision – to get over your silly little crush on him.
Apparently fate had other plans for you and you honestly didn’t know how to feel. Heeseung began to be part of your group hangouts alongside Jake, now being a regular presence to the point where your friends would frequently ask his whereabouts, as if everyone in the group suddenly grew a liking for him.
And honestly, you couldn’t blame them. Apart from your tangled, weird feelings that for sure had something to do with how you envisioned him, Heeseung revealed to be a genuine sweet, caring person, easily breaking parts of your pre-concept about his stereotypes. 
His “player” aura was fading little by little, even though his confident demeanor kept its place on his every move.
Heeseung had gleaming eyes shooting you the most flirtatious, intense gaze, with equal glistened lips adorning the most endearing smirk, enough to make you lose your words, to lose your mind. Not to mention how often his body leaned towards yours in order to give you full attention.
Heeseung would cock his head and glance at your lips whenever you were the one speaking, simple behaviors messing you over and over, tempting you to dive into the pool of the unexplored, the so lustful field you never let yourself do a proper investigation, too afraid of surrendering to your feelings and needs.
The more you got to know him, the harder it became to dismiss the growing admiration and longing feeling running all over your body. Heeseung wasn’t just some fleeting crush anymore. He became something you couldn’t name yet, still fuzzing your mind, the crawling sensation on your skin wanting more and more of whatever he had to offer – just a look, just a smile, just some words, just some gentle brush of skins. Anything. 
At some point your chest started to palpitate just by the mention of his name, your blood running cold instantly as your whole posture changed, terrified of someone knowing about your feelings, about your dirtiest thoughts, about how he would visit your dreams at night to show you how much you craved his body. 
God, you were so fucked up, so desperate, and nonetheless, hesitant.
Something strongly held you back, even with Heeseung’s attempts to become closer to you, asking direct questions to you, trying nonstop to get to know you better, just like Jake once told you he wanted to.
You never let him in. Not openly, not with your words, not in front of him – you refused to risk having a broken heart because Heeseung was simply being his normal self and you, seeing beyond his charming facade.
Heeseung had occupied a spot in your mind from day one, ever since his damp, sweaty hair stuck on his forehead together with a cocky smile seemed way too attractive to your eyes and you began to pay more attention to his existence. That was true. But you only allowed him to do his proper mess inside your head after de-idolizing him; after the looks he gave to every other girl started to have you as the main target, after his hands “accidentally” brushed on yours during your moments sitting side by side sending shivers throughout your body, after he questioned about how you day have been and actually paid attention to your answer, your stomach doing flips every time.
Heeseung was now part of your thoughts because he showed genuine affection and worry about you, without you asking for it. And alongside all of that, he was so fucking and unnecessarily hot.
But what if all of this was just a game? Just another girl he messes around with, playing with her feelings just because he can. Just because he's attractive and you're foolishly falling for him…? 
…Falling for him?
“Stop overthinking,” Sunoo’s voice cut your roam of thoughts as he appeared out of nowhere, dropping his books on the table before sitting across you in the library, catching you totally off guard. 
“Damn it, Sunoo!” You nearly screamed, covering your mouth to restrain it, ignoring the librarian's angry glare.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” he chuckled softly. “But your frown is screaming at me, what’s on your mind?”
“Ahm, just some media ethics stuff, y’know–”
“Cut that off, sweetie. I’m not asking about your studies. You know that. I’m asking about your frown, your overthinking frown,” he said, gently pressing his finger on your forehead. “What’s really going on in there?”
You sighed. 
The two of you had met in your first year when you realized you shared almost all your classes. Since then, Sunoo had become one of your closest friends – the trustworthy one, the always-down-for-anything one, and also the one who worried about you the most. He was a comforting presence, someone you could rely on to listen to your concerns and anxieties without judgment.
Still, despite this, you felt nervous. Your eyes darted around searching for any eavesdroppers, a few students scattered throughout the library, deeply focused on their studies, oblivious to your conversation. Yet your tense nerves inhibited you from sharing your true worries as you opened and closed your mouth a few times without being able to talk.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Sunoo asked softly, eyes offering you comfort as he held your hands and caressed them.
You nodded, watching his body instantly lifting up from his seat to help you grab your things and his own, snatching your hand with his to drag you around the campus until you found a quiet place near some trees. 
“Go ahead, sweetie,” Sunoo said as he leaned in one of the trees, watching your gaze avoiding his and your cheeks reddening a bit.
“I’m having some troubles, personal problems, if I’m being honest…” Sunoo said nothing, just nodded his head in a reassuring way although you weren’t looking at him. “It’s–” you gulped. Your mind screaming at you to shut up, because you were certain he would make fun of you. Sunoo, the guy who always had people crushing on, definitely would not understand what you are going through. You searched for his eyes, just to find them filled with compassion. “I’m–” You shut your eyes searching for the best way of saying. “I’m a virgin,” you blurted out in a low tone, your face burning with embarrassment as you refused to open your eyes. 
However, Sunoo's nonchalant reaction took you by surprise. “Okay, and?” Then you blinked a few times, trying to comprehend the lack of judgment. This was not what you prepared yourself for. “What’s the problem?” He sounded genuinely confused with your dumbfounded expression. “That’s all? I mean, if it’s really bothering you we can talk through it, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, sweetie…”
“So… You think that’s normal for a college girl to be a virgin? You don’t think it’s something to be weird or to be asham–”
“My dear Y/N,” he cut you off by holding your head softly to look directly into his eyes. “First of all there’s no such thing as what's normal or not normal when it comes to many things. Also, please never let someone make you feel ashamed of who you are or how you’ve chosen to live your life, ok?” Your honest reaction was to stare at Sunoo in astonishment. “Promise me, Y/N.”
“I promise,” your voice was muffled since he was holding you still.
“Now spill the real tea, because I’m pretty sure this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
So you vented out about everything running through your mind, your worries, your genuine curiosity mixed with a fear, how you were aching for something you were too afraid of getting – or letting yourself to get. 
Relief ran throughout your body, as Sunoo made you comfortable enough to go subject by subject in order to help you name all of your nameless and confused feelings, including to situate where your expectations were set. You wanted your first time to be enjoyable, that’s for sure, so you had to be with someone who would help you erase your turbulent thoughts by reassuring you regularly – a one night stand type of thing was not an option, you realized with Sunoo. 
You shared your apprehension on disappointing with your lack of experience, and to that Sunoo settled your nerves by saying “If the person respects you, you don’t have to worry about that,” and you discovered another name for what you wanted. 
The anguish of not knowing what to do or where to go was slowly diminishing every time you labeled what previously you were able to describe only as a ‘bittersweet feeling of panic and desire’. 
You also didn’t need to directly mention Heeseung, Sunoo himself brought his name after connecting the obvious dots of the said crush being Heeseung, especially since his glances at you and your reactions to it were anything but subtle.
“Don’t have to worry about that either, sweetie. I don’t think any of the others noticed it, they’re too oblivious sometimes,” Sunoo calmed you down after you almost cried due to your embarrassment of someone noticing your messed up self. 
Something Sunoo said reverberated throughout your day as well. “You will always be a virgin if you don’t have sex. And if you’re afraid of having sex because you’re a virgin, it’s an unsolved paradox.”
Your talk with Sunoo eased your mind, but also introduced a whole new scenery of thoughts – gladly not anxious one. You were depriving yourself of your own pleasure, of your own desire. And perhaps the real reason was because you feared… liking it. 
So after a good night of sleep, you decided to head out to your favorite place during your free time: the basketball court. Not necessarily to watch anything – or someone in particular, but to ponder what you had going through your head the whole night ever since Sunoo’s advices and sweet, reassuring words. 
Of course your choice of place would lead you to probably bump into a specific someone, and part of you really hoped for that.
While you drank your iced coffee, you wondered if Sunoo was being serious when he said that the talk about Heeseung in most cases was disconnected with reality. He didn’t explain much about it, but what he said was enough to intrigue you.
“Hey,” a far, but known voice snapped you out of your trance, and instantly your whole body heated.
You watched Heeseung jogging in your direction, panting a big, sweat dripping off his temples and his arms in display for you since he was wearing a sleeveless shirt.
“It’s been a while since I last saw you here,” he said, shooting you a small smile, easily walking through the seats by skipping them with his long legs until he got closer. 
“Yeah, I’ve been a bit busy,” you answered, fighting yourself not to tremble and to avoid glazing your eyes on his body, the team’s uniform looking gorgeous in contrast with his skin tone.
“Missed you, Y/N,” Heeseung talked with a gentle voice, his usual sparkly eyes growing wide as he realized what he just said. “I mean, I missed you being around, y’know,” he tried to play it cool and due to your nervous self, you barely noticed he was going through the same emotion.
He was so attractive, and for some reason the mix of his perfume with his sweat inebriated your air lines, making it a little difficult to breathe. 
Little did you know that Heeseung was in a similar state, lost in how cute you looked that day, your comfy outfit and the single ponytail doing your face features justice by letting them shine with a natural beauty you carried confidently.
Heeseung noticed you on the very first day you appeared to watch a game. He normally paid little to no real attention to who watched his practice, the flirty glances and winks thrown at the crowd usually was just for fun and no one in particular, but your sudden appearance was overwhelming, his stomach did flips and his so focused self was faltering before your presence. 
He had to take a good, long, cold shower after in the locker room to try to get over his exaggerated reactions. How does one get his heart pounding so fast, hands sweating and distracted concentration just because they are good looking?
He for sure knew plenty of attractive people, but none got his heart aching and his body craving like you did. 
“I’m sorry, I know I’m the team’s lucky charm,” you acted out of your bubble a bit. That would be a normal saying by you, actually. But around Heeseung you worked differently, actions more withdrawn than ever, flustered by the fact that his focus was on you, and only you. 
You barely had any moments alone with Heeseung, most of the time some friend of yours was engaged in the conversation as well, so to talk directly to him without having another person to cover up your nervous state was pretty difficult, especially by the way he held eye contact on you, as he was reading every bare piece of you.
“Yeah, I really don’t know what to do without you,” Heeseung put his hand on his heart dramatically as he said and you blushed, pushing his shoulder and avoiding looking at his face. 
And well, he wasn’t lying. 
Your constant attendance, whether to really pay attention to what was happening or just to quietly study as you regularly did, threw his mind into chaos. Heeseung had to physically restrain himself from jumping across the seats to ask for your number at first, your aura seeming a bit coy to him – not in an off putting way, but in a way that made him think you deserved someone better than what he could offer. Alongside that, he believed there was no way a hot, beautiful and smart girl like you would pay any attention to him.
It wasn't like Heeseung was insecure, he knew his strengths and how to work with them. A line of girls would eagerly wait for a chance to spend a night with him, though he never went that far with many of them, choosing carefully who he led to his room or allowed in his life.
Nevertheless, the feeling of having that kind of attention was addicting. To feel desired by them fed his ego, he never denied that. 
That alone convinced Heeseung that you, out of all his options, would never let him taste a crumb of what he really wanted from you.
And then there was the moment he got to know about Jake being friends with you. 
His instincts told him to give up, but he had to try, a demeanor similar to a man who never saw a woman in his life before, just to get a little bit of whatever you would give to him.
Heeseung grew obsessed with your presence, with you. Yet never bold enough to do much about it, too afraid of your so certain rejection. Then you suddenly disappeared and he missed you like crazy, to the point of befriending your friends simply to have a bit of your presence in his daily life.
To get you know better did no good to his health at all. He got enthralled by your sarcastic, funny personality, your endearing laughs and genuine love for your friends, spilling through your actions and words, always supporting them without losing your humor. 
Heeseung got a small taste of how it feels to have you around and he grew addicted – even more than for the feeling of being desired by many, more thrilling than the praise for his performance or the rush of winning a game. At the end of the day, Heeseung wanted your attention and your praises. 
After realizing it, he decided to step up on his game.
“So…” Heeseung cleared his throat after your silence. “Are you free later?” 
The question itself had nothing openly implied, just a normal, simple and direct ask. But God, why did your heart started to beat so fast? Why did your face felt like fire burning all over it?
You forced yourself to meet Heeseung's gaze, his eyes filled with anticipation and eagerness, just like your reply could change the whole path of his life. 
“Ahm, yeah, kinda. Why?”
You watched as his expression lighted up and how he tried to hold back his smile while scratching the back of his neck. Spotting Heeseung apparenting to be nervous ignited a different, sudden feeling inside you, as if you now understood that you affected him in some way. Or that he was a very good actor. 
“I was wondering if you would like to come over to my place– We’re going to throw a small party, so it’d be cool to have you there,” he nodded to himself, proud for not stuttering at all. When did inviting a girl to a party become that hard?
Unfortunately for him, you paid close attention to his behavior and body language, how he avoided looking at your eyes even though he was the king of maintaining eye contact while speaking and how his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as if he swallowed hard. All the pieces together put you in a new position, one that you felt confident enough to play on his game. 
“A party, huh?” You showed him a smile before biting your bottom lip and tilting your head to the side, as if you were thinking about his invitation, Heeseung’s eyes catching every movement and your eyes catching his not a bit subtle glances. “I’ll try to fit you in my schedule.” 
And you gave him a wink as you stood up to go back to your dorm without waiting for a response, knowing that your sudden courage would not last long to keep it going, not even realizing you left Heeseung in a total speechless form.
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Attending a party alone was not something common to your lifestyle at all, same as accepting going on one just because of an acquaintance of yours. 
Usually your friends – Yunjin or Sunoo, in particular – would be the ones to tag you along, since you liked to go out but never got that extroverted side to be directly invited; you didn’t even bother to care much, because as said before, your friends were the ones in charge to lead you to the places.
In addition to that, not only would you have a company so you would not feel alone, but also a friend nearby to look after you – though your alcohol tolerance was pretty high, you didn’t trust yourself to make sound decisions sober, let alone drunk.
Later on, Heeseung messaged you saying you could invite the girls and Sunoo, but to your misfortune and as if fate was tricking you, all of them had other plans and left you hanging this time. Yunjin encouraged you to go by yourself, since Jake would probably be there as well as Heeseung, so you gathered all the courage you had left and decided to go.
Nevertheless, Heeseung wasn’t necessarily your friend yet. 
You both shared information about each other during the time he hung out with you and your friend group, enough for you to know his degree and some of his life interests like favorite movies, music and the fact he was a chronic gamer. 
Whilst you didn’t trust him enough to have your back if needed to, there was something on the way he oftenly treated you that broke down your doubtful barriers with ease, not only by his respectful manners but also by his desirable glances. Heeseung would look at you with a perfect mix of endearment and craving, like he wanted you so bad he would do anything, but never crossing the line, waiting for you to make the first move.
It was reassuring in some type of way, to feel wanted and at the same time, respected. Upon this conclusion, you felt confident enough to cross the opened door and to enter the house, hearing the loud music boosting through the speakers as a bunch of people danced to it, some of them seeming way too drunk already. 
The fluttering sensation in your stomach showed you not only the fear of being by yourself, but mostly the obvious, expected acknowledgment you would eventually bump into Heeseung. 
Before you could walk your way to the kitchen to get something to drink – a shot of courage, maybe, someone gave you a sudden bear hug and by the drunken voice you noticed it was Jake.
“You came!” 
“Yeah!” You answered with the same pitch, hugging him back, relieved that your whole internal dilemma ended quickly. Or you thought so. “You look kinda drunk,” you stated the obvious with a sarcastic tone, sly smile at him when he pulled out of the hug.
Jake literally giggled as a response and wrapped his free arm around your shoulder, dragging you around, his other hand occupied holding his cup. 
“Let me introduce you to my friends, you introduced me to yours so it’s only fair if I do the same, right?” You laughed at his very slurred words, as well as how cute he sounded having his cheeks flustered due to the alcohol. 
However, when you realized that he was leading you to his friends – and Heeseung was his friend – you almost froze, stumbling a little on your legs while your whole body tensed. You damned Jake for not letting you take your shot of courage before.  
“No need to be nervous,” Jake murmured close to your ear, his hands resting now on your waist as he continued to walk with you. The distance wasn’t that far, but Jake kept stopping to greet everyone along the way so it took you both double the time.  
“I’m not–”
“You’re doing the face you do when you’re nervous,” he pointed out.
“Am I that easy to read?” You let out an awkward chuckle, feeling shy at how transparent your reactions were. 
“Yeah,” he replied, causing you to now genuinely laugh at his sincerity. “You’ll like them. They already like you. Heeseung doesn’t shut up about you, so they're already familiar with who you are.”
What?
You had no time to think about his words or even react properly, a bunch of new friendly smiles greeting you.
“This is Sunghoon and Jay,” Jake indicated with his fingers to the ones sitting on the couch in the corner of the room. “The two over there are Riki and Jungwon,” Jake pointed with the hand that held his cup to the two who were standing and talking with each other, but when their names were mentioned they looked at you with curiosity. “And Heeseung you already know, but I don’t know where he is.”
Part of you felt relieved by Heeseung's absence, while another part was somewhat disappointed.
“Hey, you must be Y/N,” the one you understood as being Jay stood up to greet you with a hug, followed by Sunghoon.
“Enjoying the party so far?” The taller one asked, looking you directly into your eyes. You showed him a gentle smile as you answered.
“I kinda just arrived, so…” Sunghoon nodded, mouthing an ‘oh’ and sitting again on the couch although his gaze kept focused on you. You shook your head when he silently asked if you wanted to sit as well. “But I can say the music is pretty nice. Whoever chose the playlist has a good taste.”
“Thanks.”
You weren’t expecting to feel Heeseung’s presence close, right behind you. His sweet yet low voice making you shiver, a weird feeling tingling your skin. 
“I chose the playlist.”
You gulped down your flustered self to turn around and address your attention to him, just to meet his signature flirty expression, this time a little more… softened. He shamelessly checked you out, eyes sparkling in interest as he tried to hold back his smile, disguising it with a small smirk.
His outfit took your breath away, as he wore a black dress shirt that had the first two buttons open and a beautiful silver chain necklace contrasting his slightly tanned skin, every move of his tempting you to see what was underneath the clothing piece. 
You saw how Heeseung’s Adam's apple moved up and down before he raised an eyebrow playfully when his eyes landed on your face again. 
He paid attention to the way your cheeks turned into a soft shade of red that he was sure wasn't just because of your makeup blush, and damn, how could you look so hot with black skirt and an oversized black shirt? Your legs in full display to him to savor. 
“You look pretty,” he complimented you, sincerity and a taste of desire evident in his tone. You smiled shyly, feeling a warm blush rise to your cheeks.
“Oh, thank you. You look great yourself,” you replied, and although you felt flustered for being that close to Heeseung, you didn’t hesitate to maintain eye contact, focusing the most you could not to falter. 
Heeseung chuckled, his hands dipped in his pockets as he straightened his posture, quickly averting from your gaze before coming back to look at you again. 
So gorgeous, his heart was beating unnecessarily fast just by seeing you and even faster because of your compliment.
“I’m glad to hear that, y’know, I was hoping to make a good impression,” the alcohol in his system made him a bit bolder than he normally was around you, his body leaning subtly closer to yours, his eyes taking the typical glances at your lips.  
You huffed a flustered laugh, looking at him through your eyelashes. “You– You don’t have to try that hard, though,” you tried to speak confidently, and you actually did it, biting your lips as a way of restraining yourself from literally jumping on that hot, attractive, charming, man.
The little giggling noises behind your back made you aware that you were not alone with Heeseung to be that fearless, so you took a step back, suddenly feeling hesitant. 
“You think so?” Heeseung, on the other hand, didn’t care about his friends, maintaining his flirty aura as he stepped closer to you, a playful grin adorning the corner of his glistening lips. However, he quickly caught the slight discomfort in your posture and decided to give you some space, backing off. “Well, next time I’ll just let my natural charm do the work, then,” he winked at you and casually sat on the couch arm beside Jay and Sunghoon.
You felt a bit out of your place, your wobbly legs not letting you do much and you awkwardly self not knowing exactly what to do. Jake was long gone already, lost in the sea of people while the other boys chatted between themselves. You stood near to the wall next to the other couch arm, engaging in the conversation as they asked you a few things in order to make you feel included. Eventually, Jungwon and Riki joined as well, bringing you a drink, and you got to know all of them better. 
Throughout the entire time, Heeseung wasn’t subtle with his glances, eyeing you up and down, taking his sweet time appreciating your bare thighs and your lips whenever you spoke. And even when you caught him staring, he didn’t flinch, full of confidence, biting his lower lip just to wet it with his tongue right after, definitely not paying attention to their friends talking.
So excessively hot. 
Heeseung was torn between awe and frustration. Having you so close, yet so out of reach was killing him inside – he wished for you to take the obvious hints he was giving of being so down to kiss you, his body aching in despair. 
And he grew even more desperate and frustrated when Jungwon boldly asked you, “Do you wanna go dance with me?” 
Heeseung watched the subtle surprise in your expression as your eyes flicked to him briefly, missing the silent plea for him to repeat what Jungwon had just said.
Still, you hesitated for another reason. Normally one of your friends would push you out of your shell to do what you wanted to, but were afraid of. But not only Jungwon's cute smile got into your heart, you also thought to yourself it was time to make your own decisions, even the simple ones like accepting or not a dance.
“Sure,” you agreed, grabbing the hand he offered you, following him to the makeshift dance floor. 
Heeseung’s eyes couldn’t drift away from how your body moved with Jungwon’s precise lead, your hips synchronized with the rhythm, your happy smile lip syncing the song together with Jungwon. He watched his friend get closer to you to whisper something in your ear, making you laugh brightly, wishing to be the one to make you feel that way, to touch, to have you like that.
Heeseung was growing jealous of Jungwon’s demeanor around you, having his hands confidently resting on your waist, guiding you through the music with ease, whispering things he wished so badly to know what it was.
He knew he was shameless staring, Sunghoon mocking his reactions as he scoffed and rolled his eyes, annoyed by the sight of another man touching you.
“Why are Jungwon’s hands roaming all over her body like that?” He asked without taking you out of his sight.
“They’re just dancing, relax.” Sunghoon smiled playfully.
“Jungwon is just being nice to her,” Riki pointed out. “They share a few things in common and they both like to dance, so it was just a convenient situation, y’know? Nothing to worry about.” Riki tapped his friend’s shoulder.
“We all know the girl’s yours,” Jay said.
“She’s not mine.” 
Yet, Heeseung completed it on his mind, but his friends knew all too well about that too.
On your side of the story, despite the warmth of Jungwon’s company, you couldn’t ignore the weight of Heeseung’s gaze, taking a glimpse once and a while of his so unreadable expression. You couldn’t figure out if it was anger or envy or desire or frustration, Heeseung showed you a mix of everything and, God, you wanted so badly for him to do something.
“Heeseung is looking at me like he’s going to kill me,” Jungwon whispered in your ear, and you laughed nervously. 
“I hope he doesn't, you’re too nice and young to die.”
Jungwon chuckled at your response, and then noticed how your body tensed up suddenly. He followed your eyes and you both watched Heeseung’s tall figure standing up and walking towards you two. 
“Mind if I cut in?” Heeseung’s voice was smooth, just like him. Your heart started to race too fast when Jungwon handed you to Heeseung.
“She’s all yours,” Jungwon winked, saying a quick goodbye to you and heading back to his friends. 
Even with now being just the two of you, Heeseung didn’t touch you without your permission, partly because he was scared of not being able to control himself at all. He blinked a few times waiting for you to take the lead and his breath hitched when your hands went directly to rest on his shoulders. 
You gave him a reassuring look, allowing him to touch you, and nearly melted when his fingers found their place on your waist, caressing the place gently as he slowly moved you both to the music. Every so often, your eyes would meet and each time you couldn’t help but blush and smile shyly before quickly looking away, Heeseung thinking how precious you seemed acting like that. 
“Don’t get me wrong,” you started saying after the silence of your voices. “I’d love to dance with you a bit more, but I have to be honest, my social battery is pretty drained already,” your lips curved into a small, apologetic pout.
“Do you wanna go home?” He asked softly, bold hands now moving a bit more freely on your body. You shook your head, since going home equaled being away from his embrace. “Do you wanna get out of here?” You nodded cutely and he smiled, endeared by your behavior. “Come with me,” he said and kindly held your hand to lead you away from the party, not before stepping briefly in the kitchen to grab you both a drink.
Heeseung took you to the back of the house, being one of the owner’s he knew all the places where people could and couldn’t be, so a big part of you felt relieved for not having to deal with a crowd overwhelming your senses. 
“You look quite tired,” he uttered with a hint of concern, as you both walked slowly through the backyard, way less people scattered through it as you just followed him without thinking much about it, focusing on your drink.
“Yep, I think I overworked my social battery today,” you answered with a chuckle. “But it was pretty fun, though. Your friends are really cool.”
“They are.”
You both stopped walking at some point, Heeseung nodded his head towards the low wall that surrounded the house for you both to sit on it, a very peaceful, quiet place to run away from the party chaos. 
“What about you?” You asked curiously, tilting your head to catch his profile before he turned to face you.
“Hm?”
“You don’t seem to be the type to just sit back and watch the party,” you stated, swinging your legs as you finished your drink. 
“Yeah? What do you think I should be doing then?” Heeseung raised an eyebrow, intrigued by your perception about him.
“I don’t know,” you shrugged, averting your eyes to anything but him when you said. “Banging with someone?”
“What!?” Heeseung exasperated, as if he was really offended. You laughed out loud with his extremely exaggerated reaction. “Is that what you think of me, Y/N?” 
“Well, y’know, it’s kind of hard to think otherwise. Your reputation doesn't help much,” you explained and forced your best innocent look when your eyes rested on him again. You tried so hard not to laugh at his very deeply offended expression. 
“I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t think I’m the person you think I am,” he huffed a laugh, biting his lips right after to glaze his eyes on you. “Don’t even know when was the last time I– Sorry,” he quickly interrupted himself with an embarrassed smile. “I might’ve overshared a bit.” 
You shook your head, smiling away your fluster. “You’re fine. But it's still hard to believe.”
“You should ask my friends, then!” He was really trying to defend himself in this one. “Ask Jake!”
“And he’ll tell me what? That you have a long list of women you hooked up with?” You teasingly wigged your eyebrows, nudging him playfully.
“God, no,” he whined and you laughed at his adorable frustration.
You didn’t know it was this fun to tease Heeseung.
“How do I put this… Mhm,” he looked away, suddenly flustered. You were slightly surprised by his demeanor. It was the first time you witnessed Heeseung being something similar to shy. “I like to kiss,” your eyes grew wide and now was your time to be nervous. “So when I go to parties, I might be found kissing someone if I’m really in the mood, but just because I like to kiss, y’know?” He continued, shrugging, trying his best not to sound crazy to you. “And what I’ve noticed is that the people that I kiss, turn a simple makeout into something more when they talk about it, which almost never really happens if I’m being honest,” he paused. “I can count on my fingers how many women I’ve actually taken to my room.”
You swallowed hard, almost audibly gulped, a mix of sensations running throughout your body with his confessions. 
“And I also enjoy the flirting, y’know. Their reactions flatters my ego,” this time he was so obviously teasing you after he noticed your embarrassment, finding it adorable how your cheeks got painted red.
You rolled your eyes, pushing his shoulders in annoyance as he laughed. “I’m not joking, though,” he added. “But once I’m committed, I give up on all of that because I can only think about the person I’m liking.”
All that new information sent your brain into overdrive, unnecessarily attractive the way Heeseung’s voice got low at the end, as if he was telling you a secret, a lustful secret, shivers running all over your spine and you having no idea of what to do. You tried hard not to read between the lines. If you did, you would pick up on the message wrongly, because there was no way he was genuinely hitting on you.
“I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable,” Heeseung hurried to say, his eyes softening on you. 
“No,” you shook your head, chuckling. “I’m just… surprised. Didn’t expect you to be this open,” you admitted, your nervousness waving away from your body, feeling a bit more at ease around him. He still carried his cocky, flirty, charming aura, but now with a taste of honesty you appreciated. 
“I just wanted you to know me, instead of what people say about me,” Heeseung confessed with a tender smile. You nodded, glad for his sincerity. 
You both fell into a comfortable silence, the muffled noise of the party still going serving as a background. Heeseung was so terribly desperate to touch you again, his hands hesitantly hovering yours, yet never really touching it, as you obliviously looked at the scenery surrounding you, the trees throbbing by the quiet breeze relaxing your senses while you took a few deep breaths. 
“Do you wanna go back inside or…?” Heeseung sweet voice eagerly broke the silence, attracting your attention. He was hungry for you, even without tasting you before. His eyes were dripping honey as he watched you consider your options for a bit, pursed lips with a slightly frown.
The peaceful atmosphere embraced you, not only by the cool weather but also Heeseung’s calm, sweet, yet strong presence. You looked through your eyelashes at the adorable bambi eyes that waited anxiously for your answer, blinking slowly. Something has shifted in the air between you two, and surprisingly your body was relaxed with the possible outcome, your heartbeats strong in your chest.
“I’m fine here, actually. What about you? Do you wanna go back?” Your voice sounded way softer than you expected, and just then you realized how close Heeseung’s face was to yours, his alcohol breath mingling with yours mixed with the scent of his cologne, sending you into a trance. 
Your eyes naturally wandered through his beautiful facial features, his cute nose, his sparkly eyes, the little mole on his forehead, and of course, the oh, so kissable lips, tempting you so badly. You never had Heeseung that close to you, and he was so fucking breathtaking.
“No,” Heeseung replied under the same tone as yours. You observed how he hesitantly raised his hand near your face to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, chills running through your body with the light touch. 
Heeseung took your reaction of not backing off as a green sign, so he jumped off of his seat to place himself between your legs, your sweet perfume intoxicating him as he looked up at you. Instead of going for a kiss as you expected him to do, he gulped and just hugged you by the waist, his face resting on your chest as you heard him taking a deep, long breath. 
Your confused self tried to go with the flow, awkwardly caressing his dark hair, hugging him back. You didn’t understand what he was aiming for, and neither did he, to be honest. He suddenly felt so nervous he forgot how to act, and he realized your presence calmed him down so a hug looked just as right as a kiss.
However, you now were the one growing impatient. “Hee?” You called by his nickname, to which he answered with a muffled “Hm?”, loving the way it sounded in your voice.
“Do you want me to get down so we can kiss?” You audaciously asked, ignoring how hot your cheeks felt right after.
“Please,” he whispered as he parted away from you just to help you to get down, his hand rushing to grab you by the waist while the other cupped your cheek, every touch, every eye contact being so genuinely gentle. 
Your fingers traced up from Heeseung’s chest until they reached his nape to scratch the area at the same time you pulled him closer, and closer. His stomach did a flip with how much he was needing you, so it took no time for him to close the distance between you two, lightly shocking his lips on yours.
The first touch was tender, hesitant, as if you both were testing it out. You moved to grab his bottom lip with yours, your breath hitching a little, shivers of anticipation going all over your skin when Heeseung tilted your head to the side so he could deepen the kiss.
Heeseung hummed against your mouth when he finally tasted you, his tongue brushing yours and sending him instantly to heaven; he immediately tangled his fingers on your hair to pull you near, eagerly wanting more and more of you, before sliding the same hand to your waist, pushing your body to lean it on the wall, pressing his own on your’s.
You two shared an intense desire for connection, once fed by days, weeks only by the tension of your imagination, of ‘how it could be’ or ‘happen’. Now that longing no longer occupied just your minds, becoming reality the more your bodies attracted each other with every touch, discovering new places, new pleasures, new cravings.
Heeseung didn’t know he would yearn you even more after getting a taste of you, and God, you were so addicting. 
At some point you broke the kiss to catch your breath, Heeseung’s fingers exploring your body with a perfect blend of desire and respect, as if he was still waiting for the moment you would ask for a stop although he couldn’t resist to feel every piece of you. Fortunately for him, you were far from wanting him to halter his movements, his lips on yours making wonders on your system, your body feeling like melting for how amazing it felt to have him that intimately. 
Heeseung’s eyes searched for yours, his now darkened gaze made your stomach flutter, your skin tingling from desire. “Tell me to stop,” he whispered on your lips, brushing them slightly. You simply shook your head, capturing his plump-kissed lips again, holding him even closer.
This kiss started urgently, even with Heeseung trying to keep it slow. Your pulse was fast, you needed him more than anything and your whole body was on fire. You could feel Heeseung going through the same, his skin smooth and warm under your hands as you boldly slipped one of them under his loosen shirt to access his back from his neck, mildly scratching the area just to receive a groan as a response.
“Fuck,” he pressed his body flush against yours even more if that was possible, his mouth travelling away from yours to spread hot kisses and small bites all over your jawline and neck.
Naturally your head was thrown back to give him more access to that area, now being your time to moan as an answer. When you paid close attention to every area of yours that was being touched by Heeseung, you noticed his hardened bulge pressing your body and let out a little gasp.
The recognition of you wanting him as much as he yearned you had awakened something inside of Heeseung, making his head lose control and focus on only one thing: you. 
Heeseung was craving you like an animal. 
And his way of showing that was slowing down his kisses, his hands audaciously squeezing your ass, sliding through your body with a mastery it took your breath away. Hesseung was a fucking good kisser, working his tongue on yours just the right enough to make your legs wobbly.
But then you became too aware of everything that was happening and your mind activated all the insecurity thoughts you once had for knowing that the makeout session would never just end there.
When Heeseung tried to kiss you again, you used your hands to lightly push him away and avoided his lips, both of you panting.
“Did I do something wrong?” He asked you with confused, puppy eyes. Your heart shattered instantly. 
“No, you’d never,” you kindly caressed his face. “I’m just– I…” You opened and closed your mouth, trying to find words that would not make you sound too off or that would make Heeseung slip away from you, but none seemed right. 
“Y/N, it’s fine, yeah?” He caressed your hips and then your right cheek, pecking your lips sweetly with a gentle smile. His dick in his pants painfully reminded him of how much he was in need of your body, nonetheless he would never force you to do anything, and just the kisses you shared was enough to make his whole year worth. With that in mind, he kissed your left cheek before saying, “Let me take you home, how does that sound?”
You smiled, even with the urge of crying knocking on your door so closely, the bittersweet taste replacing Heeseung’s in your mouth as you gulped it down your throat, damning yourself for being such an overthinked, insecure person that was too afraid of going all the way for God’s knows why. 
“Sounds great, Hee.”
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As your usual response after any encounter involving men and the possibility of intimacy, you tried desperately to escape from meeting Heeseung. You would die to kiss him again, and again, and again… But at the same time, Heeseung wasn’t the type of guy who would stop at just kissing and you got a bit of the taste of that – your whole body was on fire just remembering his firm length pressing against your body, the little sounds he let out through the kiss, his hands pulling you closer and closer… And then you freaked out. As always.
Little did you know that Heeseung grew so obsessed with you and your intimate touch that night, that the mere thought of kissing you again consumed his mind just as much as you already captivated every corner of his head before.
The ghost of your lips lingered on his, haunted Heeseung’s memory, making him crave even more of whatever you would be willing to give to him, he would take anything at this point. 
Heeseung noticed you vanished from your obvious encounters, not only by missing the basketball game’s practice, but weirdly not hanging out with your own friends. The possibility of you avoiding him made his heart pound in a mild, strange pain, as he didn’t know the reason behind and simply deduced he did something wrong, like crossed your boundaries or anything similar. He couldn’t live with himself if that was the case and in order to correct that, he needed to see you and properly apologize.
“Do you think I’ve fucked up?” Heeseung was now in Jay's room to vent out his concerns about you, pacing back and forth. Jay was still half-asleep, barely knowing his own name let alone able to deal with Heeseung’s situation.
Fortunately for Heeseung, one of the perks of having a long-time friend is that the said friend would be open to hear you whenever and for whatever reason. 
“What do you mean?” Jay’s voice sounded groggy as he squinted his eyes to face the bright light coming through the window before searching for Heeseung in his room.
“She’s been ignoring me, like literally ignoring my texts and avoiding me,” Heeseung explained, fingers messing his hair nervously. 
Jay let out a deep sigh with a yawn while he sat straight on his bed, running his hand on his hair to try to make it as presentable as possible. “Have you thought about the possibility that she’s, I don’t know, going through something?”
“And how do I fix this?” Heeseung looked at his friend with a hint of desperation. 
“You have to let her deal with her stuff first, Hee.” Jay tried to sound as much as compassionate as he could, watching Heeseung taking the seat beside him on the bed. Jay patted his back. “I don’t think it’s up to you, at all.” 
“I know, it’s just frustrating. I want her so bad, bro,” Heeseung rested his elbows on his legs and buried his face in his hands.
“Yeah, never seen you so down for a girl like that,” Jay huffed a little chuckle, amazed by his friend’s behavior. 
“How can I not be? She’s so pretty, and we have such a good connection, and, God, her lips taste like honey. Like, her touches are so ligh–”
“Ok, enough,” Jay rushed to cut off Heeseung’s possible one hour speech about you, and now that you both shared an intimate moment, Jay was one hundred percent sure he didn’t need to hear such vivid details about it that early in the morning. “Let her do her thing, I’m sure she’ll eventually reach for you, bro.”
“I hope so.”
You weren’t too different from Heeseung though, feeling completely frustrated and in anguish. 
You got your panties dampened in arousal just by having Heeseung touching and feeling you the way he did, and he would not leave your thoughts alone for no second during your days, making it difficult to go through your classes and to focus on your studies without your foots nervously tapping the floor, while biting and licking your lips due to your imagination flying by uncountable scenarios. 
All of them with the same outcome: you panicking and leaving him hanging.
“Spill it out,” Sunoo surprised you by hugging you from behind while you waited in the line to order you a coffee.
“God Damn it, Sunoo!” You slapped his arm, hearing him laughing at you. “Why do you always do this?” Your question sounded like a whine. He poked your sides before letting you go from the hug. 
“It’s funny how reactive you always are,” he teased with a smirk. “Order one for me, babe. I’ll pick us a table,” Sunoo said simply, as he started to move away from you. 
“But–”
“No but’s!” He called out already far from you. “I can see your frown from a mile away and I’ve known you long enough to know you’re doing what you like to do the most.”
Your flabbergasted expression was the only thing Sunoo saw before heading to a table on the corner of the store waiting for you to pick the both of you a coffee and head to share the seat with him. 
“I kissed him.” You blurted out as soon as you sat, eyes expressing a mix of despair and excitement. Sunoo opened his mouth in a perfect ‘oh’ that silently asked you to explain it better. “So I went to that party,” Sunoo nodded for you to keep going. “And I was dancing with one of his friends, and then he stepped in and we danced together. You know I don’t usually socialize alone that much, so I was feeling drained already,” Sunoo eyes were sparkling in interest, he loved a good little love story. “Heeseung led me to the backyard, and we chatted for a bit, he made sure that I knew his reputation was all talk,” you chuckled, remembering how anxious he looked trying to explain himself. “And now that I know this, it makes total sense. I never really saw him doing anything too explicit in public, so…”
“Ok, babe. I got that part,” Sunoo rushed you. Normally he would listen to every single word you were saying in order to fully help you, but he was so invested in getting to the point he couldn’t help his impatience. 
You rolled your eyes playfully. “Well, we had a little moment y’know and then we kissed, very cute and all that jazz. Until the things… shifted a bit,” your cheeks blushed.
“Oh?” Sunoo's eyes grew wide just like his smile. “Did you..?”
“No! I didn’t,” you pouted. “That's the thing. I freaked out. As I always do. And now I’m even more desperate than before, because I got to taste what he can offer me and I want more, but I’m so, so, so afraid,” you whined, almost crying as the words came out of your mouth without you caring if it made sense or not.
Sunoo sighed, his orbs now filled with reassurance as he held both of your hands. “Did he force you to do anything?” You shook your head. “He stopped when you asked him to?” You nodded. “Then I don’t think you have to be scared of anything, Y/N,” you were about to interrupt him, but he kept on talking. “Listen, if Heeseung is into you the way it looks, he’ll respect your boundaries and wait for your consentment. And if he tries something funny, y’know I’ve got your back. I can punch really hard if I need to.”
You chuckled at his wording, knowing that was actually the truth. You were blessed to have someone like Sunoo in your life. “Thank you, Sunny,” you said sincerely. “I’m very grateful for having you.”
“No need to thank me, sweetie,” he kissed the back of your hand, before clapping his and saying excitedly. “Now let’s work on a plan of how you can relax and finally get that dick.”
“Sunoo!” You exclaimed, exasperated, and your friend's loud laugh was the only response you got.
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“See you tomorrow, captain.”
You leaned your back against the wall near the door, watching a group of guys walk out of the locker room, some of them narrowing their eyes at you to which you pretended not to see, fakely paying attention to your phone, hoping none of them would stop to talk to you. You had one person in mind only.
“Oh? What are you doing here?”
And it was definitely not Jake.
“Oh, hey,” you smiled awkwardly, pushing your body away from the wall to face Jake. Your eyes darted over his shoulder, scanning if someone was coming after him just before you turned away from the door. “I’m wai–”
“Y/N?”
Your blood ran cold at the sound of your name being called by the voice you only heard in your dreams for the past few days. You tried to swallow down your tension and your shivers, barely registering Jake stepping away from you two to give the space you both needed.
Your body slowly turned to face Heeseung. His hair was wet, and he had a flustered, tired face from the game, a backpack hanging loose from his shoulder, and a small towel on his hands that he was using to dry off the water from his recent shower. His cherry-red lips were slightly parted, and his heavy breathing made your stomach and heart fluttered.
What a fucking vision, you almost whispered.
He had a blend of surprise, happiness and worry in his expression, which softened right after you showed him a small smile, your voice sounding as sweet as honey. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he mimicked your kind tone, his lips curving into a smile as well. He observed your adorable reddened cheeks and your big doe eyes staring at him, filled with expectation. “How are you?” He tried to sound casual, but his voice came out so obviously holding back his desperation.
His heart was racing fast, a genuine wave of joy and relief running through his body. You had no right to show up looking so damn cute and expect him to act normal, as if he wasn’t missing you like crazy.
“I’m good,” you replied softly.
Heeseung nodded, never breaking eye contact. You tried hard to figure out what was left unspoken through his intense, yet tender gaze; your skin aching, yearning for his warm touch just one more time, just like that night, just as a reminder of how good it felt, just so you could bring to reality everything that went through your thoughts since the last kiss.
You really wished Heeseung were feeling the same way, or at least something close to it, otherwise you weren’t sure if you could deal with rejection after you struggled to gather all your courage to encounter him.
The tension in the air was suffocating you a bit, the endless silence was killing you inside, nevertheless you couldn’t find the right words to start anything coherent. Gladly Heeseung perceived your body reacting to the strange atmosphere between you two, and the last thing he wanted was for you to feel uncomfortable or to make things weird in your little relationship.
So he took a step closer, his eyes never leaving yours as he bit his bottom lip.
“I’ve missed you,” he confessed without realizing he just did, voice quiet, almost like a whisper. You watched his eyes growing subtly wide before you drifted away from them.
Your heart skipped a beat, your cheeks heating up and your hands trembling with the unexpected confession. “I’ve missed you too, Hee.” You admitted looking at the floor, unable to keep looking at the eyes that showed you too much affection right now.
The desire once never forgotten grew stronger inside Heeseung’s chest, he needed you more than anything. His hand reached out for yours, the light brush of your skins sending chills through your spine and taking your breath away.
“Can we talk?” He asked softly, relief running on his body when you held his hand back. 
“Yeah, we can,” you nodded, now looking up, not containing your smile as soon as you met his face all lightened up.
“Okay,” he left out a little chuckle, too happy for his own good. “But not here.”
Heeseung and you walked out of the building together, his hands’ grip tight on yours as you simply followed his lead. Your brain was spinning inside your head with the amount of thoughts going on.
You didn’t know what to expect the conversation to be, let alone what he would do with you – or what you would do with him. The anticipation was eating you alive, and you thanked God when he stopped in the private area of the campus’ parking lot, guiding you to stand in front of him while he leaned his back on the wall.
“I was not joking when I said I’ve missed you,” he started, now holding both of your hands. You took a step closer, so you could show that you weren’t lying either. “I have to ask, though. Did I–”
You interrupted before he could even start the question, because from the little you knew about Heeseung, he was going to blame himself.
“I’m sorry for my reaction that night. I– I think I was a bit overwhelmed,” you explained, focusing the drawings on his shirt to avert his eyes. “I really enjoyed kissing you, God, you have no idea,” you said with a soft laugh. “But I freaked out,” you gulped. “I freaked out because I’ve never–” Your cheeks were burning like fire due to your embarrassment, your words stuck on your throat. Heeseung gently squeezed your hands in a reassuring way, leaning a bit forward to search for your eyes. You finally looked up at him.
“I’ve– I’ve never gone further kissing someone,” your voice came out as an unsteady, low whisper, while you quickly avoided Heeseung’s gaze again. 
But he made sure you would be looking right at his eyes when he said his next words, tilting your chin up with his finger.
“I’m sorry if I put any pressure on you, angel,” and he was so, so tender to you.
His hand left yours to caress your face with a softness that almost made you melt, automatically leaning into the touch. The new nickname sent a flutter through your stomach. 
“No,” you hurried to say, shaking your head. “You didn’t. It’s just… Me. Me being an insecure mess, I guess,” you laughed awkwardly. 
“Hey, you’re not a mess,” he now held your face between his large hands, forcing you to maintain eye contact. “I loved kissing you, baby. Would love to do more than that,” he smirked, not only showing his desire, but also his understanding. His words and his actions worked in a perfect sync to make your body instantly react, the pulsing sensation between your legs showing how much you were affected by him. “But I would never force you to do anything.” He released your face, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear before his hands rested on your waist in a comforting manner. “Would it help if we talked through your insecurities?”
Heeseung was an angel, you realized. A perfect blend of a compassionate angel and a devil who fed your deepest fantasies.
You blinked twice to process his offer, not once in your life imagining you would meet someone willing to hear you so openly.
“Are you sure?” You asked, hesitantly placing your hands on his shoulders.
His lips curved into a mischievous, shameless smirk. The so known cocky, flirty aura making its appearance just to falter right away, as if he remembered it wasn’t the moment to act like that. You raised an eyebrow, tilting your head to the side when he vacillated to speak.
“Now you have to say exactly what you’re thinking.” You said firmly.
“I don’t think I sho–”
“Lee Heeseung,” your voice was serious and he sighed defeated.
“Okay, okay,” he locked his eyes on yours, a hint of playfulness and craving mixed, causing your heartbeat to increase. “Yes, I’m sure I wanna hear what you’re insecure about, Y/N,” he leaned in closer, just to murmur. “I have to know what I’ll be fucking out of you.”
Your eyes grew wide with his sincerity. Yes, you did ask, but fuck, how does one say something so casually? Your whole face was burning with fluster, your flabbergasted expression was as clear as crystal water, your brain stopped working properly and you had no fucking idea of what to say or do. 
“I’m sorr–”
But for some reason, shutting Heeseung up with a kiss sounded right.
Your lips shocked against his with a passion you never felt before. Heeseung’s words, the way he touched you, how his body reacted at the simple act of kissing you and having your hands discovering places on his body – everything made you feel secure and desired, the right mix to make it work on you.
Heeseung made his way through your shell, placing himself right before your insecurities and little by little, without doing much, he was helping you get over them.
Heeseung shamelessly moaned against your mouth when you bit his bottom lip, sucking it before coming back with your tongue hungrily searching for his, your heavy breaths mingling while you both devoured the kiss with vigor.
You parted away to speak, your voice sounding low and too sensual for Heeseung’s health. “I hope you’re loyal to your words, Heeseung.”
He took in your now darkened, full of lust, eyes and your swollen, glistened lips due to the urgent kiss you just shared. The view alone made him go insane.
“Oh, I am,” he murmured, voice deep and husky, his cocky grin making him look even hotter. He gripped your waist tightly and maneuvered your both so he could press you against the wall, placing his lips on your ear to spread a few kisses before saying, “I’m a man of my word, Y/N. And I’m gonna make sure you never doubt yourself ever again.”
You let out a small gasp and then a little whine, your lips parting and your eyes hooded as you relaxed your body, ignoring your mind screaming at you to run away, replacing the anxiety with the craving you cherished for God’s know how long. 
“I want to hear every single thought that is holding you back, and then, I’m gonna make you forget about all of them,” Heeseung’s breath was hot against your skin, just like his lips, biting, sucking, kissing every area he had at his disposal. 
“Is that a promise?” You decided to play with him on his game, knowing you had no chance against the player anyway. Nonetheless, the foreign feeling growing inside you made words come out of your mouth without you really thinking about them, and it was so fucking good.
“Yes, angel. It is a promise,” Heeseung halted his intense diving into your neck to look deep into your eyes. “But I can’t take your virginity here, in a public parking lot.”
Normally you would fumble into a chain of embarrassment and nervousness with your intimacy being said that openly. However, Heeseung managed to word it in a totally different way. His voice was low, sultry, filled with a raw desire that made you realize he still wanted you, even after you admitted inexperience. Heeseung ignited an intense fire in you.
And then you remembered. You lived in a dorm. “Don’t get me wrong,” your fingers tangled in his hair, pulling it back a little. “But I can’t take you to mine.”
His forehead rested on yours while he chuckled, a bit disappointed. But not on you. “Yeah… I can’t take you to mine, as well. Not today, though.”
“So…” You blinked innocently, not knowing exactly what to say or do. 
“We’re not finished yet, angel.”
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Unfortunately for you, you realized that what made you so confident and down to go all the way with Heeseung was the fact he was with you, his smooth foreplay skillfully easing your body to relax and enjoy instead of overthinking. 
His kisses helped you to forget your concerns and his hands guided you in a way you didn’t have to worry about what to do, not to mention the fact that he was willing to have sex with you even after you shared your insecurities with him. 
When you two realized that it wasn’t going to happen that day, the heat went down and you both decided to sit in Heeseung's car to share some more kisses while chatting.
Heeseung always reassuring you through his caring – and hot – touches, listening to every word of yours with compassion dripping out of his eyes, understanding and explaining openly to you about what you were curious about.
You didn’t really open up about everything as you usually do with a friend like Sunoo, partly because you believed it would work as a huge turn off and Heeseung would leave you. But also because you recognized that a lot of your thoughts were beyond your control, like the shape or size of your breasts and other similar things.
Heeseung made sure you understood that besides anything, he would find you sexy no matter what, which made you blush and hide your face on his chest while he laughed at your reaction, but it also made you believe his words and feel more confident about sex. 
Nevertheless, through a whole week, a bunch of “do you wanna come over?” texts were dismissed with a lame excuse from you. As said before, his kisses made you ease your mind, and answering such an important question like that without having his mouth working on yours to make you forget about your messy mind, was damn difficult. 
What you didn’t know is that Heeseung wasn’t actually planning to have sex with you the times he invited you. He literally just wanted to hang out. Of course he aimed to kiss you eventually, however his main objective was to make you comfortable with him being around, touching you in places you never got to be touched before, making sure you knew how much he craved your body, how much he wanted you, and that you were safe.
It was a busy week, afterall, full of heavy practices because the final game was getting closer and your presence on the bleachers was one thing that didn’t stop happening this time.
You avoided being alone with Heeseung as much as you could, but your lips always missed him, so you had to make the tremendous effort of watching him in every practice. 
“He’s so good,” Julie whispered close to your ear, startling you.
“Who?” You asked confused.
“Your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” you rushed to reply with your cheeks already gaining some color. 
“Cut that off, he’s head over heels for you, girl,” Yunjin pointed out on your other side. “It’s almost annoying.”
“Yeah, and you always have this weird look in your eyes whenever you see him,” Julie nudged you with her shoulder. “Like you’re always wanting him so bad,” she said with a forced sensual voice. “I bet the sex is amazing.”
“I don’t think you should be talking about Y/N’s sexual lif–” Sunoo tried to interrupt the subject, noticing your discomfort for being smashed between two – sometimes – very indecent girls. 
“No, but like. She never talks about it. I’m so curious,” Julie whined. “They say the quiet ones are the worst.”
The whistle indicating the last quarter of the practice was over and you jumped out of your seat, running down the stairs to meet Heeseung, not only to be with him but mostly to avoid Julie and Yunjin's inconvenient questions.
You didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell them about anything sex related, since they both were very sexually active and their actions seemed a bit off whenever you became the topic of the conversation. 
“What’s with the hurry, baby?” Heeseung smiled big while hugging you when you jumped on his arms, caring little to nothing about his sweat sticking to your skin. 
“Missed you,” you said muffled against his neck, your heart beating fast while you felt him moving you to walk on your back, still clinging onto him.
He stopped walking at some point and you let go of him.
“I gotta take a shower. I’m getting you all dirty, angel,” your cheeks burned with how you interpreted his words, widened eyes as you looked at him. Heeseung noticed it. “Hey, you dirty minded girl, I’m talking about my sweat on you,” he sneaked his arm around your shoulder, pulling you into him to walk with you towards the locker room. 
“I don’t think your explanation makes it less worse.”
He laughed out loud, throwing his head back with your audacious phrase, and typically you would find it endearing how he looked so handsome smiling big. This time you paid more attention to his neck and how his Adam’s apple seemed more attractive than ever. His sweat dripping out of his honeyed skin was doing no good to you as well, messing with your head, filling it with horny thoughts.
When you arrived, you patiently waited for Heeseung outside the locker room, greeting a few team’s members you’ve come to know, since it’s become a routine for you to be around.
You were playing on your phone when he left the room, glancing at you with a pretty smile and offering you his hand.
You two walked your way to the parking lot, a common everyday thing you started doing after the days he had practice. Oftenly you would be in his car for a few minutes, sharing caresses and sweet talks, before he drove you to your dorm. 
“Will you watch me tomorrow?” He asked with sparkly, expectant eyes, swinging your arms.
“Of course I will, Captain,” you looked at his side profile. “Don’t forget, I’m the team’s lucky charm,” you winked playfully at him, remembering one of your firsts dialogues alone you shared. 
“Yeah,” he stopped walking to pull you closer by the waist, his voice softened. “And I don’t know what to do without you,” his eyes glazed on yours for a while, dripping affection.
It took just a second for his lips to find its home on yours, kissing you slow and sweet, enjoying every bit of your addicting taste.
He parted with a little smack sound, pecking your lips a few times. Your breath hitched with his tender touch. He held your hand again so you could keep walking. 
“The coach was afraid of me dating you, he said you could be a distraction to me and bla-bla-bla,” he huffed a laugh, you, on the other hand, froze. Dating? “Little did he know you’re the main reason I have a good performance. I need to impress my girl.”
You had a very shocking expression on your face when Heeseung looked at you to see why you went quietly suddenly. You stopped on your tracks and turned to him, lips parted as you blinked without saying a thing. 
“What?” Heeseung cocked his head, his bambi, confused eyes shined, trying to read you.
“We’re dating?”
“Oh,” he scratched the back of his head nervously. “I never asked yo–”
“You never asked me–” You both said at the same time and stopped, also at the same time. 
Heeseung cleared his throat and with a deep breath he rested his eyes on yours, automatically smiling.
“Well, if you’re okay with it, I’d love to call what we have dating.” He said adorably with his hand squeezing yours, “I just assumed we were on the same page, but I’m okay if you don’t want to define it or wanna talk about it more. I’m always all ears for you, Y/N.” He leaned in slightly, his eyes never leaving yours. “I mean, I just wanna be with you, and if you are fine with me calling you my girlfriend, then I’d be more than happy to call you that.”
All his words sounded like babbling to you, because that moment, in the middle of the parking lot, you heart skipped a beat as you realized you were so fucking in love with Lee Heeseung. 
You were sure you had heart eyes while staring at his anticipating expression, and you couldn’t care less. You pushed yourself forward so you could kiss him passionately, his hands coming to hold you by your jawline, moving so slowly, so lovingly, so sincerely.
It was a different kiss, it was a love kiss, a confessional kiss, a kiss you only were able to have because of its genuine intentions. 
“I’d love to call you my boyfriend, Hee,” you whispered against his mouth, smiling brightly as he shared the same expression, the same emotion.
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As intense as a final game normally is, you couldn’t help but tap your feet on the ground, to the point of you standing up to pace back and forth. The rival university was ten points ahead in the fourth quarter and the minutes were ticking down.
You could see Heeseung's tensed body from afar, the seat you had helping nothing with the view of the game – you took advantage of being the captain's girlfriend to ask to watch the game from up close. But it was your worst decision so far, because you barely saw anything. 
The tension was palpable in the air, your breath caught in your throat at every pass. Your university team managed to close the gap at some point, and when you looked at the clock, the 10 seconds countdown was shining.
Your heart dropped when you saw Heeseung’s bold move of stealing the ball from one of the opposing team member, the crowd yelling as he sprinted down the court, for a fraction of seconds you catched his glance at you, before he focused fully in dribbling whoever entered his way, and then he launched himself into the air, his perfect form aiming directly for the three point line. 
Everything became slow motion as you watched the ball going straight through the hoop, the whole gym exploding with loud cheers as you yourself jumped and hugged whoever were near you with a big smile.
The whole team crowded Heeseung to celebrate, everyone of them shining big smiles but you paid attention to only one. And the said one was searching for you in the sidelines. He broke free from them to jog to you, who also was running in his direction. You jumped on his arms, wrapping your arms around his neck and he swirled you while screaming excitedly. “We did it!” 
“You did it, Hee. I knew you could do it.” You answered as happily as him, laughing with joy and tightening the hug. 
Heeseung softly landed you on the ground, his eyes gleaming with his victory. He cupped your face with his large hands, pulling you into an eagerly sweet kiss, no trophy topping the feeling of having you like that.
The cheers grew louder as everyone watched the romantic scene, however nothing seemed real around you two, lost in the bubble you’ve created. “I did it for you, angel,” he murmured against your lips, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I told you before. I have to impress my girl,” and then he kissed you again, your smiles you shared mingling between breaths and small pecks, before he hugged you tightly one more time.
The celebration went for a while. From afar, you observed Heeseung being surrounded by his friends and teammates, getting praised for his skills and how well he did that match. 
You watched from afar how bright and full of joy Heeseung was, his whole face glowing, surrounded by his friends and teammates, celebrating the win, getting showered with praise by everyone. There was a faint blush on his cheeks, and you couldn’t help but remember all the times he got flustered by your compliments, his shy smile in contrast with his darkened eyes, as if your words woke something inside him. You made a mental note to take a little advantage of that later on. 
“The guys left the house for me tonight,” Heeseung murmured as he finally approached you, already outside the building, placing his hands on your waist while yours naturally settled on his shoulders. His voice dropped to a tone only you knew the meaning of.
Instantly, your heart skipped a beat.
“Yeah?” Your voice came out low.
You took in every detail of his beautiful face, his demeanor softened since a big part of the adrenaline had left his body by now. Despite that, his eyes still sparkled with adoration and a hint of desire. Heeseung licked his lips, sucking his lower one while shifting his gaze between your mouth and your adorable, innocent, yet lustful eyes. 
“Yeah,” he mildly nodded, leaning in closer, but he unfortunately got interrupted by a voice you recognized immediately. Your eyes grew wide.
“Look at you two!” Julie squealed with a smile, clapping excitedly. “You did amazing, Heeseung.” She complimented your boyfriend giving two thumbs up, and you tried to hide your embarrassment by tilting your head towards Heeseung’s chest, who hugged you sideways. 
Yunjin, who was with Julie, nodded in agreement, also smiling. “Yeah, that last point was incredible,” she added, giving your shoulder a teasing nudge to whisper closer to you. “I bet you’re dying to get out of here, huh?”
“Thank you,” Heeseung said with a smile, while you gave an awkward grin in response to Yunjin.
“We’ll leave you two alone,” Julie said with a wink. “Looks like someone’s eager for some private time.” With a final ‘goodbye’ and ‘good luck,’ Julie and Yunjin left, leaving you with an astonished, shy expression, and Heeseung with a contained mischievous grin. 
“I’m sorry about them,” you whispered, watching them go before searching for Heeseung’s eyes just to see them already glancing playfully at you.
“Are they lying, though?” Heeseung asked with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.
You smacked his chest, unable to give a proper response as you buried your face on his neck, muffling a quiet “Stop,” while he hugged you and let it out a precious laugh.
“But… Can I take you to my place today?” His question sounded a bit hesitant, still sweet as honey, while his fingers gently caressed your back. “We don’t have to do anything, I just wanna be with you,” he added with kind eyes after you released yourself from his embrace to face him.
You nodded, “You can,” and offered him a small, genuine smile, making him lose control with your beauty and cuteness and kiss you before heading to his car with you.
The drive was calm, nonetheless your body was pretty tense on the car seat. Your brain was spinning with that night’s outcome. While you had an intense desire to finally have Heeseung the way you dreamed of, you couldn’t help but feel anxious about it too.
You craved his body, his touches, his lips, overall, him. And he had demonstrated to be a good guy so far. Heeseung respected your boundaries, always making sure you felt comfortable even with the minimal invasive touches, like when he tried to touch under your skirt one day and you startled in response.
He murmured a billion “I’m sorry’s” after the episode, and that alone had your heart fluttering in passion, allowing him to slide his bold touches wherever he wanted to, but never further enough to have you fully.
You gulped down your nervousness, looking at Heeseung’s side profile illuminated by the night lights – his honeyed skin was glowing, his black hair messy with sweat, some strands of hair sticking on his exposed forehead, his perfect nose and kissable lips, everything made you dive into your dirtiest thoughts.
You only noticed you arrived at his house when he broke the silence by announcing it, opening the door for you and grabbing your hands instantly as he led you inside the house all the way to his room.
“Imma take a quick shower, okay?” You nodded. “Make yourself comfortable. Don’t be shy.” He pecked your lips before heading to his bathroom.
You sat on the edge of his bed, analyzing how simple his room seemed to be – just the right amount of things he needed to have, like a wardrobe, a big bed and his gamer computer setup. Being in one’s room, for you, always felt like an act of intimacy itself. 
You were in the same place he changed clothes, he listened to his favorite music, he played his favorite games, he studied… And the same place he touched himself, he had sex with other persons, he had wet dreams…
“Fuck,” you whispered to yourself, fidgeting your fingers even faster. Your panties got slightly dampened and your body overheated just by thinking of how close you were to Heeseung right now, although you didn’t even had him in your sight.
The sound of the shower turning off indicating he was done showering had your stomach fluttering because he was about to come out of the bathroom, and not a single soul in the earth had you prepared to face his upper body in full display to you – his toned chest, a bit red because of the hot water, being accentuated by a subtle abs, his arms muscles contracting as he dried off his hair.
Heeseung’s boxers peeked through the hem of his sweatshorts, and you swore to God you saw a single droplet of water running all the way down in his beautiful, hot, tanned skin, stopping on his V-line. 
“Are you hungry?” Heeseung’s voice broke you out of your trance, finally making you stare at his face instead of his body. He didn’t deny that your voracious eyes eating him alive sent signals directly to his dick, making it twitch inside his clothes. He watched you blink two, three, four times with an unreadable expression, making him frown. “Y/N?”
“Y–yeah?” You snapped out of your imagination of kissing, licking, sucking every part of his body, feeling his skin through your lips. Your mouth watered, but not because of hunger for food. 
“Do you wanna order a delivery or something?” Heeseung cocked his head, shamelessly checking you out as well. If you had the right to devour him with your intense gaze, he had it too, undressing you with his eyes while biting his bottom lip. 
Your skirt was placed gently on your thighs, your tight crop top evidenced your breast and a little part of your belly was being shown, all too tempting to him, eager to see more of your body.
You swallowed hard, trying to concentrate on anything but your desire of having Heeseung fucking you, failling disastrously. “Um, sure. Sounds good,” you managed to say, your voice clearly trembling as your breath got stuck in your airways.
You had to contain a whimper when Heeseung took a step closer, his towel now hanging in his shoulders as he towered you, lifting your head with two fingers holding your chin.
“What do you wanna eat, angel?” He questioned, and he was definitely not talking about food anymore at this point.
You felt the heat increase in your stomach, your body shivering with his light, warm touch, acting like it was in withdrawal of whatever he could give you. And you wished so hard for him to offer you everything. 
“I– I don’t know,” you murmured, blinking slowly, parted lips letting out your hitched breath. “What’s your suggestion?” You forced yourself to take a glance at his look, gasping slightly with how he had shifted to an almost breathtaking lascivious one, slightly hooded, serious and attractive just the right amount to make you squirm uncomfortably in your seat.
“I’m afraid my suggestion does not involve food, my love.” Heeseung’s voice dropped a few tones as he bended forward to lean closer, inches away from you, his warm air brushing against your face, his gaze savoring every single one of your reactions.
“What–” You bit your lip. “What does it involve, then?” You asked under breath, a burn sensation taking place on your cheeks as Heeseung’s grin grew. Your pulse increased in the silent, yet full of unspoken desires, room. 
“Well,” he murmured, eyes almost closing as he got closer and closer, lips now touching lightly yours, as he said “I might have to show you. Would you let me?”
Your answer came through actions, your hands quickly took place on his neck and pulled him down to you, tossing the towel to the floor while your mouth chased for his’, desperate for a kiss. It took Heeseung just seconds to react to your intensity, kindly pushing you to lay down on the bed as you tried to keep your lips occupied while moving upwards in a comfortable position; Heeseung crawling on the mattress, never daring to break out the touch.
His fingers dug into your waist while his other arm supported his weight, grinding slowly against your body, pressing his hardened cock on your clothed cunt in order to get any friction he could. A moan escaped your lips, muffled by the kiss, as the heat between your bodies intensified, the thought of causing that reaction in Heeseung making you feel even hotter, more impatient, more desperate for anything he was giving you.
His mouth was working wonders – hot, skilled, passionate as he sucked your tongue, his little groans getting lost in the middle of the kiss. At the same time your fingers brushed his naked chest, his hands infiltrated under your shirt, and your body instantly reacted to the feel of his warm and smooth skin on yours.
Though Heeseung had waited for what felt like ages to have you underneath him like that, he was aware of your insecurities and the fact that it was your first time. Despite how your body responded to his touch, he knew that taking it slow was the right choice, so he made sure you felt safe and cherished as he savored every second. 
Heeseung unhurried his movements, gently parting the kiss to catch his breath and taking the opportunity to enjoy the view – your parted, glistened and swollen-kissed lips, your hooded eyes, hiding your lust behind them, but showing him adoration. He smiled, placing a sweet, tender kiss on your jawline, downing to your neck and collarbone, getting drunk on your scent with his lips trailing kind and lascivious touches on your skin.
You grabbed his hair with your hands, pulling Heeseung even closer to your body – as if it was possible – in a way of distracting the anxiety building up on your core. But then you pushed him away, and he showed you a confused gaze. 
You smiled shyly and moved your hands so you could undress yourself from your shirt and toss it onto the floor, revealing part of your gorgeous body to his eyes, your breasts placed in your black bra attracting his attention.
“You’re beautiful,” Heeseung whispered, filled with sincerity and care, looking at you as if you were the most precious thing in the world, the most cherished treasure he ever had, with the perfect mix of desire, eyes dripping the need of having more of you.
His touches were light as he traced his fingers from your waist all the way to your clothed boobs, his eyes never leaving yours, taking in every little reaction, every little sound. He paused to ask tenderly.
“Can I take these off?” And when you nodded and helped him to remove your bra, he smiled, not holding back his delighted sigh at the sight of your pretty and hardened nipples.
You felt exposed and your cheeks flushed with a dark ton of red, you had nowhere to hide so you just let Heeseung adore you, until his mouth placed kisses near your breasts, giving you time to assimilate that new experience.
You couldn’t hold back an audible gasp when his lips brushed your sensitive bud, his hot tongue swirling it to suck right after, not too intense, not too light, just the right amount, as if he knew exactly what to do with your body to make you go insane.
“Hee–” you moaned his name when he drifted away to give the proper attention to your other boob while his hand massaged the already a bit swollen one.
The sound of your voice whining Heeseung’s name sent a wave of electricity all over his body, directly to his neglected dick. While he kept going down with his mouth through your belly until he reached the hem of your skirt, he humped slightly on whatever could give him some friction on his sensitive bulge.
He halted his movements when he achieved your inner thighs to look at you with reassuring eyes and a soft smile.
“Tell me to stop if you want me to,” his lips kissed the area and you tensened your legs, not used to being touched in there. However, if it felt too good and in no world you wanted Heeseung to stop.
“I trust you, Hee.”
And Heeseung couldn’t ask for a better way of you saying what he needed to hear. He kept placing hot kisses on your thighs and you bent your knee, the position giving him the full view of your ruined panties, a pool of arousal making it stick to your cunt, the drawing of your folds making its personal show right in front of his eyes.
Heeseung’s mouth watered. He remembered every time he imagined being buried between your legs and, God, he didn’t know if he would be able to hold himself down on this one.
“Would you be okay if I–” He gulped, searching for your eyes, which were already glancing at his drunk-looking figure with curiosity. You never saw that expression on Heeseung’s face, and for some reason it made your clit pulse, walls clenching around nothing. “If I eat you out? You can say no if you don’t feel comfortable doing it on your first time, but I would appreciat–”
“I meant it when I said I trust you.”
You cut off his ramble for two reasons: one, because you weren’t prepared to hear his speech that would pretty much make you feel even more embarrassed; two, you were desperate for some relieve, your body literally aching in desire to feel your release, and if his hot mouth and tongue felt that good on your skin, you shivered just by the thought of having them on your sensitive area.
“Thank you,” Heeseung sounded really relieved that you accepted his request. “I’ll remove your skirt, is that okay?” He asked softly and you nodded, hands gripping on the sheets without knowing much more what to do.
Heeseung tossed your clothing piece on the floor, and when he was about to prepare himself to dive into your pussy, you grabbed his hair. He instantly stopped what he was doing, his heart did a flip with the thought of you giving up on your words, although he would obey whatever your decision was. 
But when he looked at you, he noticed your shy smile. “Can you remove your shorts too?”
He let out a little chuckle, “Of course,” and stood up to do what you asked so adorably for him to do.
You enjoyed the view of his dick hard inside his, now, tightened boxers. You wondered if he would fit in you, but you didn’t have time to think much of it as he went back to his position, gaze shifting between your clothed cunt and your anxious eyes.
“Are you okay, princess? Remember, you can always ask me to stop.”
“Yes, Hee. I’m okay,” your voice came out between hitched breaths. “Please, do something, it’s hurting,” you pleaded with a little whine, and that was the green sign for Heeseung to sigh and groan by the sight of you, needy of his mouth on your pussy. 
He placed a delicate kiss right on your clothed clit, simply for you to feel comfortable with your area being touched for the first time. Heeseung heard your little moan before losing himself in his mind, distributing hot touches with his lips all over the area. 
He then removed your last piece of cloth, the view of your pussy in full display made him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he did so, his cock throbbing inside his boxers.
You had your eyes closed, trying to ignore the fact you were very exposed, to focus on the amazing feeling of Heeseung’s hot breath directly where you needed him the most. You moaned when his tongue licked experimentally your folds. 
Heeseung slipped his hands under your legs to hold you in a position he gained a better support and kept you open for him as he worked on your cunt. 
Your sweet taste melted on his mouth as he ate you out willingly, the tip of his nose brushing on your sensitive clit as he skillfully moved his head to stimulate you in as many areas as he could – his tongue teasing to enter in your entrance, the foreign feeling making you squirm in a bit of a discomfort that quickly waved out of your body because of how good your clit being stimulated was making you feel.
It was a mix of sensations you never really felt; you had touched yourself before, but nothing compares to Heeseung’s amazing mouth and tongue licking, sucking and making out with your pussy. You could feel the knot forming on your stomach as you tensed your body. 
“Heeseung,” you moaned a bit loud. “I think I’m close–” 
Heeseung broke out of the trance he got himself into to listen to you, afterall he wanted to take care of you.
“I want you to cum on my mouth, is that okay princess?” He asked between little pecks and licks on your folds and clit. You nodded, not knowing exactly if he was seeing you do so.
“Could you look at me, angel?” He questioned, his voice sounding too sweet to the lustful view he was offering you. Hair stuck on his forehead, nose and chin glistened with your arousal. “There you go,” he smirked before diving again into your pussy, his eyes now never leaving your face, even when you rolled your eyes and threw your head back, trying hard to keep with his request.
Your orgasm hit almost instantly, the mix of his devilish looks and how he ate you so passionately worked together for you to achieve your release in his mouth, Heeseung drinking not only your juices, but all of your moans and whines. 
He left the area after pecking two, three, four times, and then trailed kisses through your body until he reached the corner of your mouth, watching you breathing heavily with a small smile adorning your lips. 
Heeseung decided not to kiss you right away, not only giving you time to recompose but also avoiding you to feel the taste of yourself in his tongue. He loved you for a while, gently brushing his lips on your skin, kissing once and a while, until he felt your hands caressing his hair, tenderly. 
“Are you alright?” Heeseung questioned after a while, searching for your eyes.
“Mhm,” you nodded lazily. However, you knew it wasn’t the end, and mostly, you wanted more. 
“Do you want to stop?” He caressed your face, moving away some strands of your hair. You shook your head, mischievously smiling. You could feel his still clothed dick literally twitching on your leg, and although your last orgasm was intense and you got a bit tired, you needed to have him even closer to you.
“You are hard as hell, Hee,” you giggled, catching his eyes darkening again. “And I need to feel you inside of me,” you looked at his lips before pulling him down to kiss you properly.
As earlier, the urgency of the touch grew faster and faster, and Heeseung had to remind himself once more that he needed to go slow.
He parted the kiss just to ask with a serious voice “Are you sure about this?” 
“More than anything in my life, Hee. I want you,” you gently caressed his cheek, smiling when he pecked your lips before getting on his feet to finally remove his last clothing piece, revealing his whole body to you.
You swallowed when his dick jumped out of his boxers, throbbing, covered in precum, all because of you. You whined with the view, propping yourself up on your elbows when he got closer to your face since he had to get a condom in his nightstand. Your hand automatically rushed to grab his length, peeking up at his face at the right time to catch his face contorted in shock and then, pleasure.
“Fuck, baby,” he moaned, enjoying the warmth of your skin on his neglected, sensitive cock. It was clear you didn’t know exactly what to do, but the movement of going up and down was enough to make Heeseung’s knees weak. He was weak for you, afterall.
Heeseung let you try out whatever crossed your mind and enjoy yourself for a bit, because it meant you were comfortable enough with him to do so, and your endeared and erotic gaze hypnotized him too strongly for him to stop you.
He made sure to moan your name, watching your body reacting to it, trying his best to make you get wet again and make things easier later. He wasn’t faking it, though. Your hands really were doing wonders on his shaft – he watched you positioning yourself to sit on your knees, face with a faint focused frown as you cupped his tip, moving your hand in circles.
Heeseung rolled his eyes, the sensitive area of his dick getting the attention he needed was sending him out of orbit, and you were using just your hands. 
“You– You have to stop,” he said as he gently held your wrist, halting your movements. His closed eyes prevented him from noticing your guilty expression, until he heard your voice.
“Sorry,” you murmured quietly, thinking you have done something wrong.
“No, baby. It’s not– I almost came,” he admitted. You didn’t know simple words could make your body heat that fast, your stomach instantly did a flip with his sincere confession. 
Heeseung’s lips met yours right away, his body leaning forward so you both could go back to the previous position. 
He placed himself in between your open legs, his gaze softening as he watched your anxious face. “I’m going to prepare you,” he explained with a low voice, kissing your neck as his hands went down to find your folds, touching you to collect your arousal and use it to lubricate his finger, “Don’t forget, your word is what guides me.”
Your body fully tensed when he pressed his digit near your entrance, “Relax, my love,” he murmured and kissed your cheek and then your lips. Your heart fluttered with the pet name. “I’ve got you, okay?”
You nodded, closing your eyes tightly, afraid of the pain you were so sure you would feel, however, Heeseung’s light touches on your sensitive area and the kisses he spread over your face got you distracted, almost making you miss when he slid a finger inside you. Your breath got stuck on your throat and he didn’t move, waiting for your body to adjust to the new intruder. 
“I’ve never– I’ve never ever put anything inside me before, so it’s all new,” you admitted, feeling a mix of embarrassment and relief for verbalizing your discomfort. 
“Yeah? You’re doing great, angel.” Heeseung encouraged, gently pulling his finger out while kissing you. You squirmed, a bit uncomfortable. “Such a good girl for me, mhm?” 
His wording caused you to clench involuntarily around his finger, a reaction that didn’t went unnoticed by Heeseung. He kept kindly pumping his single finger inside you, teasing to add one more as you whined against his mouth, while he whispered sweet words of encouragement.
“You feel so amazing,” Heeseung said, and something popped into his mind. He decided to test the waters with a dirtier talk, his hot breath tickling your ear. “I can’t wait to feel you around me, so tight and wet,” he kissed your earlobe, his husky voice and words making you whole body shiver, “I promise, Y/N, I’ll make you feel so good,” his teeth nibbled your sensitive spot on your neck and you slightly arched your back, moaning, not even noticing when his second finger entered you.
You were panting a bit, messily whining and squirming, your fingers threaded through his hair, gripping it firmly, forcing him into your neck.
“You’re so tight, I don’t think I’ll last long when I get inside you,” Heeseung sounded muffled, loving the way you squeezed even more around his digits. “Can you feel how my fingers stretch you so well, baby?” His question sounded rhetorical to you, because it was obvious you felt the way he stretched you so amazingly good, your toes curling just by that. 
“Hee, please–” You pleaded not quite sure what you were asking for, but your eyes locked onto his with a desperate need. His fingers worked so perfectly inside you, making you wonder how you could be so close to tearing, yearning for his dick, which you never ever had before. 
Heeseung grinned, eyes dripping with desire and fondness, wandering your whole body as he removed his digits from you.
“My baby seems a bit desperate, doesn't she?” He teased, chuckling. You watched as he coated his dick with a condom, jerking it off with the precum he collected before to prepare himself for you, never breaking eye contact. He leaned closer. “Don’t worry, I’m just as desperate as you are, my love,” and with that he positioned his tip in your entrance.
You tensed again, but Heeseung's sharp instincts caught the subtle change in your reaction. To help you relax, he covered one of your nipples with his mouth, warm lips sucking the sensitive area, making you moan. His body pressed into yours distracting you from the pain as well.
“Ah–” you gasped, frowning with a flicker of discomfort as he slid his dick inside you; your hands grabbed his shoulders, squeezing with a certain strength as you tried to get over the burning feeling in your cunt.
Heeseung was on the verge of insanity, his sensitive cock aching with your walls tightening around it, so eager for some more friction. He had to dig self control from the deepest place of his mind in order to keep going. 
“Shh. I’ve got you, my love,” he kissed your wrist, and then your shoulder, and then your neck, and then your cheeks, and finally your lips, while slowly getting himself fully inside of you, moaning as he did so. “You drive me crazy,” he murmured against your lips, loving how messy you were kissing him, your expression changing little by little from a discomfortable to a pleasant one. 
Heeseung remained still for a moment, making out with you while waiting for your body to adjust to his dick. You gently waved your hips forward with a little groan at some point, a silent plea to get more of what he was offering you, and he got the sign immediately. 
With a tender smile and after pressing his lips in yours once more, Heeseung began to move, thrusting into you with a necessary slowness at first, that became unneeded the second you started to feel only the delight of being full.
His tip rubbed a certain spot in you that made you flutter your eyes shut while rolling them, moaning loud.
“You liked that, angel?” He asked, desperate to pound harder and faster onto you, still controlling himself. “Tell me, please,” he looked at your lips parted, his name being the only thing coming out of them.
“Y–yes, Hee. It’s so fucking good– Ah,” you threw your head back in the pillow, his response to your compliment making him thrust deeper. “You feel so good, fuck.”
Needless to say that your praise to Heeseung’s work was enough for him to almost fully lose his inner battle of going easier with you. His head rested beside yours and while his movements grew faster, your voice got louder and louder; your fingernails sinking into the skin of his back, his moan close to your ear making you see stars with the overwhelming feeling. 
“I’m close,” you whispered, feeling the known knot on your stomach growing stronger as Heeseung kept pounding into your g-spot. You opened your eyes to lock eyes with him, who already had positioned himself to do the same – both of you wanting to see each other reaching their respective climax. 
“Come for me, princess,” he demanded with a groan. “Show me how good I’m making you feel.”
The view of Heeseung’s forehead damped in sweat with strand of hairs sticking to it, his parted lips every so often being bit by his teeth while letting out the prettiest sounds and his heavy breaths, his eyes showing your affection, desire, urgency in achieving his own release, and his dirty words, all of it blended together, worked perfectly for you to achieve your orgasm.
A strong wave of desperation and pleasure ran over your body and took you milliseconds to cum all over Heeseung’s dick with a loud moan, your pussy tightening harder around his cock while he drove you through your high at the same time he chased for his own. 
“Fuck,” Heeseung moaned, keeping thrusting faster and faster, a frown of concentration adorning his forehead and then he saw you, pretty face contorted in pleasure, your mouth letting out the hottest moans of his name. You felt his cum filling up the condom inside you the same time he moaned your name, making you hiss while he pumped into you a bit more. Eventually he removed himself from you, flopping into your body, tired. 
You thought you just had hit cloud nine with the amount of joy and excitement running inside you. A sense of realization making you smile brightly. You enjoyed the sound of your respirations working its best to recompose itself and Heeseung’s heartbeats against your chest.
“I have to say,” your voice came out a bit husky as you lovingly caressed Heeseung’s sweaty back. “Now I do accept the food.”
You heard Heeseung chuckle on your neck, before he kissed there and then your lips. “Yeah, me too.”
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The morning after your first night together with Heeseung was filled with doubts.
After the sex, you both got cleaned up and ate the said delivery while watching something on the tv.
Obviously Heeseung didn’t let you go back to your dorm, needing to feel your warm embrace as much as possible. So you two slept together on his big bed, cuddling.
But then you woke up earlier than him, and you took your sweet time to appreciate his serene expression, deep in his sleep – his soft breath, his pretty eyelashes, his slightly parted lips. You sighed, a weird feeling eating away you inside, afraid of being left alone after the last night.
What if he said all of that just to have you one time? What if he did all he did just for that moment to happen? What if he didn’t really mean any of his words? What if he didn’t enjoyed it the way you did?
“What’s with the frown?”
You startled with Heeseung’s groggy voice breaking the silence of the room. “Nothing,” you awkwardly smiled and of course Heeseung didn’t buy it.
“Tell me,” he blinked slowly to focus on your pretty face, snuggling his body into yours. “Tell me what’s going on in this pretty head of yours, my love.”
You gulped, heart racing with his new way of calling you. 
Love.
You got lost in your mind for a while before asking “Will you leave me now?” The question came out a bit more stupid than you expected, but at the same time, it was sincere. 
Heeseung propped himself up on his elbow to give you a proper look. He removed the hair from your face with a gentle touch, caressing your cheeks with the same amount of care. His voice sounded low. “No,” he shook his head, eyes full of adoration, endearment, and love. “I’ll not leave you. Actually, I’m even more attached to you, my love,” his, oh, so known smirk tugged the corner of his lips. “I’m not going anywhere, unless you want me to.”
You hurried to shake your head, taking in every detail of his pretty features. 
“Then I’m staying, and I’ll be taking anything you offer to me,” Heeseung kissed your lips in a different way. Slow, tender, filled with this new emotion – love.
You parted the kiss to look into his sparkly eyes, smiling.
“Then I offer you my everything, Heeseung.”
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why-animals-do-the-thing · 5 months ago
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I promised you some lions! Let's talk about manes, males, and management.
This is Tandie, the current male lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.
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Notice anything odd about him? He's got one of those hilarious awkward teenager manes. Except... this cat is nine years old.
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I was, of course, immediately curious.
Manes serve a lot of purposes for male lions, including being an indicator of health and fitness - it's actually a sexually selected trait and a social signal. Mane texture / hair quality / length is dependent on nutrition and the body having energy to grow (and carry around!) that much hair! The color is also a signal: males with darker manes have been found to have higher testosterone levels.
In one research report, wild males were much more likely to avoid a lion decoy when it had a longer or darker mane - but the girls really loved a dark mane. It's thought this is because a long, dark mane is an indicator of mate quality. Males with longer, darker manes have higher testosterone and were pretty healthy: meaning they had more energy for fighting, had a better chance of recovering if they got injured, and generally had a higher rate of offspring survival. Manes matter!
So, back to Tandie. He was actually born at the Woodland Park Zoo in 2014 alongside two brothers, to dad Xerxes and mother Adia.
This was Xerxes (rip).
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Obviously, a very large, dark, lush mane on Xerxes here. So where did these blond muttonchops come from on his son?
I asked the zoo docents and got an answer that didn't make a lot of sense. They told me that after the three cubs grew into adolescents, they were moved to the Oakland Zoo together. But living together suppressed his testosterone, and he never grew a mane.
Hmmmm.
Here's a photo from 2016, when the brothers debuted at Oakland. They're a year and a half old in this photo.
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(Photo Credit: Oakland Zoo)
And here's from an announcement for their third birthday.
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(Photo credit: Oakland Zoo)
Okay, so these dudes obviously all were growing manes as of 2017. I think Tandie is the one on the left in the first photo, and laying down in the middle on the second. What happened?
I was just in the Bay Area for a zoo road trip, of course I went to Oakland and tracked down a docent to ask some questions.
It turns out that shortly after the brothers turned three, they started acting like adult male lions: they started scuffling regularly. It's a normal social thing for male lions to live in groups, called coalitions, but according to my lion experts there's generally a baseline level of some social jostling within them. It wasn't quite clear from what the docent said if they couldn't manage the boys together, or if they just wanted to avoid the scratches and small wounds that result from normal lion behavior. Regardless, they put all three of the boys on testosterone blockers in order to be able to keep them together as a social group.
Now, I don't know a lot about the use of hormone alteration as a form of captive animal management, except in the case of birth control. I don't think it's something that's unethical - there was just a webinar on it that I saw go by - but I don't think it's commonly done with big cats. Lions have kind of complicated reproductive cycles, and for instance, we've been learning that female lions can take much longer to come into estrus again than expected after coming off hormonal birth control.
In males, testosterone blockers (or being neutered) means they lose their manes. This is why a lot of rescues will do a vasectomy on their males instead of a neuter - it allows them to keep their mane and the social signals that accompany it.
Tandie returned home to Woodland Park Zoo after Xerxes passed in early 2022, and the docent told me all of the lions had been off their blockers "for while." I'd guess those things happened around the same time, since bringing the trio down to a duo at Oakland would reduce some of the social tensions.
Hormones are such interesting things, though. One of Tandie's brothers has a full mane again, and the other is still totally mane-less.
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As for Tandie, his mane is growing back in, and it looks like he might rival his dad for length and coloration.
He started here, in February:
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Yesterday:
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What a difference four months (and maybe proximity to a girl) makes!
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pretty-sparkle-bomb · 3 months ago
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imagine bakugo dating you. youre his first girlfriend and he just...doesn't know how to act😭🥺
Sighs, I have brain rot now😫😫😫
As you both walked down the street, you could feel Katsuki's hand seeking yours, his fingers brushing against your palm. You glanced up at him, noticing the slight pink tint on his cheeks. He was trying so hard to act normal, but the possessive grip on your hand said otherwise.
"Hey, you okay?" you asked, a teasing smile on your lips.
"Yeah, just... don't let go," he mumbled, looking away, clearly embarrassed.
A group of guys walked by, you remember them from school. One of them gave you a friendly smile and a nod to which you responded with a smile. You weren't going to be rude!
Katsuki's grip tightened, his eyes narrowing as he pulled you closer. "What's his problem?" he grumbled under his breath.
"Relax, Kats," you whispered, trying not to laugh. "You know Kaminari, he's just being nice."
"Fuckin' dunceface... can be nice somewhere else," he muttered, fingers growing hot as you realised that he was going to release explosions any moment now.
You placed a small kiss on his cheek and that seemed to do the trick because he looked at you and grinned, almost cockily.
Later, when you tried to pull away to grab something from your bag, Katsuki shot you a look. "What're ya doing?" His voice came out as a soft whisper.
"I need to get my phone," you explained, still struggling.
"You can do that with one hand," he insisted, not letting go of your other hand. "Just... don't let go, kay?"
You couldn't help but smile at his protective nature. "I won't Kats," you said, squeezing his hand gently. "I won't let go."
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ms-demeanor · 4 months ago
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If you're new to me yelling about this: my neighbors feed a feral cat colony but provide no other care to the colony like neuter/spay or vaccination. They free feed the cats, which attracts skunks, and they have (at the moment) about 20 cats in the colony, which attracts coyotes.
My dog has been skunked twice, she can't be outside in our yard unsupervised for even a minute because otherwise she'll try to eat cat shit because there's cat shit everywhere in my yard because the neighbors also haven't provided litterboxes or a sandbox for their ferals (their entire yard is paved) and if she has to go outside at night I need to clear the yard for coyotes before I let her out even in the small fenced area by our bedroom.
Also there are fleas fucking *everywhere* and even though my dog is on medication to prevent fleas I need to de-flea her twice a week in the summer; this is the case for every dog owner on the street.
The street I live on has a speed limit of 25mph but I hear cats getting hit frequently, so frequently that we have a resident group of crows who hang out and wait for them to become roadkill.
I have a collection of photos on my phone that show kittens with broken legs, kittens with missing eyes, kittens with horrible ear mite infections, and I have a dedicated shovel that I use for moving cat corpses that show up on my property. The cats that die on my property die from abscessed wounds from fights with other cats, respiratory infections, renal failure, and injuries from being hit by cars.
My spouse is immune compromised, and while toxoplasmosis is not a serious risk for most people, it IS a serious risk for people who are immune compromised (as are all the other infections that cats can potentially carry), which means that it's unsafe for me to grow vegetables in my yard for us to eat and it's unsafe for him to work in the yard.
I'd love to maybe open my windows at night and keep down the electricity costs of using the AC, but I can't because the entire side of my house that faces my neighbor's yard reeks of cat shit and piss year round.
Those are my next door neighbors.
Last week I was walking my dog as a neighbor around the corner was pulling out of her garage; she paused and rolled down her window and pointed at the cats on her lawn and said "Head's up, my cats are weirdly aggressive about small dogs and they just got let out so they're full of energy right now" and I nodded and crossed the street and didn't yell at my neighbor but *the temptation was there* because A) why are you letting your aggressive animals roam and B) Why are you letting your cats shit all over the neighborhood and C) Why are you exposing your owned cats to the risks of the large and territorial feral colony that is a literal stone's throw away from your house?
Anyway, and as always, Keep Your Fucking Cats Indoors.
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emacrow · 6 months ago
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Aquaman was only patrolling the ocean, not expecting a baby mer swimming with the whales along the way.
It one of the few things he would like to do in his free time is to help the ocean sea with minor problems, a seal having his neck stuck with a plastic can holder, a a couple shark with a hook stuck to her fin/nose or tailfin, a couple of trapped rare fish in poacher traps.
He wasn't expecting a small group of whales, mainly a momma whale and two Baby whales to swim by singing their song while hunting a vast enormous group of krills.
Only to hear a tiny little baby mer singing along with them. It was a boy, with chubby lil arms, a beautiful trails of sparkling white and neon green color, fade gray and black tips mer tailwind. A fainted trail of electric shock probably from a mishap by jellyfish tracing from one of his chubby hand down to his body.
Hair white as snow, eyes greener then the grass on land, tanned skin and a odd sliver mechanism purple clock on a necklace that was ticking slowly despite being in deep underwater.
Arthur was going to get closer but the Momma whale Block his view using her vast body after she noticed him getting closer, the two Baby whales hiding behind her along with the baby mer.
Meanwhile Danny as clockwork apprentice until he grows into his state as the ruler of ghost realm and away from noisy observators has been on a mission to keep the timeline in check in other dimensions. Clockwork insisted this form would do the trick
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kiwi-bitchez · 8 months ago
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The Girlfriend Experience
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Eddie Munson x Reader
Summary: Eddie doesn’t think he’s cut out for dating. Self-resigned to a life of one and done hookups, you’re determined to make him see that he has the capacity to be a worthy companion… for when the right girl comes around. Fake Dating AU, classic corny fic for a fav corny troupe, Stranger Things canon divergent ofc, 18+ smut (see warnings below), big dick energy but also slightly emotionally unavailable!Eddie, yada yada yada, you know the drill. 
Content warnings: AFAB reader with she/her pronouns, use of y/n, alcohol, smoking the devil’s lettuce, mention of panty stealing, food consumption, semi-public sex, fingering, PIV, Dom-ish!Eddie, oral (m and f receiving), pierced dick Eddie because I said so!, unprotected PIV sex, hair pulling, mild angst but nothing too angsty just like one heated conversation and Eddie feeling a little worthless but happy ending I promise
Word Count: 20k ahhhhhh!!!
A/N: Thanks to all those who comment and reblog! Your feedback and engagement makes my heart soar and keeps me motivated to write this filth! Sorry for the gargantuan length, in very-me fashion I always ending up writing one behemoth fic every so often rather than just separating it out into chapters. Also, realizing after the fact that I use the brand name ‘Goodwill’ a lot in this fic, which maybe not everyone might know is a thrift store, not sure if that’s just an American thing or not but figured it was worth noting. 
“I guess I’m just not boyfriend material, ya know?” Eddie shrugs.
“Don’t say that, Eds,” your eyebrows pinched together, “different qualities are important to different people. Not everyone is looking to date a Steve, or a Brian, or a whoever. I’m sure someone is out there looking for an Eddie.”
“It’s not that,” he shot a look towards Steve, who, despite your analogy, was unfortunately everyone’s type and the textbook definition of boyfriend material.
“I just don’t think I’d be very good at gooey romance stuff, or even like, passable boyfriend behavior. I mean, look at me, I hardly take care of myself, I’m loud, I have no money, I’m basically every dad’s worst nightmare, do I need to keep going?”
“The nightmare thing can actually be a bonus,” Steve chimes in, “the whole bad boy persona can be a huge draw for most girls.”
“Sure Steve,” Eddie’s voice grows exasperated, “I’m the mysterious bad boy until they realize I’m a huge loser who runs not one but two dungeons and dragons groups. Real fuckin’ attractive I’m sure that is.”
“Shows you’re committed to something…” you trail off when his eyes tell you to stop coming up with a positive spin for every excuse he gives. 
This whole discussion had started because of something that happened at the bar last night. A small group of you decided to meet up for drinks, your usual group of pals. It was a Thursday, so the bar wasn’t too busy. Your friends all squished into a booth in the corner, chatting and catching up over a plate of shared nachos, when Robin started making frantic gesture at you and Steve.
“Please just say what you’re trying to say instead of this elaborate charade,” Steve makes a few mocking hand signals back at her.
“Okay, one at a time, and keep it subtle,” her voice lowered to a whisper, for some reason, “over at the bar, some girl is totally flirting with Eddie.”
You and Steve both turn around. “I said not at the same time!” She whisper yells. 
There was, in fact, a pretty girl with shiny hair and glossy lips doing a half fake laugh and pressing her manicured hand to Eddie’s bicep. You whip back around to find Robin with her mouth hanging open in a “can you believe this is happening” way. 
“Good for him,” Steve swivels back around too, “She’s pretty hot.”
You return to your nachos, pretending there wasn’t a ping of jealousy in you. Eddie was your friend, that had been made abundantly clear.
When Robin introduced you to all her friends from high school, you had easily gotten along with all of them. You especially got along with Eddie. He was funny, authentic, abrasive at times, but a truly good person at his core, creative, protective, you could go on.
After getting to know him a bit, and developing a budding crush, you had made a few passes at him. Nothing too forward, just small compliments here and there, open ended offers to hang out that never lead anywhere.
It’s not like he flat out rejected you, but any feelers you were putting out to see if there was potential there were met with him looking past your flirtatious intent and just being his goofy, friendly self. He treated you exactly the same way he treated everyone else, which was awesome, except for when it wasn’t. 
“Oh no,” Robin’s gaze was not subtly fixed on the unfolding scene at the bar, you and Steve watched her face drastically shift from confused, to a cringe, to an eye roll.
Still half whispering, as if Eddie could even hear your corner of the bar, “He’s totally blowing it. DON’T both turn around at the same time again.” 
“Okay, so,” she starts before either of you can even confirm that you want to know, “she was totally laying it on thick, like you could see it from all the way back here. And he must have said something off putting, cuz all of a sudden she like went cold on him and pranced away. Shhhhh, okay okay, he’s coming back.”
She was acting as if she wasn’t the only one gossiping. You and Steve were innocent bystanders in all this. 
“WHAT was that?” She immediately blurts out when Eddie returns to his seat, fresh drink in hand. 
You and Steve share a side glance to sigh at Robin’s inability to be subtle, god bless her. Eddie shifts around awkwardly and lets out a forced dry laugh, taking a long sip from his drink before facing the wrath of a curious Robin. 
“Oh, that,” he gestures to the bar as if she could be asking about anything else, “some girl. Not sure.”
“Not sure? Eddie she was FLIRTING with you,” Robin all but yelled, causing Steve to scan the bar to see if the girl in question had landed somewhere within earshot. 
“I know that,” he hisses, “She just… wasn’t my type…”
“Okay sure, hot girl in a tube top and no bra isn’t your type, riiiiight,” Steve rolls his eyes.
“It’s just,” Eddie was so over this inquisition, “she asked if I wanted to get coffee.”
You, Steve, and Robin all give him a blank stare, trying to decipher what he could possibly have against getting coffee with a hot girl. 
“That’s like,” he gets defensive, detecting the wall of confusion facing him, “something people do on a date. Coffee is serious, and I’m not a very serious guy.”
“What do you mean ‘coffee is serious,’ coffee is like, as casual as you can possibly be?” Steve’s tone now emulated Robin’s from earlier, half whispering, half yelling, all scolding towards his friend. 
“That’s just not really my speed. Coffee dates and flowers and hand holding and all that,” he was avoiding eye contact with all three of you, “Yeah, she was hot, sure, and maybe if she had been like ‘hey lets go fool around in the bathroom’ then I wouldn’t be here having this lame ass conversation with you three. But I don’t do coffee dates, so I’m not gonna waste her time and pretend like I’m that sort of guy when I’m just not.” 
“Well good on you for not leading her on, cuz I’m sure you could have agreed to the coffee date and still gotten lucky in the bathroom,” Steve mumbles, and you smack the back of his head lightly to scold him. 
“So you only date girls who’ll fuck you in a bar bathroom the first time you meet?” You redirect your now equally scolding energy to Eddie.
“No!” He runs his hands through his hair, “I don’t date. Anyone, really. At all. Ever.”
“Oh,” you think for a minute, realizing in your few years of friendship you never had seen him with anyone, or heard him mention a romantic interest of any sort. 
Leading you to your present conversation, you and Steve continuing to question Eddie on his decision to reject the hot tube-top girl at the bar and why he felt like coffee was such a scary commitment. 
“You guys know me,” he continued to defend his stance, “If I took that girl out for coffee she probably would have picked some fancy hoity toity place and I wouldn’t know what anything on the menu meant, I’d probably spill something or like, get crumbs everywhere, and the bill would be way more than two coffees should be. It would have been a waste of both our time.”
He was staunchly refusing eye contact with the two of you, knowing he’d be met with something along the lines of pity. 
“Fine, we’ll drop the subject,” you shoot a look to Steve, “but I just need to make sure you understand that not every girl likes expensive coffee, or flowers and handholding, or whatever your expectation of girls and dating is. There’s plenty of girls who have similar interests to you, who feel the same way about PDA and mushy romance stuff that you do. You do know that, right?”
“Of course I do, y/n,” you could practically feel his eyes rolling at you, “but girls like that sure as fuck aren’t here in Nowhere, Indiana. Even if she was, I’m sure I’d still find a way to fuck it up given that I’ve had exactly zero serious girlfriends and the closest thing to a date I’ve ever been on is when you me and Steve pooled our ski ball tickets to win that ugly stuffed turtle.”
The memory of what you had all agreed to be the world’s ugliest stuffed animal caused all of you to crack a smile. Steve had silently agreed to change the subject, not wanting to dig Eddie any deeper into his pit of self despair. 
Steve’s mouth was half open, about to suggest that the three of you have a smoke and watch one of the rental movies he brought over, the words just about to escape him when you harshly cut off any chance at ending the pity-party.
“Date me!” You exclaim, without much thought. The shocked look from both boys caused you to rapidly back pedal , “You can date me, as practice!” You said it as if it was the simplest concept in the world. 
When met with gaping mouths and confused stares you continue on, “You and I can be fake boyfriend-girlfriend for like, a month, and I’ll tell you everything you do wrong, and like generic do’s and don’t’s, so that way the next time some hot girl hits on you, you can be all like ‘Coffee isn’t really my thing pretty lady, but I’d be down to get drinks sometime’,” you did a silly impression of Eddie’s voice, and then switched to a high pitched one to impersonate what you assumed the girl at the bar sounded like, “and then she’d be all like, ‘Oh yeah that sounds greaaaaat, getting coffee is just like, a generic catch-all thing that most people say when they want to get to know someone better, but you can buy me a drink’ and then the two of you will ride off into the sunset and it’ll be great.”
Still no reply.
“It won’t be all romantic and gooey, I promise I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to. It’d be a way for you to get some honest feedback and catch up with the stuff most people have to learn the hard way.” 
“I suppose you are the most brutally honest person I know,” Eddie doesn’t sound convinced. 
Steve just looked between the two of you with eyebrows raised, not knowing if giving his opinion on the matter would be appreciated or not. “I guess I would’ve appreciated someone telling me that most girls don’t want to be asked out with a pickup line from a John Hughes movie, would have saved me a few dozen rejections.”
“I’m pretty sure Robin did tell you that…”
“I don’t know y/n,” Eddie scratches his head. 
“It’ll be easy. Ask me out.”
“Huh?”
“Ask me out, for practice, ask me out on a date like I’m a pretty girl you met at some metal show or a DnD convention or something like that,” you stand in front of him with your hands out as if to prompt him to say something. 
“Will you go out with me?” He sounds more like he’s asking himself if he even wants to be asking the question.
“No.”
“What the hell!” He throws his hands up.
“I said no because that wasn’t a very good effort. Go out where? To do what? You’re asking me, a pretend stranger, out on a date Eddie, not if I want to go have a smoke with you.”
“Ughhhh,” he spun around and tried to get some sympathy for Steve, who unfortunately was on your side with this one. 
“A compliment or two doesn’t hurt as well,” Steve added, deepening Eddie’s groan. 
“Hey pretty stranger lady,” his voice was laced with sarcasm, but at least it wasn’t disdain, “you seem really…” he hesitated to find his words, “cool? Would you like to come see my band play this weekend at The Hideout? We-“
“No,” you cut him off.
“WHA-“
“Eddie, you can’t ask a girl to watch Corroded Coffin play for your first date with her, that’s like date four or five material, no girl wants to go sit by herself at a bar to watch some guy she just met play an hour of heavy metal. She would have to know you a little bit more for that to feel organic. Pick something more generic, like coffee.”
“I think you seem cool, would you like to get coffee with me?” it all came out as one monotone mumble from him. 
“Sure,” you wait for him to lift his head up to make eye contact with you, “But coffee isn’t really my thing, maybe we can go out for drinks?”
“Oh fuck off,” he flopped back onto the couch next to Steve. 
“See, now we have our first fake date, and then you can ask me to be your fake girlfriend, and then you’ll be so comfortable with emotional vulnerability that you can find a real girlfriend to take on real dates.”
“Yeah, I suppose it could be beneficial,” Eddie was slowly coming around to the idea. He knew that he was oddly charismatic at times, but he was just always too self conscious to follow through with the whole romance thing.
This maybe wasn’t a bad idea, because he knew you weren’t the kind of person who would make fun of his hobbies, or put him down if he slipped up, the sorts of things he was always afraid of girls doing. Sure, he’ll agree to the girlfriend experience. 
After a night of movies and pizza with Steve fake-third-wheeling, you made sure Eddie knew that the fake-date was actually happening, that the two of you would go out for drinks this weekend as your first official practice date. 
After giving it a bit of thought, you realized that you and Eddie had never hung out alone. In your feeble attempts at flirting with him all those months ago you had invited him to have movie nights or grab a bite to eat, but he always showed up with Steve and or Robin in tow.
As the night of the fake-date rolled around, you’d be embarrassed to admit it to him, or Steve, who didn’t care to hide how skeptical he was about this whole idea, that you went through your normal pre-date routine. You took some extra time on your hair and makeup, exfoliated in the shower, chose an outfit you felt confident in, added a few spritz of perfume for good measure too. 
Eddie rolled up in his van, only a few minutes late, but a few minutes was very impressive compared to his typical chronic tardiness. The two of you agreed to just grab some food and drinks at your usual spot, considering you and Steve openly agreed that it would be a good first date spot in theory. 
“Hey,” he reaches across the center console to pop the door open for you, “you look nice.”
It took you a second to register as you settled into the passenger seat, and then whip around with your arm outstretched to give him a high five. He scrunches his face at you.
“High five me Eddie, that was really good! I know you usually open the door for me anyways, but the compliment right away, A+,” you flop your hand down to gently slap his, still gripping the steering wheel. 
“Don’t patronize me, y/n,” deep down he knew you weren’t trying to talk down to him, and deep down he hadn’t even given complimenting you a second thought, he really did think you looked great in your date get-up. 
On the ride over to the bar, the two of you discuss some logistics. Considering all of this is just practice dating, you don’t expect Eddie to pay for you, but you explain that in theory if he had been the one to ask you out then he should be the one to pay for the first date. 
“To me it’s less of a gender thing and more of a who asked out who thing, but I know some people would abide to the stereotypical ‘the man always pays’ standard, which is why you’d just have to be honest on date like two or three about what you enjoy doing and what sorts of things are in your budget. You can still have fun and be thoughtful without spending a lot of money.”
He asked a few questions, like if he should have gotten you flowers for a first date, or what he should do if someone asks to go to a fancy restaurant that he surely couldn’t afford. You tried your best to give solid advice, but always reminded him that every person is different and every relationship is different, so all he can do is be honest. 
You take up a spot at the bar and both order for yourselves, splitting some fries and slipping into some easy conversation. 
“Am I supposed to, like, beat someone up if a guy tries hitting on you in front of me or something like that?” you nearly choke on your drink at his question. 
“Eddie, no,” you answer, also questioning, “why the hell would you ask me that?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “My buddy Jeff was with his girlfriend at this punk show before they were even together, and some guy made a creepy comment to Amanda and Jeff just decked the guy in the face. He say’s that’s what made her want to date him, cuz he defended her honor or whatever.”
“I guess that’s sort of circumstantial, but I prefer my dates to not engage in any sort of violence,” you sip your drink, “even if it’s for my honor. I’d like your face a lot less if you were all bruised up.”
“Well I never said I would get hit,” the two of you were laughing a bit now.
Over a few cocktails you went over some first date etiquette with him. PDA and being touchy, how to follow her lead and gauge if she’s the type who wants everyone at the bar to know you’re together, or keep it strictly platonic to start. How far of a grip on the leg is too far up, that sort of thing.  
“So if she does something like this,” you fake laugh a bit too loud and, lean into his personal space, and then run your hand from his slender down his arm, “that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to fuck you, but it’s pretty close. You’ve at least got a green flag to get a little closer to her, tell her she looks nice, maybe offer to buy her a drink.”
“I know how to tell if someone finds me attractive, y/n, I’m not stupid,” he said casually, “obviously that girl the other night was hitting on me, I’m not blind. I wasn’t going to ask to buy her a drink or try and get lucky in the bathroom because I was out with my friends. I can find a quick fuck in a bar on my own time. I was having fun with you guys, I wasn’t going to abandon all of you to talk to some stranger, even if she was hot.”  
“Oh,” you processed his comment, “Steve would be happy to know he ranks above tube-top girl.”
“Steve would be happy to be above tube-top girl in any context,” he jokes. 
“You really just find random girls in bars to fuck?” You question, not in any sort of judgmental way, just curious. 
“Not specifically, I guess I did make myself sound like some serial bar-bathroom type of guy. I never really had girls interested in me when I was in high school, at least the first four years of it. Then when we started playing regular gigs at The Hideout it was a little easier to find girls who were interested, but it was always that they were more into fucking some guy who could play guitar and was in a band, so it usually just always happened on-site, probably cuz they had an actual boyfriend or husband to go home to. Girls think I’m fun. Which isn’t untrue, I do enjoy a romp in the Hideout bathroom, or the back of my van, or wherever we end up.”
“So that’s what all those blankets are back there for,” you say with a fake scowl, referring to his van set-up. 
“Not exclusively! They make a cozy nest for smoking blunts and listening to tapes too!” 
You return to your drink, trying not to think too hard about the girls that Eddie brings to bar bathrooms or his van or wherever. 
“I just find the energy of those situations very different from like, talking and getting to know someone. Fucking is easy. I’m not interested in ruining that by adding emotions and the looming feeling like sex is contingent on me acting a certain way or checking a certain number of boxes for someone.” 
He shrugged, and you could understand where he was coming from, sometimes a quick fuck or hookup could be cathartic and easy. But it also saddened you to think that Eddie believed he had to get in and out before the person on the other end got the chance to know him. 
Moving away from the subject of his inability to be emotionally vulnerable, the two of you practice some cheesy ‘first date’ questions as you had called them. As your drinks started to settle into your system you were having more fun being silly with him, pretending to be a stranger on a first date. 
“When’s your birthday?” You ask, twirling your drink straw with your finger and making some fake flirty eyes at him to accentuate the facade of asking him a bunch of questions you mostly knew the answers to. 
“August 9th,” he flips his hair over his shoulder, joining in on your fake ostentatious flirting. 
“Oh my gosh, a Leo! This will never work out, cuz I’m an asparagus…”
The two of you nearly fall out of your bar stools laughing, realizing you meant to say Sagittarius. 
“Okay, let’s get you home Asparagus,” he helped you up, having kept his drinking to a minimum so he could drive you home. 
“Wait, wait,” you grabbed his arm as the two of you exited the bar, “can we go back to your trailer?”
He raised an eyebrow at you, “that’s a little presumptuous for a first date missy.”
“No, no, this isn’t girlfriend y/n asking, just regular friend y/n, who thinks it would be a lot of fun to smoke and watch a movie without Steve there spewing all his annoying fun facts, like, we get it, you read the little insert inside the tape while you were bored at work!”
Eddie did agree that the idea of packing a bowl and watching a few movies with you didn’t sound too different from what his plans would have been otherwise, so he agreed, as long as you promised not to give him any dating advice while hanging out as friend y/n and not girlfriend y/n. 
Although you promised to try your best, you immediately started lecturing him on t-shirt borrowing and the potential weight that could hold in a relationship when he offered to give you some more comfy clothes to change into. 
“It’s important to know!” You emerged from the bathroom in one of his oversized shirts and a pair of boxers, “Some girls are very touchy about it. Any shirt you lend her to sleep in, you have to be willing to sacrifice for life.”
“For life?!” Eddie finishes making a bowl of popcorn for the two of you, swallowing his words when he sees you in his clothes, an unidentifiable emotion rising in him at the sight of you so cozy and integrated into his space. 
“Well maybe not life,” you plop down onto the couch, “but do NOT ask for it back. Most girls will give it back once it stops smelling like you.”
“If she gets my shirt, can I have her underwear?” He asked without thinking, the weed he had just smoked with you hitting him a bit too hard in that moment. 
“Oh my god,” you squeal and bury your face into a pillow, “la la la la, pretending like I didn’t hear that!”
“I’m just saying!” He laughs at you, now curled up into a ball, “fair is fair, right?”
“I guess it depends on the girl,” you mumble. 
“So I’m guessing not you, by your reaction.”
“Eddie!” You smack him with a pillow, “I don’t know, no one’s ever asked!”
“If my girlfriend isn’t going to ask before stealing my shirt for an indefinite amount of time, I think that gives me panty privilege.”
“Wow Eddie, if I had known you were such a perv I would’ve reconsidered being your fake girlfriend,” you say sarcastically, with no real judgement behind it. The idea of him wanting to steal your underwear dampens them ever so slightly. 
“Don’t worry babe, I won’t do anything pervy to you unless you ask nicely,” he shoots a wink at you, which you meet with an eye roll and a turn away to hopefully hide the heat rising in your cheeks. 
The two of you carry out your platonic movie night as planned. You suppressed any urge to note on his actions from a romantic lens, and he ignored the itching desire to sling his arm around your shoulder or pull your legs into his lap to get more comfy on the couch. 
“Can I sleep here Eddie,” you ask after movie two, “too sleepy to move.”
“Sure, I can take the couch and you can have my bed. It’s been a minute since I washed the sheets but it shouldn’t be too bad…”
“Nonono,” you mumble, “Your legs will totally hang right off the end of this thing. I’m conked out anyways, I can crash right here I promise.”
“Ignoring that you’re my fake girlfriend, I’m not letting you sleep out here on this lumpy thing. You’re taking the bed, no arguments.”
He helps you up from the couch, letting you keep the blanket that’s wrapped around you, snaking his arm underneath it and pulling you from the couch by your lower back. You were slightly taken aback by his assistance, body still limp from your relaxed state, your torso easily arching into his. Your arms fly up to grab his shoulders, steadying yourself with an awkward giggle. 
“In the real world, a time like this would be good for a first kiss,” you make note of your closeness, the way he swept you up off the couch and held you steadily as you made your way to your feet. 
“I know that, y/n,” his face was closer to yours than it had ever been, making your words hitch in your throat. 
“Well, I’m just saying,” you turn your head to avoid the tension, “I’m sure the way you kiss your bar-hookups isn’t the way most girls who’re looking to date you long term want to be kissed for the first time.”
‘Oh yeah? And how do you presume that goes?” He kept his hand planted on your lower back.
You pretend to act wildly drunk, throwing yourself at him and letting your limbs go a bit heavier than they already were. “Ohmygod guitar man, I’ve had like, six dirty Shirleys, please finger bang me in the bathroom,” you slur your words and let your tongue loll out the side of your mouth as if to lean in for the world’s sloppiest and most uncoordinated kiss.
“First of all,” his voice was very serious, “I don’t hook up with girls who are too inebriated to stand, let’s get that straight. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even have our first fake kiss like this on account of the drinking and smoking, gotta make sure you’re in the right headspace. Secondly,” 
He spins you around and quickly backs you up against the wall that stood a few feet behind the couch. His hand sliding up in between your shoulder blades, blanket now slumped around your waist, his other hand suavely cupping the side of your cheek, His hips angled into yours, pinning you back against the vinyl, almost collapsing back into it. 
He pressed against you, not aggressively, but enough to let you know that if you were to try and squirm away he had the capacity to keep you right where he wanted you. He accomplished this all in one elegant motion, leaving you a bit dazed.
As you started to snap into reality, he moves his hand from your cheek down to grab your chin in between his thumb and the knuckle of his pointer, angling your face directly up at him. 
“If you were some girl in a bar, it would be like this.”
The moment before your brain turned to absolute mush, you silently cringed at the thought of what you must look like, mouth hanging open, eyes glassed over, body instinctively sinking into his touch. Pathetic, you were sure of it. 
Sure, Eddie did think you looked a little helpless, but he also thought you looked perfect. Exactly as he had imagined you to in this situation. Of course he had thought about you before, like that.
Of course he had felt an immediate spark with you when you had first met. But he never flirted back, or lead you on, because as much as he was attracted to you and enjoyed your company, he knew that it wouldn’t work out. He wasn’t relationship material, and you were the picture perfect girlfriend that he didn’t deserve. 
He spoke directly into your parted lips, mouth hovering just far enough away to toe the line of ‘holy shit, is he going to?’ But no, as he made very clear, he wouldn’t kiss you under these conditions. He had made his point, and slowly backed off and let you find your footing. 
As soon as he was sure that you were steady, he backed away and started down the hallway. 
“I might have an extra toothbrush stashed away somewhere, let me look…” he ducked into the bathroom, leaving you stunned in the kitchen, head swimming and your stomach traveled up into your throat. 
He was teasing you, he must be. That was his little way of getting back at you for thinking you could give him dating advice. If he was unsure about his capacity for romance, he was going to make sure you knew he was more than capable in other ways. Understood. 
You shook your head, weeding through your inner monologue of how he could possibly look at you like that and then just walk away. Your shock gave him just long enough for you to to not notice him splashing cold water on his face in the bathroom while he “looked for a toothbrush.” 
The two of you decided to ignore the lingering tension from the events in the kitchen, not a peep of fake-girlfriend talk from you for the rest of the night. He did find you that toothbrush, and the two of you moved through a too-easy domestic routine of getting ready for bed. 
You told him that you wouldn’t be able to sleep if you knew he was cramped on that couch, and that you were fine with sharing a bed. You mumbled something about  getting around to bed sharing etiquette at some point anyways, and sleepily pulled him into being your little spoon. 
Eddie lay there, trying not to twitch or fidget, relaxed as best he could into your cuddled form thinking about how horrible of an idea all of this was. He was convinced all it would take is roughly ten more minutes of you burying your face into his hair and making cute little sleepy noises for him to fall irreversibly in love with you. 
But what was he supposed to do? Move and wake you up? Never. 
You rolled around enough in the night to wake up in a less intimate position than when you had fallen asleep. You knew Eddie was a deep sleeper, and took it upon yourself to creep out of bed and back into your day clothes, make a pot of coffee, and watc a bit of TV before he roused and joined you in the living room. 
“Why didn’t you wake me?” He rubbed the crust from his eyes and was pleasantly surprised to see you had brewed a whole pot of coffee to share. 
“You looked so peaceful and cozy,” he shook his head at you, as if that was no excuse for letting him sleep an extra forty minutes.  
After a slow morning, he agrees to drive you home. 
“So this is the part where I say ‘Eddie, I had such a wonderful time on our date. I’d love to do it again sometime.’ And then you agree and tell me when you’re free. It’s best to be super direct and make plans to get together again soon, cuz then it’s not an awkward who’s-gonna-call-who-first sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh…” he stares at you blankly. 
“But for our sake, let’s just agree that I’m in charge of planning our next date. Okay? I’ll do it from the perspective of what I think most girls would enjoy, so you can steal it for the future. I’ll call you later.” 
You hop out of his van before he can agree, and leave him with a “Thanks for letting me stay over!” As you bound away from his view. 
He squeezed his eyes shut the moment he caught himself checking your ass out as you walked away, and let his head rest down on the steering wheel. He was fucked. How the hell was he supposed to tell you that you needed to stop being his fake girlfriend without disrupting the homeostasis of your friendship?
On one hand he could lie and say he doesn’t want your advice, making you think he didn’t enjoy your company, which was entirely untrue. On the other hand he could tell you the truth, and you would never be friends the same way again. 
He drove home with the music too loud, and patiently awaited your call later that evening to iron out the details of your second fake-date. 
Per your instructions, he let you pick him up this time with the argument that you were the one taking him out this time. He didn’t know what you had planned, but let himself fall to the mercy of whatever you had decided was an exemplary date fore him to ‘steal in the future’. 
You picked up two coffees and rolled up to the trailer park, popping a mix-tape he had made you ages ago. 
“Hey, I thought we said no paying for each other with fake-dating,” he objects to the coffee sat in the passenger cupholder, some abomination of mostly cream and sugar, the way you know he likes it. 
“Yes, that’s true, but you smoked me up the other night, and this coffee was like a dollar fifty, so don’t worry about it,” you give him a look that tells him to drink the damn coffee and not sass back, to which he complies, even though he smokes you up expecting nothing in return about every other weekend. 
The two of you sip away and listen to Eddies ‘must-know-to-be-my-friend’ mixtape and arrive shortly at the strip mall across town. This was a regular weekly stop for both of you, the strip of connected stores containing the Goodwill, a pet store, the pharmacy, and grocery. A pretty mundane collection. 
“Okay, what are we doing at Greg’s?” Eddie gestures to the grocery store, the back of his mind running through the grocery list he’s been making for this week anyways.
“What’s the perfect date?” You ask, and answer for him, “a romantic picnic. But gathering supplies is half the fun. Picnic food supplies at Greg’s, some pills to get fucked up at the pharm, some turtles or something to let loose into the wild from the pet store, and then hats, cups, blanket, etcetera from the Goodwill.”
He turns to you with the most bewildered stare, which sends you into a fit of giggles.
“Okay, I’m joking about the pills and the turtles,” you nudge his arm, “but won’t it be sweet to get together some picnic supplies and then drive out to lookout point? We can still swing by the pet store to check out the ferrets though.”
To Eddie, the idea of a date involved him doing something he didn’t want to do, some awkward small talk, and spending money on shit he truly thought was useless. This didn’t sound half bad. You would “work backwards so the food purchases come last” according  to your reasoning, and he followed you in tow without any arguments into the Goodwill.
“So I’m thinking…” you start to wander into the aisles of used clothes and knick knacks, “maybe a blanket? A basket would be sort of corny, but if we find one for cheap I don’t see why not. Surely two glasses for drinking, and maybe some sun hats?”
Swiveling back around to see a half stunned Eddie, who was still processing how in the hell this was your idea of a romantic date, you grab his hand and pull him to the bric-a-brac section. 
After it got through his thick skull that the same place he had uncomfortably tried on new pants throughout his growth spurt, and picked up his daily-worn leather jacket, had the same potential to provide some silly, cheap, used items to add some flair to this picnic. 
Silly and cheap was right up Eddie’s alley. The two of you picked out mismatched champagne glasses, one with the engraved name of a couple who got married in 1943 and the other a flashy rose color with baby angel carvings dancing around the sides. 
You luckily find an on sale beach blanket, and the two of you pick out some very goofy sun hats. A floppy farmers hat for you, and a bedazzled trucker hat spelling ‘hot mama’ for Eddie.
Through the midst of your giggles and debate on whether you should buy a wooden bench to bring out to your picnic destination, Eddie found himself having a really good time with you. 
As promised, you visited the pet store and checked out the ferrets and fish and geckos. 
“If you could have any pet, what would you want?” You asked him, noses pressed against the chinchilla enclosure. 
“Jaguar,” he said, a little too quickly.
“For real, dummy,” you knock your hip into his.
“I don’t know, we never had enough space or extra money for pets growing up, so maybe someday if I had enough room for it to run around I’d like a dog or something,” he tells. Eyes still transfixed on the chinchilla behind the glass. 
“I can see that,” you imagine Eddie with some mutt from the shelter, wrestling around and giving it lots of scratches behind the ears. 
Skipping the pharmacy, you pop into the grocery store and assemble what may be the world’s most eclectic picnic. 
“That’s the definition of a picnic, I’m pretty sure,” you explain after Eddie insinuated that the gingersnap cookies you grabbed, along with grapes and a block of cheese, wasn’t exactly a meal, “you know, just a smorgasbord of whatever we want!”
Admittedly, Eddie had considered a handful of pretzels and a beer to be dinner on more than one occasion, so he couldn’t argue with you. Quickly catching your drift, the two of you picked out an assortment of snacks and some ingredients for pb&j sandwiches. 
“I thought picnics were supposed to be classy?” Eddie holds up the Wonder bread and bag of potato chips with a look that suggested his question was rhetorical.
Your response was simply to raise the, admittedly cheap, bottle of champagne you grabbed to accompany with your meal, more for the irony of drinking the bubbly liquid out of your new used glasses with your sticky sandwiches than anything else. 
You pack your supplies into a tote bag, not having found a suitable basket at the thrift store, and drive across town to a dirt paved road that leads to a nice lookout point with a view of the lake. 
“Let’s walk down the path a little bit, but not too far,” you grab the blanket and tote bag from your trunk, motioning for Eddie to put on his ‘hot mama’ hat and carry your other auxiliary supplies, “I do not fuck with bugs.”
“I’ll protect you,” Eddie puffs out his chest, making you both giggle.
“From bugs?”
“Yeah, I’ll punch a mosquito right in the face, to defend your honor and all that.”
“I know I told you not to do that, but a mosquito might be the exception to the rule.”
You found a nice little clearing not far from the car, a spot that still had a nice view but was a bit more secluded. Eddie sat pressed right up next to you, making your sandwich ‘to be a proper gentleman’ but simultaneously spilling a glob of jelly onto your leg.
“Shit,” he doesn’t think twice before leaning down and slurping the grape flavored blob off of your bare knee, tongue poking out and licking the spilt jelly from your skin.
“Eddie!” You squirm away, barking out a surprised laugh. 
“What! Your knee is clean, wouldn’t want to waste perfectly good preserves, or a napkin.”
You feel your skin tingle where his lips had touched you, for only a moment, but you still felt it. He was so confident and casual in his movements, not having any hesitation to grab your hand or brush your hair out of your face. It wasn’t under the guise of fake romance, he had always been like that. Not touchy, per se, just sure of himself. You’d never seen Eddie do anything half assed, that’s for certain.
After the conversation you shared the other night, you were unable to stop your mind from wandering to thoughts of what Eddie does with those girls in bars, if he touched him with the same confidence and sureness he put into everything else he did. 
It was wrong to let your mind go to such dirty places about someone you considered a friend, but you couldn’t manage to feel any guilt. He had offered that information freely, so who were you to punish yourself for staring a little longer at his fingers, conjuring up the context in which he’d bury them inside you against some grimy bar bathroom. 
The date was all peanut butter smiles and bubbly laughter that floated up into the trees. Silly, yes, but neither of you could deny there was something sweet, maybe even romantic about it. A cheap meal in the woods shared between two friends in ill-fitting fifty cent hats, but an undeniable touch of romance lingered nonetheless. 
Eddie started to realize that maybe the whole dating thing wasn’t as uptight and scary as he had initially thought. It could be easy and fun, with the right person. And fuck, if he could even imagine doing this with anyone but you. 
Like most things Eddie did, he did not consider any potential consequences before acting. You looked so pretty sitting there in the sunshine, sipping from your cheap ‘Martha & Dave ’43’ glass, a few sandwich crumbs dotting the corner of your mouth.
What else was he supposed to do other than lean over and wipe them away with his thumb, stroking your soft cheek and feel the warmth of your skin beneath his palm. 
“You had some,” he uses his other hand to motion at his own mouth, “and I suppose this is the sort of moment where I’d ask if I can kiss you.” 
You find yourself a bit dumbfounded, his big stupid hand on your cheek and those big stupid puppy dog eyes unrelenting in making everything he says seem so genuine.
“Are you?” You find your voice, only half embarrassed at how shy it comes out.
“Am I what?”
“Are you asking me?”
“Yeah,” his answer comes out in a way that insinuates that he never meant anything other than that, that he was always asking to kiss you, he wasn’t asking in theory, in another universe, in the context of advice. 
“Okay,” you found yourself behaving like Eddie, not really thinking of consequences before your words and actions spoke on behalf of your instincts.
Everything so far had been so easy. Your fake first date at the bar, curling up next to him in a haze, making up stories about what sort of people donated the fake palm tree or the Garfield mug at the Goodwill, imagining Eddie running around a yard with a puppy, lounging in the grass and eating your assorted picnic snacks. It was all effortless.
Suddenly, being kissed by Eddie sucked the ease from your lungs and sent your mind spiraling into a cacophony of bells and whistles and giant swirling red flags. If this is how he kissed you, casually across some half eaten peanut butter sandwiches, you’d spend the rest of your days yearning to know how he kissed someone with true intention. 
Of course, his intentions were all there, but the lingering knowledge that all of this was happening under the umbrella of “you giving him advice” or “helping practice for the next girl” poisoned any true feeling he poured into it. He cupped your cheek, soft, let his lips press into yours delicately for a moment before he felt your breath hitch, opening his mouth just enough to deepen the kiss and capture your lower lip fully. 
He was more careful, gentle, methodic with his movements and so receptive to every little signal your body gave him, it was unlike any first-kiss, heat-of-the-moment-kiss, in-the-throws-of-passion-kiss, any of it. Like hell you’d ever tell him that, inflate that big ego that fuels his snippy comebacks at you, but Jesus, was it remarkable. 
While at war with yourself internally, your heart was on the precipice of exploding in your chest from the way he snaked his hand into your hair and pressed his forehead against yours to catch a breath. You suck in a sharp breath and feel that stupid cocky smirk creep up onto that pretty mouth of his.
“’S that sufficient for a first kiss?”
“Fuck offfff,” you were still a little out of breath, smacking his chest and flopping back down onto the picnic blanket, throwing your arms up and rolling your eyes at him, “if you’re so damn confident, maybe we just should fake break up, cuz you don’t seem like you need my advice.”
“Nooooo,”he slumps down next to you, burrowing his head under your arm so he can pop up right next to your face, “I’m learning a lot, I promise! This date was so fun, and cheap! I would have never thought any of this could be remotely romantic. I’m hopeless, y/n, look at me.”
He wriggles around and gives you a big fake pout, “If left to my own devices I would probably do something horribly embarrassing or off-putting, like…” he digs his head into the crook of your neck and blew a fat, wet raspberry right into your skin, making you yelp and squeal, but his position half on top of you pins you down. 
“See!” He pulls up for air, you were in a fit of screaming giggles, “I’d go right in for a kiss and just,” and he does it again, leaving you gasping for air, trying your best to tickle his ribs to get him off of you, but not minding the close contact by any means. 
“Now I’m not so sure,” he pulls back to give you a minute to catch your breath, “it seems like you enjoyed that, so maybe survey says I should pull that move on the ladies.”
Your airy laughter subsided, but he stays half pinning you down to the blanket and the lumpy grass underneath.
“I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I’m not grateful for your help,” he says earnestly, catching your gaze, “it’s just… this isn’t what I need help with.”
As his statement is processing, you find his lips back on yours, his torso pressed flushed with yours and his wild mane of hair coming down to curtain around your head. He doesn’t take it too far, but kisses you as earnestly as he had before, giving your lip a slight drag with his teeth and running his hand up from your hip up the side of your ribcage, leaving you arching slightly into him by pure instinct.
Before your head got too dizzy again, before you could really throw yourself into it and say fuck it and kiss him back the way you secretly wanted to, he pulled back.
“That.” his voice was even, you hated how needy you felt and how even keeled he could be milliseconds after stealing the air from your lungs, “It’s the rest of it,” he threw his hands up and gestured to all the food and knock knacks around you, “it’s this stuff that you make seem so easy, so forgive me if I lay it on a little thick when we get to the parts I’m actually good at.”
“Just,” you sat up a bit, grounding yourself and formulating a response despite your brain looping the past twenty seconds back infinitely, “don’t do that again.”
“Okay,” he sat back and popped a grape into his mouth, “sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” you knocked his knee with yours, struggling to articulate how you felt without showing too much of your hand, deciding to just be candid, “I just- I liked that a little too much if you know what I mean. And this is strictly business, or education, maybe?”
“You liked it when I pinned you against the wall the other night,” he said matter of factly, “I think you liked that a little too much too, and you still took me on this fake educational business date.”
“Yeah, well, you caught me,” you threw your hands up in defense.
“Which one is it though?” He asks and you don’t quite understand, “are you a sweet kiss on the picnic kind of girl, or an up against the wall kind of girl?”
“That’s none of your business, as far as fake-dating is concerned,” you say a little too quickly, “and no you can’t have my panties.”
You say it with a smirk, but he doesn’t press any further. He turns and does that Eddie-thing he’s so good at, just changing the subject and shifting the vibe completely away from what might have been a stale moment or awkward pause. He starts asking if you like green or purple grapes better, going off about how he used to put them in the freezer as a kid. 
The remainder of your date went without a hitch, of course. You picked away at your picnic until the sun started to set, and once the sky started turning purple you made your way back to the car. The drive home consisted only of easy conversation and no further mention of the kiss, well, kisses that had transpired. He hopped out of the passenger seat with a ‘thank you’ and a ‘see ya later alligator.’ 
A scalding hot shower, a restless night of sleep, and too many cups of herbal tea the next morning did nothing to quell the noise in your head that blasted those moments over and over. You couldn’t stop picking apart whether he had thought about it for even a millisecond, and felt embarrassed that you could think of nothing else. 
It was simply an amplified version of what your whole friendship had been up until this point. You silently admiring him and wishing he would look at you the way you looked at him, and settling for friendship over heartbreak. 
Pushing it aside to the best of your ability allowed you to get through your week, but you had the lingering feeling that the next time you saw him would strike you with warm cheeks and a scrambled mental state.
Guilt had started to seep in at the corners of your mind, but you reminded yourself that you shouldn’t punish yourself for having romantic or sexual thoughts about someone you simply found attractive and compelling, it was your actions that would determine the validity of your guilt. 
“Long time no see, loser,” Robin hollered from the pool table across the bar, where she was likely kicking Steve’s ass. 
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” you shrug off your coat and plop down at their regular booth, knowing her jabs were entirely empty. You notice Eddie’s leather jacket hung up by the wall, and scan the bar to find him ordering a drink. 
There was a silent mutual understanding that you’d keep the fake dating thing to a bare minimum when out with your friends like this. Even though Steve was well aware, and therefore Robin was too, you figured tainting your social time with the performance of romance is the exact reason Eddie turned down the girl at the bar in the first place. 
“For the lady,” Eddie waltzes over and hands you a drink.
“Oh, thanks,” you take it with a confused smile, “you didn’t have to do that.”
“You bought me coffee last weekend,” he sat across the booth from you, “plus I’m trying to get better at buying drinks for pretty girls, right?”
You remind him that he doesn’t have to keep tabs on things like coffee, but you appreciate the gesture regardless. As per the past few times you’d been out with your friends, you expected him to put a pause on the flirting, but it seems to be bubbling over tonight. You weren’t complaining, but admittedly the arm around your shoulder or the noticeable way he checked you out when you got up to refill your drink took you by slight surprise. 
Sneaking in to claim the always occupied dart board for a challenge against Eddie while he uses the restroom, you keep your eyes on the corner of the bar to signal him over once he returns.
“You need a partner?” A man suddenly appears behind you, a little closer than you’d like but the bar was crowded, so you’ll let it slide. 
“Oh, I was just waiting for-“
“Let me fill in until your friend gets here, we can get you warmed up, yeah?” His tone wasn’t too pushy, but you didn’t love the look he gave you when making that comment.
Awkwardly staggering for a second, unsure weather to just agree or tell him to fuck off, “He really should be just a minute-“
“Or maybe less,” Eddie comes up right behind you and pulls you possessively into his side.
Your head whips up to see him with a devilish smile, his hand on your waist and the fire behind his eyes telling his guy to get lost.
“Oh, sorry man,” the guy starts backing away with an apologetic look.
“Yeah, better luck next time, pal,” Eddie snakes around to take the guy’s spot in front of the dart board.
He had his darts in hand and took his stance to start the match, gesturing for you to do the same. 
“What was that,” you ask with a slight joking tone, but seriously curious.
“What?” He doesn’t make eye contact and instead throws the first dart, “I’m not allowed to get fake jealous?”
“You’re allowed to feel any fake emotion you want, I guess,” your tone is somewhere in between a joke and a question. 
“You’d feel fake jealous if I was getting blown in the bathroom by some chick rather than playing darts with you, I bet.”
“Okay,” your tone shifts to defensive, “getting blown is very different than some guy asking to play darts with me.”
“I didn’t like the way he was looking at you,” Eddie turns to face you, having thrown all his darts, “for real.”
A moment lapsed where you didn’t register that your mouth was hanging open in disbelief, the look in your eyes Eddie immediately clocked as lust and bottled up to store away for a later time. 
“I knew the scary dog thing would work,” his ‘i-told-you-so’ tone rubbed you the wrong way, but he wasn’t wrong, “you said girls weren’t into that, but you totally looooove that I defended your honor.”
“Don’t give yourself too much credit, I said girls wouldn’t be into it if you punched him,” you rolled your eyes.
“I don’t know, babe, I think you liked the whole ‘back off of my woman’ act.”
You mumble out a ‘whatever’ and let him have this win, which he was clearly reveling in, trying to focus instead at beating him at darts. 
“Just don’t pull shit like that on a first date, acting too possessive off the bat is a huge red flag for a lot of women.”
“I thought we weren’t doing dating advice tonight?” You don’t even have to look at him to know he’s got that stupid sarcastic smile.
“Yeah I thought so too,” you fail at your attempt to beat him in darts, as well as your attempt to not flirt back with him. 
He insists on collecting all the darts, picking up the ones haphazardly strews across the floor from failed attempts to hit the board. 
“I’m no pro or anything, but I think you’d hit the board a lot more if you fixed your stance.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” you flip him the bird and take back your red tipped darts. 
As you steady your arm to aim your first shot he comes up behind you and grabs your hips, causing you to let out an unexpected squeak. He adjusts your stance, not aggressively, but with some force, twisting your hips and using his big combat boot to sweep your foot around so you stood more sideways. 
“You’re standing straight on,” he backs up, allowing you to secretly catch your breath, “and all your shots are veering to the right. If you plant your feet more angled you’ll hit the board.”
You wanted to roll your eyes at him, miss on purpose to show him he’s full of shit. You flippantly toss the dart, not trying particularly hard, and it hits. Not a bulls-eye or anything like that, but a lot closer than your previous attempts had been. 
“Good girl,” he comments, leaning in to breech your personal space just enough to make your blood boil.
You drop the remainder of the darts in your opposite hand onto the floor and whip around to face him, half jokingly smacking him on the shoulder. 
“Oh my god, fuck off!”
You’re met with his trademark shit-eating grin.
Truthfully, Eddie hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off you all night. He’d spent the night after your picnic date with his hand in bis boxers, squeezing his eyes shut and remembering the little gasp you had made when he grabbed your waist, the hum in your throat that bubbled up when he kissed you pinned against the blanket, that night and every night since. 
“Oh, you don’t like that?” that joking tone he uses to cover up what he actually wants to say. 
“Shut up, you know I do,” you didn’t even try to stifle your reaction, knowing it was his intent to get under your skin.
“How would I possibly know that,” he playfully looks up at the ceiling and around the bar, hands clasped behind his back now, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“You better cut that shit out, unless you plan on doing something about it,” you manage the most assertive tone your wobbly insides could muster, a little shocked at yourself for actually saying what you were thinking. 
“I’m not much of a planner,” he gracefully takes a stance next to you and rips all three darts, not great shots, but all hitting the board, “I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy, you know that.”
“Well your pants better make up their mind if you’re playing boyfriend tonight or not,” your insinuation was heavy but you had fumbled your hand, and he had already seen all your cards at this point, so there was no reason to bluff.
“The real question is,” he leans in, his imposing figure crowding your space in a way that made your head spin, “do you want me to play boyfriend? Or do you want me to play guy who fucks your brains out in the bar bathroom?”
Your eyebrows pinched together for a millisecond, and before he could decipher your expression you grabbed his hand and started storming through the crowds hoarded by the bar. Why the hell a seedy downtown bar has a single stall family bathroom with a changing table is beyond you, but you drag him inside and slam the lock down behind you. 
“You’re not allowed to treat me any differently after this,” you start to fall into the sinkhole of oh my god what the hell is about to happen, but are cut off by him pressing you against the closed door the exact way he had handled you against his kitchen wall that night weeks ago. 
“Not unless you want me to,” he doesn’t hesitate to get his mouth on yours, immediately pulling your mind from wondering what the vague sticky substance on the door pressing into your back could be. 
“I mean, you’re not allowed to fuck me and then never talk to me again,” you say in between moving lips and tongues, giving him a moment to bury his face in your neck, "Promise me."
“Oh don’t worry about that,” he pulls back, “we can go get coffee tomorrow and you can give me a full performance review. Promise.”
Your annoyed eye roll quickly turns into them fluttering shut as he licks a stripe up to the junction behind your ear that has you melted into a boneless puddle between his pressing hips and the door. He drags his teeth across your lobe while leaning into you with a black denim clad thigh.
“Why don’t we make a deal,” you let out, voice breathy and unfocused. Before he can even pull back to reply you continue, “if you’re half as good at this as you claim to be, and can make me cum in this dingy bathroom, I’ll let you take me back to your trailer and you can do whatever the fuck you want to me.”
He was leaning in to seal the deal with a kiss before he could even process your request, because yes of course, a million times yes he’s taking this deal. Despite the rouse of you playing bar hookup for the night, and despite the idea of bringing you back to his place and finally doing what he’s wanted since the day he met you absolutely terrifying him, he nods and kisses you. 
It’s electrifying. His confidence only spurs you on to kiss him harder, grip his hair a little tighter, say the things you would only imagine in the deepest parts of your mind. The feeling of his grin against your lower lip and his fingers quickly unbuttoning your jeans fuels your fire. 
“You sure you know what you’re getting into,” he mumbles playfully, pulling you away from the wall with a gasp and leading you over to the tiny built in counter against a mirror by the sink. 
“Well I’m certainly not letting you fuck me against any of these sticky surfaces,” you note as you’re lifted onto the counter covered in mystery substance, “and I think you need to earn it.”
Of course it was no surprise to you that Eddie was good with his fingers. You probably could have told anyone that long before this impromptu bathroom hookup. Egging him on and challenging him in a way you were sure he wasn’t used to was well worth abandoning your assumptions. 
“Oh yeah? I think, if you’re lucky, I’ll earn it more times than you can count before the night’s over,” he positioned himself in between your legs, pressing your torso into the mirror behind you as he leaned in for another heated kiss. 
He pulled your ass to the edge of the counter, and looped his thumbs into the waistband of your unbuttoned pants. You were quick to assume that he’d yank the fabric right off your legs, preparing to lift your ass from the counter to assist.
Eddie paused, pulled back and gave you a look that asked ‘you’re sure about this?’ and when a dreamy smile spread across your cheeks he melted into you with a kiss that turned your stomach inside out and made your pussy flutter.
He snakes a hand from its grip on your torso down into your unbuttoned pants. You arched up into his touch, wanting to urge him to get on with it and get your pants and underwear out of the way, but appreciating how much he seemed to be reveling in feeling you for the first time. 
“So fuckin wet,” he mumbled against your lips, his fingers only feeling up your cunt from outside your underwear. He pressed the fabric into your slick center, following the path up to your clit and then teasingly back down to where your panties were soaked through.
“You weren’t lying when you said you liked this a little too much,” he’s rolling his hips ever so slightly against your spread thigh as he rubs your clothed pussy, his teeth sinking into your lower lip as he moves the material aside and sinks two fingers right into your wet cunt with ease.
You were sure that you’d retrospectively have a million quippy compacks that come to mind, but in this moment it was impossible to come up with words when his fingers were buried inside you, still, just letting you squeeze around them, and his hard cock straining against his jeans nestled against the inside of your thigh.
He slowly drags his finger’s up from your hole to your clit, and you let out a whine of desperation as he fully removes his hand from your damp underwear. 
Before you can manage the breath to tell him to please, for the love of god, get on with it, he brings his fingers up to his lips and gives them a long suck, never breaking eye contact with you. 
“Yeah,” he sighs out and presses his forehead against yours, “I might like that a little too much too.”
Protests and urging words catch in your throat as he yanks down your pants and underwear with one quick pull, not even needing you to lift your ass off the counter more than it already was. He was methodical and moved with intention, folding up your pants neatly and shoving your soaked panties into his back pocket, shooting you a wink. 
“Eddie, please,” your overdue complaints are finally bubbling over. You hardly finish your plea before his face is buried in your neck, and his fingers are sliding right back into your needy hole. 
The top of your head rests against the mirror behind you, exposing your neck and arching your back into his touch. He sucks and nips at the soft skin between your collar bone and ear, all while letting his two middle fingers pump slowly into you.
“Mmmm,” he mumbles into the crook of your jaw, “such a good girl for me, perfect pussy squeezing my fingers so tight, can’t fuckin wait to feel you soak my cock.”
Nearly orgasming at his words alone, your eyes flutter shut and you let out a moan of his name as he lets his thumb drag circles across your clit. “Eddie, please, just like that, I-”
“Oh, suddenly she’s not questioning my abilities?” he says with a biting smirk, “What was that about me not being half as good as I think I am?”
“Fuck,” you want to raise an eyebrow and shoot something back, hold out and make him work for it, but after hardly two minutes of his fingers rolling inside you, hooked up to drag along that perfect fucking spot, you had no choice but to feed his ego and let him win. 
“You wanted to make your little deal,” he pumps a little faster, making your head loll to the side and mouth hang half open, “I’ll sweeten it for you, babe. I say we can get this pretty pussy to come twice all over my fingers before anyone even knocks on this door.”
“Yes,” is all you can squeak out, “yes, please.”
If Eddie was being honest, he was a few half-thrusts into your thigh short of coming in his own pants from how hot you looked. Your eyes glassed over, pretty lips parted and gasping his name, perfect cunt sucking his fingers in. 
The hand not occupied by your gushing cunt slid up to cup the side of your cheek, forcing you to look into his fiery eyes. “Feel’s good?” he questions, knowing the answer and not expecting a verbal response.
He drags the pad of his thumb up to your parted lips, running it along your plush bottom lip and dragging it down a bit, relishing in how under his spell you were. His thumb slips into your mouth and you immediately wrap your lips around it and suck. 
“Good girl,” his thumb on your clit is rubbing more focused circles, “suck on that and keep your voice down, don’t want the whole bar knowing what a good little slut you are for me.”
Jackpot. 
A muffled moan around his thumb and the spasming of your inner walls signaled that you were hitting your peak. He drags the spit slicked digit from your lips and quickly replaces it with his lips and tongue, kissing you with fervor as he feels you ride out your orgasm on his hand. 
“Mmmmmmm” you moan, somewhere between a pleading whine and a sigh of satisfaction into his lips as his fingers don’t let up. 
Under different circumstances you would tell him to slow down, give you a minute to catch your breath. Eddie was stubborn, this you knew, and he had already made it abundantly clear that one orgasm wasn’t going to be enough. 
He pulls back from your lips, loving the sharp intake of breath you swallow as your cheeks continue to flush and eyelids keep fluttering. 
“So fucking good, came all over my fingers,” his gaze locks in on where his hand was buried into your cunt. “Gonna give me one more?”
Of course you would, whether it was up to you or not. He did slow up for a second, just enough for you to regain your grip on reality before he started curling them up again. 
“Eddie,” you whine out, eyes nearly crossed and unable to focus your attention on his face, hands, anything other than his boner poking into your inner thigh, “wanna feel you.”
The hand formerly gripped tight onto the edge of the counter snakes forward and pulls his hip into you, a permanent indentation of his stiff cock molding against your skin. 
“Not yet baby,” he rolls his hips forward, giving you a delicious feel of how it would be if he was inside you, but instead pushing his fingers a touch deeper and then pulling his hips away, “one more and then I’ll take you home. You’re gonna let me ruin that perfect little cunt, right? That was the deal?”
“Yes,” you gasp out, his other hand moving from your hair down to rub fast tight circles on your clit, the other hand still pumping steadily inside you.
“That’s right, I know this pussy is gonna take me so well. You’re already drooling for my cock, so fucking perfect.”
You feel it building up again, that sacred double orgasm that only ever came during your alone time in the shower or when you were so desperate for release that your hand didn’t stop after the first, but never with another person, never like this. 
His smile nearly touched his ears at this point, pulling back to take in all of you as your eyes screwed shut and thighs threatened to break his wrist at how fast they snapped together. 
Hitting you like a punch to the gut, your abdomen tightened and released rapidly, air sucked from your lungs and his hand working you through it between your clenched thighs. 
Yeah, maybe this was a bad idea. 
If you were in a cartoon, stars and chirping birds would be swirling around your head as you slowly came back to reality. He gave you some space, and begrudgingly gave you pack your panties after you hand out your hand and gave him a stern look.
“I’m gonna go tell the others that you aren’t feeling great and I’m taking you home,” he makes sure you’ve pulled your pants back up before unlocking the door, “Take your time, and I’ll meet you at the van, okay? I’ll grab your stuff.”
“Yeah,” you still feel a little flustered, looking back into the mirror and smoothing down your hair, “thanks.”
He shoots you a wink before slipping out, giving you a moment to collect yourself and splash some cold water on your face. Okay, so you’re doing this. 
Any nagging feelings that this might ruin things or that he’s only teasing you because of your arrangement are quickly squished down into a deeper compartment of your brain, overtaken by the post orgasm bliss and wandering thoughts of what might happen next. 
You peek your head out of the bathroom door, and slink your way to the back door without passing your group table or a stray Steve or Robin. The fresh air equalizes your buzzing thoughts, and you spot Eddie, already in the driver’s seat of his van. 
“You good?” He asks as you hop into the passenger seat. You won’t let him have the upper hand, just because he made you come twice in under ten minutes. 
“Yeah,” you gather as much assertion as your voice will project, “You good?”
“F’course,” he starts backing up, you internally roll your eyes at the way his outstretched arm muscles and curved neck make your stomach flutter, “Just wanted to make sure I passed the test.”
You sit in silence, not wanting to give into the cocky game he clearly wants to play, yet know that he’s entirely correct in his assumption that he’s driven you completely crazy. Once he’s on the main stretch of road, finally rolling to a stop at a red light you let your hand migrate across the center console, dancing its way into his lap. 
As you hoped, his cock was still half hard and apparent underneath his jeans. You let your hand draw circles next to it, loving the little twitch you get when you run your nails against his thigh. 
“Easy there, tiger,” he lets out a huffed laugh, with just an edge to his tone that suggested you were getting yourself into something you’d soon regret. 
“C’mon Eds,” you let your head fall on the corner of the headrest, gaze angled over at his tight grip on the steering wheel while your hand dancing around the bulge in his pants, “you’ve been pushing this thing against my thigh for the past twenty minutes, forgive me for wanting a better feel.”
You put on a pretend pouty face and flash him your best puppy dog eyes to ward off any incoming snippy comments from him. He rolls his pretty eyes at you and silently bites the inside of his cheek as you feel up and down his lap, grazing his growing cock with each pass. 
“Forgiven,” through gritted teeth, he squeezes his eyes shut as your fingers circle around his head, now taking visible form beneath his black jeans. He internally reprimands himself for losing focus on the road, and zeroes his concentration on getting back to his trailer as fast as this van can take him. 
You have your fun watching him wiggle in his seat, feeling his thigh muscles clench under your palm every so often. You weren’t full on jerking him off over his pants, but you were certainly relishing in the feeling of his dick getting harder and harder with each occasional pass of your hand.
He parks diagonally across the lawn in front of his trailer, not giving a shit where the van ends up as long as it’s stopped. He wanted to dash around the vehicle and scoop you out of your seat, throw you over his shoulder and take you inside to continue with whatever this evening had in store for you.
The second his hand stalled on the clutch, shifting the van into park and taking a moment to let his mind wander to what would happen once he got you inside, you were already halfway out the van and skipping up the steps to his front door. 
Entering his trailer, you start taking off your coat and shoes, trying to act as normal as possible. Your facade of keeping it cool entirely shatters when he enters behind you, calmly clicking the door shut and patiently waiting for you to finish unlacing your boots.
You remain crouched down, darting your eyes up at him, deciding against being a brat and undoing your laces as slowly as possible to keep him waiting. Any caution you had was long swept away by the wind, and he’d taken control in your little bathroom tryst, so it was your turn to say fuck it and just do what felt right. 
And in this moment, there was only a few quick movements and about six inches of space between you and Eddie’s semi-hard dick. One shoe was only half off, haphazardly kicked behind you as you pivoted onto your knees and had your hands moving eagerly up his tensing thighs.
“Can I?” Your question was half formed and he was already nodding. 
You’d teased him enough on the ride over, you wanted him, now. Pants quickly unbuttoned and blue checkered boxers pushed down to his knees, and you were about to go feral and just go for it when a silver glimmer adorning his thick cock caught your eye.
Your mouth was already half open, but your jaw nearly unhinged and hit the floor when the pierced head of his dick falls out of his boxers and lands at your eye level. 
Unmoving, mouth agape, you look up to make eye contact, ripping your eyes away from the shock of two silver balls on his cockhead. He knew it was nice, he wouldn’t have bedazzled it if it wasn’t, but the look you were giving him sucked all the unwavering confidence from his body for a split second, suddenly feeling weak in the knees at the sight of you slowly sicking your tongue out, not making any contact but waiting. 
He took the base of his dick in his hand and gave it a few precautionary strokes before angling it down and slapping your wet tongue with the tip a few times. 
You were two and a half seconds away from being entirely fucked out. If he pulled away and asked you to crawl on all fours to him, you’d do it without a second thought.
You let him slide his cock gently against your outstretched tongue a few times before coming to your senses and wrapping your lips around him, moving your hand to replace his and move against the length that your mouth couldn’t yet reach. 
All it took was a few steady bobs of your head, hand twisting and eyes still focused upwards on his face, to have him biting his knuckle and looking up at the ceiling to ground himself to try and not bust on the spot. You love this, of course, seeing him visibly spiral paired with the salty taste of precum already leaking from him. 
The hand not jerking him off comes up to the back of his hip, gently pushing against him in tandem with the movements of your head, encouraging him to shallowly thrust into your mouth.
“Jesus fu-“ he grunts out, not wanting to overestimate your encouragement, but unable to keep his hips from rolling forward slightly with the push of your hands and the bob of your lips. 
After an unexpected snap of his hips that sent his cock sliding into the back of your throat, making you gag slightly, a pang of guilt struck through him for pushing too hard. That was, until you let your head pull back a touch to catch your breath, but a long string of spit connected your lips to his cock, and a wild smile broke across your face that nearly sent him to the moon. 
You dove back in and pushed his cock all the way into the back of your throat, going so far that your nose pressed into the patch of dark curls that sat above his perfect dick. Focusing your breathing through your nose, you make a point to constrict your throat a few times until you feel him twitch inside you.
Pulling off with a gasp for air, you notice his eyebrows pinched together and gaze locked on you. 
“I like how these feel,” you comment, letting your pointed tongue dance around the metal balls on his tip.
He shudders and you clench your thighs at the sight of his stomach muscles tensing up when your tongue makes contact with the underside of his head, right where it meets the shaft. 
“If I let you fuck my mouth until you come, are you still going to be able to give it to me in a bit, or are you a one and done kind of guy?” You ask with a playfully teasing tone, but genuinely want to know if you suck him off to completion if the night will be over or not. 
“Fuck,” he spits out, more blood rushing to his cock at the idea of coming down your throat, “I’d fuck you all night if you’d let me babe.”
Half a second doesn’t pass before his cock is back in your mouth, hips shakily moving forward with your movements, gaining confidence as you flicker your eyes up at him through your lashes, the glimmer in them telling him he can take what he wants. 
“Fuckin’ look at you,” he comments to himself, “takin’ it all.” 
“Mhmmm,” you hum around him letting your tongue roll around his tip each time before he pushes his cock back down your throat. 
“You think you can get away with teasing me like that? That shit you pulled in the van back there, you think it’s cute to try and get me all riled up?”
You nod, tongue out and saliva coating your lips and chin. You could tell he was close by the way his words came out staggered, and his hips started snapping towards you in a new tempo, like his body was chasing it. 
Grunts and moans pulled from his chest fill the space mixed with the hums of satisfaction you let out while you take him deeper and faster. Moving in for the kill, you carefully slip your hand up in between his legs, cupping his balls, trying your best not to startle him. 
“Oh fuck,” it was a pitch of his voice you’d never heard before, a new tone especially reserved for the moments before orgasm, “you’re gonna make me fuckin come, y/n, y/n, I’m…”
The feeling of his balls constricting in your hands cues the warm wash of come sputtering down into your throat.
Getting the feeling he’d appreciate a bit of a show, you continue to jerk him off and pull off his cock slightly, letting the tip balance onto the tip of your tongue and the rest of his load spills out into your open mouth, some landing around the corners and onto your lips. 
“Christ, y/n,” his chest is heaving, his eyes finally pulling from you to squeeze shut for a moment. 
Once you’re sure he’s looking at you again you swallow down the salty white substance and lick the excess off your lips. You take his head back into your mouth, sucking just enough to clean off the tip and lap up any stray drops. He’s sensitive, you can tell, so you stop torturing him and place a final kiss right in between the two metal balls. 
You thought of asking him if the piercing hurt, or maybe make a comment about the two matching tattoos on his hipbones, ink of his you’d never seen until now. Before your brain can jump from swallowing his come to making post-nut chit chat, he’s yanking you up off your feet and wrapping you in a searingly passionate kiss. 
In your past experience most guys wanted you to drink some water or brush your teeth after they came in your mouth, at least before kissing you. Not Eddie. The way his tongue immediately slipped into your mouth, you almost believed he was trying to get a taste for himself. 
“C’mon,” he whispers in between slotting his lips with your, “Bedroom. Now.” 
He takes your hips in his hands and spins you around, causing a surprised yelp to bubble up from you, making him chuckle behind you as he walks you down the hall, keeping his hands on your sides. 
You knew where you were going, there were only so many doors in his tiny trailer, and you’d been here plenty of times before, but you liked the feeling of his hands pushing you forward, guiding your movements and steering you down the hallway into his room. 
Before your knees can hit the bed he spins you back around and captures your lips in another heated kiss. His hands trail up your sides, letting his fingertips slide beneath the hem of your shirt and push it upwards until your ribs were exposed. He pulls away from your face, leaving you leaning back into him, not wanting the kiss to end. 
“Up,” he pinches the sides of your shirt in his hands, and signals with his chin that he wants you to lift your arms, which you comply. 
It slides up and off of you, his hands quickly darting back to unclasp your bra, seemingly without even trying. This makes you roll your eyes, but the realization that you’re bare before him eclipses the thought of making a snippy remark about what a man whore he is. 
Flat palms caress your sides and move up to cup your breasts, his tongue pressing into the side of your neck. 
“These too,” his thumbs dip into your pants, managing to wiggle under the waistband of your panties as well. You’re going to do it yourself, but he gently pushes you back onto the bed, letting you flip back into the unmade blankets. 
“I wanna see you,” he pops your pants button and waits for a nod before sliding your pants and underwear down your legs. 
In between the blowjob and now, he’d tucked himself back into his pants, pulling his boxers and jeans back up, still unbuttoned, but covering him back up as his cock returned to a half hard state, unlikely to stay that way for very long considering how things were going. 
The scene of you now sprawled out onto his bed, naked and needy for him, and him standing above you, basically fully clothed, had a flood of lust traveling south between your thighs.
“So fuckin’ gorgeous,” you burned under his intense gaze, raking down your body and soaking in the image of your skin laid out against his flannel plaid sheets. 
He crawls over you, letting his body melt into yours, the center seam of his jeans pressing against your soaking core, just as it had when he had you pressed up against the door of the bar bathroom.
Rocking gently against you, you feel his cock already starting to harden again. His tongue moves against your neck, hands roaming freely against your skin, arching into his touch. 
His breath was heavy against your lips, he was already starting to lose himself, and he knew he wanted to make you come with his tongue at least once before his dick came back out, but it was already pulsing between his legs, growing rock solid with every little whimper that came past your lips. 
Your fingers intertwined themselves into the tresses of his long, messy hair. You use your new grip to pull his face as close into yours as your bodies will allow, smushing his nose up against your cheek and foreheads plastered together. The weight of his body on yours, and the lovely rocking motion of his hips against yours stopped as he pulled away and hooked his arms under your knees. 
He slides off the side of the bed, feet returning to the carpeted ground and yanking your body to the edge of the mattress. You let out an unexpected giggle, body limp like a rag doll, moving wherever he wanted you. 
He leans back over to give you another deep kiss, teeth dragging against your lower lip and tongue sliding gracefully against yours, before he slides his mouth down, stopping to lap up at your nipples for a moment, not letting any part of your skin go untouched as he takes his time moving down to where you want him most. 
Wiggling around on his mattress, your body is begging him to get on with it, but he loves to make you squirm. He takes his time licking up your hip bones, kissing from the innermost part of your thigh all the way down to your knee, and then back up the other side. He even takes a long moment to suck a dark purple bruise into the meat of your thigh, biting down on the flesh and licking over the skin to soothe it, noticing how your back arched a little when he bit down harder. 
“Please Eddie,” your voice is hardly above a whisper, whimpering and whiny.
“All you had to do was ask nicely,” he has that too-cocky tone again, but it’s long forgotten once his tongue is buried in between your thighs, lapping up the excess of wetness already pooled there.
“Ohhh,” you let out a moan, sucking in a sharp breath and allowing your body to relax under his focused touch. 
His hands push up from your ass to the crooks of your knees, moving your legs back to either side of you, strong palms finding their resting place on the backs of your thighs, keeping your legs spread wide open for him while he buries his face deep in your cunt. 
“You-“ the start of a compliment, or maybe a request, escapes your lips but the sudden harsh suck of your clit into his mouth has you speechless and moaning, “Mhmmmmm, uhhhhhhh.”
The sloppy wet sounds of him making out with your pussy are enough to drive you wild, your hands originally balling his sheets in your fists quickly move to the top of his head, resting atop his mop of messy curls. 
“Y’can give it a tug,” the first half of his statement spoken directly into your pussy, “I don’t mind a little pain.” He shoots you a wink and keeps his eyes locked on you as he lets his tongue lap a fat long lick up your slit, and then leaning back down to encourage you to tangle your hands into his hair. 
Coming to either side of his head you grab two points of purchase, locking your fingers in at the roots and feeling him hum into your cunt when you grabbed it a little tighter. 
Your hips start to quiver, so he brings one hand from your thigh up to your lower stomach, pinning you against the bed, and still keeping you spread open with the other. 
Working a steady rhythm against your slick center with his lips and tongue, he can tell he’s found the spot you like most by your open mouth and tight eyebrows.
“Ohmygod,” your chest starts moving with heavy breaths, you can’t bear to keep yourself up any longer and flop back down flat onto the mattress, eyes screwing shut in pleasure. He lets go of his anchor on your tummy and returns his hands to your thighs, allowing your hips to wiggle and wriggle against his face to chase after your own pleasure. 
“Pleasepleaseplease,” one glimpse of his big brown eyes looking up at you and his nose pressing deliciously into the spot above your clit has your head reeling, “please don’t stop, fuck.”
Rather than reply, he just continues to devour you at that steady pace, your thighs almost snapping shut around his head . 
“Uh huh, right there, oh fuck Eddie I’m gonna-“ 
A strangled moan rips from your throat and your back arches off the mattress, his hands quickly come to wrap around your thighs and keep your center held closely against his face. He’s pulling your hips flush with his face, despite your spasming torso and gushing core. 
As your orgasm peaks, your hips angle themselves to push up deeper into his face, and he uses his leverage against the backs of your thighs to lift your ass, the entire lower half of your body now off the mattress and sliding backwards as he keeps his moving tongue glued to your clit. 
He climbs up onto the mattress as you slide back, the grip he had on your legs was sure to leave a sore memory of him unwilling to let your coming pussy away from his face. 
When he finally pulls away, your hand pushing at his forehead to prevent overstimulation, both of you gasping for air, his knees are propped under your thighs, and your hips are propped up right at perfect level with the bulge in his pants. 
“Fuck me,” you say through catching your breath, not as an expletive but rather a demand, “Eddie, I need you to fuck me,” your voice was whiny and desperate. 
“This okay?” he starts pulling his dick from its constraints in his unbuttoned jeans, not even shoving them halfway down his thighs before he had that pretty pierced dip dragging through your open and ready folds. 
“Yes, inside, please,” you were chasing after his length, while he tossed his shirt off. He teasingly ran it up and down your slit before sinking into you, collapsing down to press your lips into a kiss to swallow your moans as he slid the whole thing in slowly, making sure to take his time and fuck you right. 
He grabbed the back of your neck and pressed his forehead to yours, finally sheathed all the way inside you and stilling for a moment to relish in the feeling. Pulling back so he can watch your face as he pumps his first few thrusts, he knows he’s beyond fucked. 
“So fucking good,” you slur out, eyes almost crossing from how deep his cock was hitting your insides.
“Yeah? This pussy’s god damn perfect, fucking made for me,” he articulates each thought with a snap of his hips, “suckin’ me right in.” 
“Wait, can we,” your voice had a little more weight behind it unlike the airy moans he’d grown obsessed with in the past forty minutes.
He pulls back, and rather than finish your thought you slip him out of you and roll over, shuffling up the bed and positioning yourself face down ass up, knees spread and back arched. 
“You think you can handle it?” he asks jokingly, swatting your ass playfully and then landing a second, harder smack on the flesh when he notices you pussy clench around nothing at the sensation of him spanking you. 
“Want you to fuck me hard,” you mumble into his pillow, wiggling your hips a little bit to jiggle the fat of your ass, “I know your cock is gonna feel so fucking good in me this way, wanna feel that fucking piercing back in my throat from the other direction.”
“Jesus Christ, y/n,” he was genuinely a little shocked at your words, slowly learning that your freak side might match his. 
You expected to feel his cock slam into you once his hands came to spread your ass apart, but instead the mattress dipped and he was licking another fat stripe from your clit all the way up past your second hole, running this back a few times until you were moaning into the pillow and thighs were tensed up from the attention he was giving you.
“Sorry babe, just needed another taste,” he pushed the head of his dick into you, and moved the first few inches agonizingly slow into your soaked hole. 
“Eddie please, need it, need you,” he loved that his sheets were balled up in your fists, using the tension of the material to bounce yourself back onto him. You only manage to slide back down about three quarters before he’s tightly gripping your hip and pulling out half way again. 
“Tsk tsk tsk, you need to learn to be patient, pretty girl,” he’d thrust it an inch of so, and then slowly pull back, making you whine and start to feel tears bubble up in the corners of your eyes. 
“Want it so bad,��� your cheek laid flat against his pillow, and you could catch a glimpse of him behind you out of the corner of your eye if you craned your neck a bit. You sounded so desperate, but you knew he liked it, liked hearing how badly you craved him. 
He starts moving in and out of you, firm grip on your ass never wavering. Restrained grunts left his mouth as he fucked into you, causing your eyes to practically roll into the back of your head. He leans down to place a soft kiss on your shoulder blade, despite how viciously he's pounding into you. His head cranes down to your shoulder, his hand coming up to brush your hair out of your face. 
As his long fingers move your hair away from your eyes, you push your head back into his hand, not wanting to lose contact. He tentatively runs his hands up into your hair, taking a soft grip on your roots.
“Is this what you want?” he whispers, “you like it rough?”
“Yes,” you manage to squeak out, “fuck, pull my hair, spank me, do whatever the fuck you want to me, please.”
His vision practically goes black with this new unrestricted passion, allowing himself to thrust into you as hard and as deep as his hips would propel him, twisting your hair in his grip and pulling you up from your laid position, quickly letting your hands jump to his headboard to support you as your head was pulled back. 
You tried to bounce back onto his cock, wanting to feel him as deeply and wholly as your bodies would allow, but you could hardly keep up with the pace he had set. 
Your ass bouncing against him and the occasional glance he caught at your fucked out expression spurred him on to fuck you even harder. He had your hair pulled back so tight that your back was pressing flush up with his chest every so often, and he took the opportunity to snake an arm around you and hold your chest up flat, his other hand moving down to rub frantic circles on your clit.
“You’re gonna make me come like this,” you manage to croak out, voice hoarse from the harsh bend in your neck. 
“Nuh uhh, no,” his voice was gruff and commanding, right into your ear and sent a shiver down your spine. 
He pulled out of you fully, and had you flipped around flat on your back again before you could even open your mouth to complain. 
“Need to see that pretty face when you come on my cock,” he lines himself up with you again, pushing into you and making a mental note of how the bulge of his cock looked pressing up from the inner part of your lower stomach. 
And of course, your face screwed up in pleasure, puffy lips and sweaty brow, slack jawed and panting his name would be something Eddie wouldn’t be able to forget even if he tried.
His thumb found its way to your clit to pick up where he had last left you, steadily building to an earth shattering orgasm. Talking you through it, knowing you were close by the vice grip your walls had on his dick, in between grunts he spilled out some “good girl”’s and “right fuckin there, that’s it.” 
When he felt your thighs tense up, and the muscles in your neck strain against the soft skin he’d previously had his lips all over, he knew you were nearing the finish line. 
“So fucking perfect, feel so good wrapped around me,” he managed to sweet talk you without altering the pace of his hips, “That’s it, come on my cock, give it to me.”
With that, your body can’t help but throw itself over the edge of pleasure. A deep grunt rattles in your chest, and you lose all sensation other than the wild pulsing in between your legs. You can’t be bothered to worry about what your face looks like, or if your thighs are squeezing him too hard, you only feel the riptide of an orgasm shattering through you. 
The animalistic noise that Eddie grunts out, his wild gaze locked on your face only makes your body shake with pleasure even harder. He had that instinct that most men lacked, to keep the exact pace and motion when your orgasm hit rather than speed up or slow down, it was a gift, a talent. 
Of course he wasn’t going to change a thing about what he was doing, look at you. You were so fucking perfect, shaking and coming all over him, those sweet noises and the beautiful squelching between your thighs. He’d rather die than change a single thing about this moment. 
He stilled only when you paused to catch your breath, and within seconds was flipped over by the power of your thighs onto his back.
Unexpectedly, you began to ride him, trying to match the pace he had earlier set. The aftershocks of your orgasm still washed through you, but you seized the moment to get him right where you wanted him. This angle was different, deeper and more connected. You roll your hips and bring your hands up to his hair, foreheads pressing together once again. 
“You’re making me feel so fucking good,” you manage to breathe out into his lips, he quickly comes to the realization of what’s happened and shifts the angle of his hips to hit you even deeper. 
“I’d give you everything, if you’d let me,” he doesn’t let a single thought pass in his mind before the words slip out, “always.”
Your lips capture his in a kiss that has far more emotion behind it than two friends play-dating and fucking for fun. His hands come up to grasp your cheeks, your hips continue to roll down into his with purpose. 
“I’m- Where-“ his words are hardly intelligible in between breathless kisses, but you know what he means. 
“Inside, please, need all of you inside me,” you try to keep your voice steady so he hears you loud and clear, wanting to give him the exact attention he had paid to you, “Please Eddie, come inside me.”
His hands travel down and guide your hips to fuck down onto him one, two, three times before he’s groaning in your ear and letting out the prettiest and most vulnerable sounds you’ve ever heard form him. 
The swell of his cock inside you makes you drape your head into his neck, focusing on riding out his orgasm and making sure he was twitching in the aftershocks of his orgasm before you let up. 
When you felt his grip on your hips tighten, signaling that he’d had too much, you sink all the way down one final time and let your body lay limp on his, pulsing cock still filling you up. 
His chest rose and fell harshly with his recovering breaths. You could feel his heartbeat pulsing up through the spot on his neck where your ear laid on his sweaty skin.
Silently awaiting the inevitable tap on the shoulder, the slow pull out and post-sex cleanup process, you try to savor every passing moment. But it doesn’t come. Eddie wraps his arms around your midsection and holds your limp body close to his, letting his cock start to soften inside you. 
You nearly fall asleep like that, all wrapped up in him, until you recognize that you should pee and clean up to avoid a UTI. You slip off of him, and hear a disappointed groan from him. He makes cute grabby hands at you as you cross the room, making you roll your eyes, but something deep inside you flip flops with how sweet he’s being, so caring, so unlike the picture of himself that he had painted for you. 
You give him a wet hand towel to clean up the remnants of your activities, and slip back into bed with him per his insistence. You doze off for a while, until the rising sun peeking through his blinds catches your eye, striking you with the sudden decision to stay and face the music or leave and let it settle. 
You’d already regretted it, but weren’t ready to have the “hey, so I know we had fake boyfriend-girlfriend sex, but I actually really like you so what should we do about that?” conversion with him, so instead you take the cowardly path and tiptoe out of his room in the early morning hours, leaving behind your underwear on his nightside table with a scribbled note saying to call you. Hopefully that was enough of a signal. 
Apparently not,
Days pass, and no call. 
It was all starting to get to your head. While you had gone through the stages of being nervous that you had done something wrong, that he was avoiding you to spare you the rejection, thinking he regretted what had happened and didn’t want to face you, who was so obviously into him it was painful, you’d just now turned a new leaf. Fuck that. If he was too much of a coward to call you, you'd hope he'd at least give you the decency as a friend to tell you the truth, you deserved to be angry, and you deserved a response. 
After stewing in your feelings for longer than felt healthy, you just get in your car and start driving to his trailer. If this all blew up in your face at least you wouldn’t have to keep biting your nails and waiting for the phone to ring. 
Three deep breaths, and a quick moment to gather your thoughts, and suddenly your body acted on instinct, putting the car in park and walking up to pound three concise knocks on his trailer door. 
“Just a second,” he hollered from inside, giving you a few seconds to be stricken with regret for showing up unannounced without a plan on what exactly to say. 
“What do you- oh, y/n,” he was in a pair of plaid pajama pants that hung low on his hips, shirtless and hair still damp from a recent shower, “uh, hey?”
“Oh, hey,” your tone was laced with annoyance, “I left something here last week and I’m here to get it back. If you don’t mind.”
“What- oh,” he’s a second too slow to realize you mean the underwear you had purposefully left behind with that note. The note telling him to call you. Which he never did. 
You were left standing on his porch steps, arms crossed and shooting daggers out of your eyes while he stood there in the doorway, an apparent guilty expression plastered on his face while he rocked back on his heels to buy some time to figure out what to say. 
“You don’t have to invite me inside, if you can just grab them and give them to me, and I’ll be out of your hair,” you say flatly, recognizing if he does as asked then this might be the last time you speak to Eddie Munson. 
“No, no, uh, you should come in,” he steps aside to let you in, “we probably shouldn’t have this conversation on my front steps.”
Avoiding eye contact, feeling an overwhelming mix of anger, confusion, and betrayal, you step inside and don’t make any effort to move into the space. You just stand by the door and give him an expectant look. Either he could go get the underwear, or he could grow a pair and say something to you. 
“I, uh-“ he looked so defeated you started to feel bad for using such a pointed tone, but then you remembered the days and days that passed without hearing from him, “I’m sorry, that I, y’know…”
“Yeah, well I don’t really care if you’re not looking for any post sex recap conversations, because you’re obviously pretty sure of yourself in that department,” the words flew out before your mind could even conjure them up, “but you fucking promised me that you wouldn’t do this, so can I please just have my underwear back and I won’t bother you again.”
He runs a hand through his hair letting out a deep exhale and searching the ceiling for words, “I know, I-“
You cut him off, your thoughts were ripping through you now and you were going to say your piece whether he asked for it or not, “You said you wouldn’t pull this shit with me, but I guess our friendship isn’t substantial enough for you to see me any differently than you do every other girl you throw away after you’ve gotten what you want. You clearly don’t want any more advice and you clearly don’t want to be my friend, so please, just give me my shit so I can go.”
“That’s the fucking thing y/n, of course I don’t want to be your friend,” his gaze still fixed on the ceiling.
At this point you were seconds away from just storming out, letting him keep your underwear as some twisted little trophy for breaking your heart. 
“Yeah, crystal clear Eddie.”
“Being your friend is already hard enough, and I knew this shit was a bad idea, the whole trial-girlfriend thing. But how the fuck was I supposed to say no to that? The girl of my dreams offers to do all this no-strings-attached romantic shit, I’d be the dumbest man alive to turn that down.”
You just give him a blank stare, your scalding anger twisting into a more confused frenzy of bees swarming in the pit of your stomach. Eyebrows pinched together, you just stare at him until he finally makes eye contact with you. 
“And yeah,” he goes on, letting all his words out like a big exhale in the same cadence that you had just hurled all your angry words at his, but his tone was filled with guilt as opposed to rage, “maybe we let it go a little too far, but I would never say no to you, I couldn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t know what the fuck to say to you after, but that’s exactly the reason I’m not good enough for you. The more we kept that fake dating shit up the worse it was gonna get, so I’m sorry, but I can’t keep spending time with you like that, because it’s starting to fucking hurt.”
“Hurt,” you say with a dry laugh, which almost scares him, “YOU’RE hurt? Give me a fucking break Eddie. I know you don’t see me that way. So what, you’re too scared to hurt my feelings? You’re doing a wonderful job, keep it up.”
“What the fuck do you mean, not see you like what?”
“Don’t pretend to be dumb Eddie. When we first met I tried so hard to get your attention, asking you to hang out, and you always blew me off. It’s fine that you don’t want to date me or whatever, but at least just tell me that, don’t fuck me like I’m special or something and then toss me aside. I deserve better than that.”
“Yeah, y/n, you do,” his voice was no longer guilt stricken, and was on the same straightforward plane as your last responses, “you deserve so much fucking better than me, that’s why I could never let anything between us happen. I don’t call girls back. I’m rude. I don’t take care of myself, let alone others. I like to smoke, and drink, and get head from girls in bar bathrooms and never learn their names, and that’s not the kind of person that a girl like you dates. I’m a fun quick fuck. You’re the kind of girl that after three dates he’ll already have a ring picked out. You’re everything, and I’m nothing, so forgive me for sparing you of that.”
Your bones are frozen and the beat of silence gives him the opportunity to spin on his heel and start down the hallway, presumably to get your panties. 
Snapping back into it, you let out a louder than expected, “Hey,” and you start following him, not taking long to catch up to him in his bedroom. 
“You,” you point a finger at him, and start to feel the rage bubble up again, “don’t get to decide that you’re unloveable. And you don’t get to tell me what kind of girl I am. Have you ever considered that maybe the reason you’re so lonely and miserable is because you choose to be? You don’t get to decide what I deserve, I do. And I really fucking like you Eddie, so forgive me for acting like it.” 
You snatch your underwear off his bedside table, and give him a look, not fueled by anger or resentment, but empathy. 
“I’m going to leave. And if you don’t want to see me again, that’s fine, but if you do, you can call me. Goodbye Eddie.”
You feel out of your own body, floating above it all and rewinding the conversation over and over, body on autopilot taking you home while your soul stayed behind and relived his words over and over, unsure if you feel better or worse than when you showed up. 
Days pass by again, and you take his silence as more of a response than anything he had said to you during that conversation. You try not to wallow, but you feel scattered and distraught, at both the prospect of losing Eddie and having to deal with your shared friends, would they allow you to dance around each other, or would they flat out choose him and shut you out? Would group nights out bowling suddenly just turn into the occasional one-on-one coffee with Robin? 
Until suddenly, on a random Tuesday afternoon when you've gotten home from work and are relaxing on the couch in your pajamas, three knocks are at your door.
At this point you figured it was over. He hadn't called and he'd made no effort to continue the dialogue. So a thought of Eddie doesn't even cross your mind in between the couch and opening the door.
And there he is.
In a suit, slightly descheveld in Eddie fashion, and holding a slightly wilting bouquet of flowers. Posture straight and brave face, but expecting your brutal edge upon answering the door nonetheless.
"Hey?" you're somewhat at a loss for words answering.
"Hi," he seems like he's running lines of a play in his mind, "I was hoping we could talk."
You reluctantly let him in, and he hands the flowers to you, as if it was a normal occurrence for him to bring you such a gift.
"First off," he starts, hardly breaching your living room entrance before starting his apology, "I regret the way we last left things, and I'm sorry for leaving you waiting for a response."
He flicks those big brown eyes at you and you can't help but give him the benefit of the doubt, he always was so sincere with his words.
"You're amazing. And although I'll remain adamant that I don't deserve someone like you in my life, I've been thinking a lot about what you said, and I'm sorry that tried to tell you how to feel."
You remain stoic at your seat on the couch, watching him shift his weight and bare his soul to you.
"You're perfect. Nice, funny, sexy, brave, all of it. And if you're willing to give me a chance, I don't know why the fuck you would, but if you are, I want to put aside all my bullshit and try this out, if you'll have me."
He stood there for a moment, letting you take in his request, bouquet in hand and suit adorned.
"And I owe you a few dates, for real."
As hard as you want your exterior to be, a smile cracks through.
"Okay, but know I don't fuck until the third date, at best," you jab, breaking his nervous exterior and visibly relieving the tension from his shoulders.
"I'm somewhat of a refined gentleman myself, so that won't be an issue," he bows and extends a hand to you.
You pull him down by the hand onto the couch with you, wrapping him up in a deep kiss. He was worth it, and you both knew it was worth the shot to try.
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stylesispunk · 3 months ago
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"Did the love affair maim you too?"
Joel miller x f!reader
next part
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Summary: Joel doesn't like you until he loses all his memories.
w.c: 14k> (longest piece I've written and my eyes are dry)
warnings: fluff, mention of amnesia, memory loss, ANGST and angst, and more angst because I love angst. There is smut but you already know I'm bad at writing that. No proof reading, I'm lazy, sorry.
a/n: hello! I got inspired by this "memory loss" type of story. It was supposed to be a one shoot, but I had to split the whole thing so another part is more likely to happen. I know there has been some drama surrounding writers and I want to say that every single person who writes and makes an art with that is amazing! Everyone who is reading this, please give creators here your flowers. With that being said, Happy reading or not 😭💌 Reblogs and comments are always appreciated. (come on, talk to me)
dividers by @saradika-graphics
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Joel didn't used to hate women, but man, when he met you for the first time, you crawled under his skin. He had fun with you, making jokes, trying to get on your nerves. For his hell, everyone in Jackson loved you; after all, you were the nurse and the sweetheart. Always looking after everyone, always being sweet to everyone.
It was a sunny afternoon when you first arrived in Jackson, your kind demeanor and skilled hands quickly gaining the trust and admiration of the townsfolk. Joel watched from a distance with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. He couldn't understand why everyone was so taken with you. To him, you seemed too soft, too gentle for the brutal world they lived in.
"Hey, Joel," Tommy called out one day, pulling Joel from his brooding thoughts. "We're heading out on patrol. You should meet the new nurse. She's something else."
Joel grunted in response, not bothering to hide his disinterest. He didn't need to meet you to know what kind of person you were. In his mind, you were just another naive newcomer who wouldn't last a week.
But fate had other plans. That very evening, a group of raiders attacked the outer perimeter. The town was thrown into chaos, and Joel found himself side by side with you, defending the walls. He couldn't help but notice your bravery and the way you handled yourself under pressure.
After the attack, as the town counted its injuries and losses, you worked tirelessly, tending to the wounded. Joel watched you, his irritation growing as he saw the way everyone fawned over you, thanking you for your care.
"Think you're some kind of hero, huh?" Joel muttered as he approached you, his voice laced with sarcasm.
You looked up at him, exhaustion evident in your eyes, but you offered a small, tired smile. "Just doing my job, Joel."
"Your job?" Joel scoffed. "You think patching up a few cuts and bruises is going to keep these people safe? This world doesn't care how sweet you are."
You met his gaze, unwavering. "And what would you have me do, Joel? Let them suffer? We're all trying to survive here, and we all have our roles to play."
Joel huffed and walked away, but your words lingered in his mind. Despite himself, he couldn't deny that you were right. Over the following weeks, Joel continued to watch you, his annoyance slowly giving way to a grudging respect. He noticed how you never backed down, how you always stood your ground, even when faced with his relentless jabs.
One day, during a particularly harsh winter storm, you and Joel were sent out on a supply run. The weather was brutal, and the path was treacherous. As the wind howled around you, Joel found himself instinctively moving closer, his protective instincts kicking in despite his irritation.
"Watch your step," he warned, his voice gruff.
You nodded, shivering against the cold. "Thanks, Joel."
As you both trudged forward, the wind picked up, and visibility dropped to almost nothing. You focused on placing one foot in front of the other, barely able to see Joel a few steps ahead. Suddenly, you heard a sharp crack and a thud.
"Joel!" you shouted, fear gripping your heart.
Rushing forward, you found Joel lying on the ground, unconscious, blood trickling from a gash on his forehead. He must have slipped on the ice and hit his head on a rock hidden beneath the snow.
Panic set in, but you forced yourself to stay calm. You needed to get him back to Jackson quickly. You checked his pulse, relieved to find it steady, then did your best to bandage the wound with the supplies you had. With great effort, you managed to lift Joel and drape him over your shoulder, carrying him back through the storm.
By the time you reached Jackson, you were exhausted and freezing, but you didn't stop until you got Joel to the infirmary. The doctors took over, treating his wound and monitoring his condition.
You sat by Joel's bedside, watching him closely. Hours passed, and eventually he began to stir. His eyes fluttered open, and he looked around, disoriented.
"Joel?" you said softly, leaning forward.
He turned his head to you, his brow furrowing in confusion. But then, a slow, almost lazy smile spread across his face. "Well, hello there, beautiful," he said, his voice low and smooth. "Did I die and wake up in heaven?"
You blink, taken aback by his words. "Uh, Joel, it's me. Do you remember what happened?"
Joel's smile didn't waver as he looked at you. "I remember everything... except meeting you before. Are you sure we haven't met in a dream?"
You glanced at Tommy, who had just walked into the room, and saw the same confusion mirrored on his face. "Joel," Tommy said cautiously, stepping closer, "do you know who I am?"
Joel's eyes shifted to Tommy, his smile fading into a look of mild frustration. "Of course I do, Tommy. You're my brother. But I'm more interested in getting to know this doll here."
Tommy exchanged bewildered looks with you. "Joel, this is… Ah. She's... well, you two never really got along."
Joel's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Really? Well, I must've been an idiot then because I can't imagine not liking someone like you."
Your heart raced, unsure how to respond to this flirtatious side of Joel, the same who hours ago was trying to crawl under your skin, the same one who had rejected you all this time. "Joel, you really don't remember me at all?"
Joel shook his head, still gazing at you with that same enamored look. "Not a thing. But I gotta say, I feel like I'm seeing you for the first time, and I like what I see."
Tommy scratched his head, clearly at a loss. "This is... something else. We need to figure out what happened to his memory."
You nodded, trying to process the sudden shift in Joel's demeanor. You knew the hit on the head did something to his memory, but you didn’t know how to face it. "Joel, you hit your head pretty hard. The doctors said you might have some memory loss. Maybe this is part of it."
Joel reached out and gently took your hand, his touch sending a shiver down your spine. "Well, if forgetting the past means I get to start over with you, I think I can live with that."
You couldn't help but blush, feeling a mix of confusion and something else you couldn't quite place. Perhaps butterflies are flying all around inside your tummy. "We'll take it slow, okay? There's a lot you need to know."
Joel's grip on your hand tightened slightly, his eyes never leaving yours. "As long as you're the one teaching me, I'm all in."
Tommy coughed awkwardly, breaking the moment. "Alright, let's give Joel some time to rest and recover. We'll figure this out together."
You nodded, reluctantly pulling your hand away from Joel's. "Get some rest, Joel. We'll talk more later."
As you and Tommy left the room, you couldn't shake the feeling of Joel's gaze following you. Tommy put a reassuring hand on your shoulder. "We'll get to the bottom of this. Just... be careful. He's not the same Joel right now."
You nodded, your mind racing with the implications of Joel's memory loss and his sudden interest in you. The days ahead were sure to be challenging, but you couldn't deny the flicker of excitement at the thought of getting to know this new, more open version of Joel.
A version where he could get to know you and maybe, like, a new story waiting to be written with the both of you becoming friends, and not just acquaintances just having to tolerate each other for the community’s sake.
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The days following Joel's accident were a whirlwind of confusion and unexpected emotions dancing on your mind. Joel's flirtatious comments and affectionate demeanor were a stark contrast to the gruff, often combative man you had known before.
You had started to get used to feeling his nice demeanor towards you. You found yourself happier than before, smiling at the thought of him when you weren’t with him, and he had become your last thought on your bed just before going to sleep, but you were aware his condition perhaps wasn’t permanent and he was going to recover his memories of you, so you didn’t want to take advantage of that, nor did you want to fall for Joel, not when the fear of him waking up one day and hating you as usual was a threat.
His recovery was slow but steady, and you spent a lot of time by his side, helping him piece together the fragments of his memory. Every interaction felt like walking on fire, with Joel's behavior making your heart flutter and your mind racing at thousand miles per hour.
As you were changing the bandage on his head, Joel watched you with a soft smile. "You know, you have the gentlest touch. It's like you're an angel sent to take care of me."
You blushed, avoiding his gaze. "I'm just doing my job, Joel. Making sure your pretty head heals properly."
Joel reached up and gently brushed a strand of hair behind your ear. "You're more than just a nurse to me now. I don't know what it is, but I feel this connection with you. Like we're meant to be."
You took a deep breath, trying to steady your emotions. "Joel, a few days ago I was nothing to you. You don’t remember me, so please just focus on getting better."
Joel's expression softened; his eyes filled with earnestness. "I get it, but I can't help how I feel. This connection—it's real to me, even if I don't remember our past."
You bit your lip, feeling a mix of frustration and affection. "Joel, you're vulnerable right now. Your mind is trying to make sense of everything, and it's confusing. We need to take things slow."
Joel nodded reluctantly, his hand lingering near your cheek before he pulled it back. "I trust you. Just know that I'm here, and I want to get to know you, past or no past."
You gave him a reassuring smile. "One step at a time, okay? Let's focus on getting you back on your feet first."
Just then, Tommy walked in, carrying a tray of food. He cleared his throat, causing you to step back from Joel. "Brought you some lunch, big brother. How’re you feeling?"
Joel's eyes lit up at the sight of his brother. "Thanks, Tommy. I'm feeling better every day. And with this sunshine here, it's hard not to feel good."
Tommy gave you a knowing look, his concern evident. "Glad to hear it. Mind if I have a word with you outside?" he asked, looking towards you.
You nodded, feeling a mix of relief and anxiety. "Of course, Tommy."
As you stepped outside the room, Tommy closed the door behind you, his expression serious. "How are you holding up?"
You sighed, crossing your arms. "It's... complicated. Joel is so different now. He's kind, attentive, and he seems genuinely interested in me. But he doesn't remember our past—how much we clashed."
Tommy nodded, his face lined with concern. "I can see how that would be confusing. But you have to be careful. This might just be his way of coping with the memory loss. He's latching onto the one constant he has right now—you."
You looked down, feeling a lump form in your throat. "I know. I'm trying to keep my distance, but it's hard. He's... he's different, Tommy. And I can't deny that I'm starting to care for him."
Tommy placed a hand on your shoulder, his grip firm and reassuring. "I get it. But you need to remember that his memory might come back, and when it does, he could revert to the Joel we knew before. You have to protect yourself, too."
“Am I that unlovable?” you sighed.
Tommy's expression softened, and he shook his head. "No, you're not unlovable. Far from it. But the Joel we knew before... he had his walls up, and you know how stubborn he can be. If his memory comes back, he might go back to those old habits, those old defenses."
You nodded, feeling the weight of his words. "I understand. It's just... complicated."
Tommy gave your shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Just take it slow. Don't rush into anything, and remember to take care of yourself too. You suffered a lot before arriving here."
You managed a small smile. "Thanks, Tommy. I needed that."
Tommy smiled back. "Anytime."
Returning to Joel's room, you found him sitting up, his eyes lighting up as you walked in. "Hey, everything okay?"
You nodded, forcing a smile. "Yeah, just had a chat with Tommy."
Joel's expression became thoughtful. "You know, I'm really grateful for everything you're doing for me. I can't imagine what it must be like, dealing with me like this."
You sat down beside him, taking a deep breath. "It's not easy, Joel, but it's worth it. You're worth it."
Joel reached out, taking your hand in his. "You know, even though I don't remember everything, I feel like I'm seeing you for the first time. And I like what I see."
Your heart raced, and you struggled to keep your emotions in check. "Joel, we need to take things slow. Focus on your recovery first."
Joel nodded, a small smile playing on his lips. "I understand. But I can't help how I feel."
He has repeated the same phrase as before, and you couldn’t help but feel yourself diving into a deep ocean for him.
You squeezed his hand gently. "One step at a time, okay?"
Joel's eyes held a determined glint. "One step at a time."
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The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the Jackson settlement as you walked briskly toward the main gate, your medical bag slung over your shoulder. You spotted Joel waiting for you, his arms crossed and a scowl already etched on his face.
"You're late," he growled as you approached.
You rolled your eyes. "I'm five minutes late, Joel. I had to take care of a kid with a fever."
Joel grunted, clearly unimpressed. "We have a schedule for a reason. Being late puts us at risk."
"Don't lecture me about risk," you shot back, your patience wearing thin. "I know the dangers out there just as well as you do."
Joel's eyes narrowed. "Do you? Because sometimes it feels like you're too soft for this world. Always stopping to help every stray animal and sick kid."
"Excuse me for having a heart," you snapped. "Not everyone wants to live like a damn machine."
"Having a heart can get you killed," Joel retorted, his voice rising. "Out there, you need to be tough. Focused."
"And maybe if you lightened up a bit, people wouldn't be so scared of you," you shot back, your frustration boiling over.
Joel took a step closer, his jaw clenched. "I don't care if people are scared of me. I care about keeping them safe. And you, with your bleeding heart, make that harder."
You felt a surge of anger and hurt at his words. "You know what, Joel? Maybe the problem isn't me. Maybe it's you. Maybe you're so wrapped up in your own pain that you can't see anyone else's."
Joel's face darkened, a mix of anger and something else—something like hurt—flashing in his eyes. "You don't know anything about my pain."
"And you don't know anything about mine," you replied, your voice trembling with emotion. "So maybe you should stop judging me and start seeing that we're all trying to survive in this hell together."
For a moment, the two of you stood there, the tension crackling between you like a live wire. Then Joel turned away, his shoulders stiff. "Let's just get this patrol over with."
You followed him out of the gate, your heart heavy with unresolved emotions. The silence between you was thick and uncomfortable, but neither spoke. The rift between you seemed insurmountable, and you couldn't see how things would ever change.
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You woke up with a pain on your neck. You had fallen asleep on a chair next to Joel’s bed where he was now lay resting, his breathing even and steady. His recovery was going well, but the emotional landscape was far more complex and you wanted to take the risk to discover it.  
You watched him for a moment, taking a mental picture of his face, the creases on his skin, how peaceful he looked like this. feeling the weight of uncertainty and guilt within you.
In that exact moment, Joel stirred, his eyes fluttering open. He looked around, his gaze settling on you with a warmth that made your heart skip a beat. "Hey, sunshine."
"Hey," you replied softly, mirroring his smile "How are you feeling?"
Joel stretched, wincing slightly but smiling nonetheless. "Better. Thanks to you."
You couldn't help but smile back, the tension easing a bit. "Just doing my job, Joel."
His eyes softened as he looked at you. "You're doing more than just your job. You've been taking care of me, looking out for me. I appreciate it."
You felt a warmth spread through you at his words. "It's what anyone would do."
Joel shook his head slightly. "No, not everyone. You're special, and I... I think I’m starting to understand that."
You felt a flutter in your chest at his words, a mix of emotions swirling within you. "Joel, you don't need to say that. You're still recovering, and things are confusing right now."
Joel's gaze remained steady, his expression earnest. "I mean it. There's something about you... something that's been here all along, and I was too stubborn to see it."
Your heart ached with the weight of his words, knowing how complicated the situation was. "Joel…”
“Did I care about you before?” he asked, gaze locked with yours.
You shook your head “No. Not really.”
You shook your head, feeling the sting of the truth. “No. Not really.”
Joel looked troubled, his brows knitting together. “I find that hard to believe. Because right now, I can’t imagine not caring about you.”
You took a deep breath, trying to find the right words. “Things were different before, Joel. We didn’t get along. You were... closed off, and I guess I was just someone who got under your skin.”
Joel’s expression softened with regret. “I’m sorry. For whatever I did to make you feel that way. I wish I could remember, but all I know is that right now, I see you, and I feel... connected.”
A memory from the past surged forward, vivid and painful. It was a cold evening in Jackson, just after a particularly difficult supply run. You and Joel had been at odds all day, and the tension between you was palpable.
"Why do you always have to be so damn difficult?" Joel snapped; his voice harsh as he slammed the door behind him.
You bristled at his tone, your own temper flaring. "Maybe because you treat me like I’m incompetent! I’m trying my best out there, Joel. We’re supposed to be a team."
Joel scoffed, his eyes narrowing. "A team? You’re a liability more than anything."
The words cut deep, but you stood your ground. "That’s not fair, and you know it. I’m just trying to help, like everyone else."
Joel’s face twisted with frustration. "Help? You call what you do helping? It’s a wonder anyone here can stand you."
The hurt was immediate and sharp, but you refused to let him see how much his words affected you. "At least I’m trying to do something good. You just push everyone away."
Joel stepped closer, his expression dark. "Maybe there’s a reason for that. I find it hard to believe anyone could actually love you."
The silence that followed was deafening. You stared at him, disbelief and pain warring within you. Without another word, you turned and left, unable to bear the weight of his cruelty.
Back in the present, you blinked, trying to dispel the memory. Joel was watching you closely, concern etched into his features. "What’s wrong?"
You forced a smile, though it didn’t reach your eyes. "Just... remembering something."
Joel reached out, gently taking your hand. "I wish I could remember too. So, I could make it right."
You looked down at your joined hands, the warmth of his touch grounding you. "Maybe it’s better this way.
Joel squeezed your hand gently. "A fresh start sounds good. But I still want to know everything. About us, about what I did wrong. So, I can be better."
You nodded, taking the risk and pushing your luck.
You and Joel could become friends, right?
"You and I... we could become friends, right?" you asked.
Joel’s eyes softened even more, and he smiled. "Friends sounds like a good start. We can build from there."
You felt a surge of relief. "Friends it is, then."
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The days passed, each one bringing closeness between you and Joel. He had got better, slowly starting to get back to his tasks. The community noticed the change in him, how he was more open and approachable. You often found yourselves working together, whether it was on supply runs or him visiting the infirmary when you were there working.
One afternoon, you were busy organizing medical supplies when Joel walked in, a smile spreading across his face as he saw you. "Hey, need any help in here?" he asked, leaning against the doorframe.
You looked up, smiling back. "Joel, what are you doing here? I thought you were out patrolling.”
Joel shrugged, stepping further into the room. "Finished early. Thought I’d come by and see if you needed a hand."
He, in fact lied. He switched places with another guy just to spend time with you again. He could feel your fear irradiating but he wanted to get to know you better. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact he didn’t like someone like you and he wanted to change that.  
You chuckled, shaking your head. " Sure, you can help me with these supplies. There are some boxes that need to be sorted."
Joel rolled up his sleeves and joined you, his presence filling the small room with a comforting warmth. As you worked side by side, you found yourself stealing glances at him, marveling at the changes in him. He was more relaxed, more open, and undeniably more attentive.
"You know," Joel said after a while, breaking the comfortable silence, "I think I like helping out here more than patrolling."
You raised an eyebrow, teasingly. "Oh? And why is that?"
Joel grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "Because I get to spend more time with you."
You blushed, focusing intently on the box in front of you. "You’re just saying that."
"No, I mean it," Joel replied, his tone sincere. "I like being around you. You make everything better."
You felt a warmth spread through you at his words, and you couldn't help but smile. "Well, I like having you around too."
The truth was that stealing glances at him now felt like interlocking fingers without even touching his skin, there wasn’t precisely a sexual tension or possessiveness over him, but a warm incandescent glow within every time he smiled at you. That was something you hadn’t felt in so long, and this time felt so right yet so wrong.
You both continued to work in comfortable silence, the rhythm of your tasks interrupted only by the occasional exchange of smiles or a shared joke. The closeness was undeniable, and you could feel the lines between friendship and something more starting to blur.
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One afternoon, you were out on a supply run together, scanning the area for anything useful. The sun was setting, casting a golden hue over the landscape. As you bent down to pick up some supplies, Joel suddenly appeared by your side, his proximity making your heart race.
"Need a hand?" he asked, his voice low and warm.
You looked up at him, finding it hard to concentrate with him so close. "Sure, thanks."
As you both worked, the conversation flowed easily. Joel's presence was comforting, and you found yourself opening up to him in ways you hadn't before.
"You know, I never really thanked you properly," Joel said, his tone serious.
"For what?" you asked, genuinely curious.
"For saving my life. For being there for me when I needed it the most," Joel replied, his eyes meeting yours with a sincerity that made your heart ache.
You shook your head, a soft smile on your lips. "You don’t need to thank me, Joel. I did what anyone would do."
"Not anyone," he insisted, his gaze intense. "You went above and beyond. You always do."
You blushed, the warmth spreading through you once again. "Well, I care about you. I can’t help it."
Joel's expression softened, and he reached out, gently brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. "I care about you too. More than I ever thought possible."
The moment hung in the air, filled with unspoken words and emotions. You could feel the pull between you, the undeniable connection that had grown stronger with each passing day.
"Joel, this is complicated," you whispered, your voice trembling slightly. "We need to take things slow."
"I know," he replied, his hand lingering near your face. "But I’m not going anywhere, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Joel's feelings for you had grown stronger. He found himself being smitten and completely in love by you, by your beauty, your strength and your soft heart. You were everything that was good with this world. Where everything and everyone was people with shadows dying out of melancholy, you were an angel wrapping your warm arms around him, making his world brighter. He had learnt how to savor the colors again.
As you continued your days together, Joel couldn't help but find ways to be close to you. He would always volunteer to accompany you on supply runs, ensuring you were safe and cared for. He would show up at the infirmary with small gifts – a flower he found on his patrol, a cup of your favorite tea, or a book he thought you might like. His gestures were always thoughtful and sincere, each one a testament to the depth of his feelings.
Joel couldn't take his eyes off you. You were kneeling in the ground, your hands deftly cleaning something you had found, your face serene and focused. Joel felt a swell of emotion, unable to keep it to himself any longer.
"You know," he began, his voice gentle, "I used to think this world had nothing left to offer. But then I met you."
You looked up, your heart skipping a beat at the intensity in his gaze. "Joel..."
He knelt beside you, his hand covering yours. "You make everything better. You've brought light into my life, and I can't imagine going back to the way things were."
You felt a mixture of warmth and apprehension. His words were everything you wanted to hear, yet the uncertainty of the situation weighed heavily on your heart. "Joel, this is all so new and complicated. We need to be careful."
Joel's grip on your hand tightened slightly, his eyes full of determination. "I know it's complicated, and I know we've got a lot to figure out. But I can't ignore what I feel. I want to be here for you, with you, through everything."
You took a deep breath, feeling the weight of his words. "I want that too, Joel. But we need to take it one step at a time."
He nodded, a soft smile spreading across his face. "I will make you fall in love with me," he said, his voice full of determination and warmth.
You couldn't help but smile back, feeling a mix of hope and apprehension. "You're quite confident, aren't you?"
Joel chuckled, his eyes never leaving yours. "When it comes to you, I am."
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You smiled, feeling a flutter in your chest at his words. "Let's get back to Jackson," you said, standing up and brushing off your clothes. Joel stood with you, offering a hand to help you up.
As you made your way back to Jackson, the conversation flowed easily. Joel told you stories from before the outbreak, sharing pieces of his past he hadn’t opened up about before. You found yourself laughing at his anecdotes, feeling a growing sense of connection.
When you finally reached the gates of Jackson, the sun was setting, casting a warm glow over the community. People greeted you both warmly, noticing the change in Joel's demeanor. He was more relaxed and more present, and it was clear to everyone that you had a positive influence on him.
Tommy approached, a knowing smile on his face. "Good to see you both back safe and sound."
Joel clapped his brother on the shoulder. "It was a good run. Found some useful supplies."
Tommy nodded, then looked at you. "And how about you? Everything alright?"
You smiled, feeling the warmth of Joel’s gaze on you on your face. "Yeah, everything's good."
As the evening settled in, you and Joel made your way to the communal dining hall. The chatter of the community filled the air, and you found a spot to sit together. Joel’s hand lingered near yours, his touch reassuring and steady.
Tommy, Ellie, and Maria soon joined you at the table. Tommy was carrying a tray laden with food, Ellie trailing behind him with a mischievous grin, and Maria gave you a warm smile as she took a seat.
"Good to see you two back," Elli said, setting down the tray and passing out plates. “How was the run?" Ellie asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.
"It went well," Joel replied, his gaze briefly meeting yours before he continued. "Found some useful supplies and had some good company."
Ellie smirked, elbowing Tommy. "I bet you did."
You blushed, focusing on your plate as you filled it with food. Maria, ever perceptive, glanced between you and Joel with a knowing smile. "It's good to see everyone together," she said, her tone light and warm.
As you all began to eat, the conversation flowed naturally. Tommy and Maria talked about the latest updates in the community, Ellie shared stories from her day, and Joel occasionally chimed in with his dry humor, making everyone laugh.
At one point, Ellie leaned over to you, her voice low enough so only you could hear. "Joel's been different lately. In a good way. You've been good for him."
You looked at her, surprised by her observation. "I hope so. It's been... a journey."
Ellie nodded, her expression sincere. "Just keep being you. That's all he needs."
The meal continued, filled with warmth and laughter. Joel's hand occasionally brushed against yours, sending electricity down your body.
Just as you were starting to relax, a woman approached the table, her presence causing a ripple of unease. It was Lori, one of the women Joel used to date. Joel visibly tensed, his gaze dropping to his plate as Lori stopped beside him, her smile a mix of surprise and something else you couldn't quite place.
“Joel," she said, her voice smooth and confident. "I didn't expect to see you here."
Joel looked up, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. "Lori. Uh, hi."
Lori glanced around the table, her eyes settling on you for a moment before she looked back at Joel. "I was just passing by and saw you all together. Mind if I join?"
Before anyone could respond, Tommy jumped in. "Sure, why not? There's always room for one more."
Lori pulled up a chair and sat down, her presence adding a layer of tension to the dynamics. Joel seemed uncomfortable; his usual confidence was replaced by nervous energy.
"So, Joel," Lori began, her tone light but probing. "How have you been? It's been a while."
Joel cleared his throat, glancing at you briefly before answering. "Yeah, it has. I've been... good. Just busy with everything here."
Lori nodded, her gaze shifting between you and Joel. "I can see that. Looks like you've made some new friends." She said, bitterly, “The last time I knew from you was when you left my house after our night, and then you hit your head and never spoke to me again.”
The table fell silent, tension crackling in the air. Joel looked uncomfortable, his gaze dropping to his plate. You could see the guilt and confusion in his eyes as he tried to process Lori's words.
"I'm sorry, Lori," Joel finally said, his voice low. "I don't remember much from before the accident. It's been... complicated."
Lori's expression softened slightly, but the hurt in her eyes remained. "I get that. But it still stings, you know? You just disappeared."
You felt a pang of empathy for Lori but also a fierce protectiveness over Joel. "It's been hard for him,” you said gently, trying to ease the tension. "Joel's been working hard to piece things together. He's different now, and we're all just trying to move forward."
Lori glanced at you, her expression unreadable. "I can see that, but it seems like you had taken advantage of the situation; he couldn’t stand your ass before his accident, and suddenly you have him like a little puppy following you everywhere.”
Your heart drops to your stomach, feeling warm spreading to your cheeks.
Joel's jaw tightened, and he quickly interjected, his voice firm. "That's enough, Lori. You don't know what you're talking about."
Lori raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms. "I just find it convenient, that's all."
Tommy leaned forward, his tone calm but authoritative. "Lori, we're all trying to move forward here. It's not fair to make accusations."
Ellie, always quick to defend those she cared about, added, "You weren't here to see what she did for Joel. She saved his life and has been helping him every step of the way."
Lori's gaze softened slightly, but the tension remained. "I'm sorry if I overstepped. I just needed to understand."
Maria nodded, her voice gentle. "We all get that, Lori. It's been a tough situation for everyone."
You took a deep breath, trying to steady your emotions. "It's okay. "You took a deep breath before continuing. “I’ll take some fresh air,” you said, standing up, not even looking down at Joel, who seemed sad at your whole dementor.
You took a deep breath, trying to steady your emotions. "It's okay. I—" you paused, feeling the weight of the conversation pressing down on you. "I’ll take some fresh air," you said, standing up abruptly. Avoiding eye contact with Joel, who looked sad and concerned, you made your way outside.
The cool evening air was a welcome relief, and you walked a little way from the dining hall, finding a quiet spot to gather your thoughts. You leaned against a tree, closing your eyes and taking deep, calming breaths.
After a few moments, you heard footsteps approaching. You opened your eyes to see Ellie standing there, her expression filled with concern. "Hey, you okay?"
You nodded, managing a small smile. "Yeah, I just needed a moment. That was a bit embarrassing."
Ellie walked over and leaned against the wall next to you. "Lori was out of line. You've been amazing with Joel. Anyone with eyes can see that."
“So, don’t you think I’ve been taking advantage of him?” You asked, really concerned.
“What are you talking about? He is the one completely enamored by you.” She replied, laughing.
Ellie laughed, shaking her head. "What are you talking about? He is the one completely enamored by you."
You sighed, leaning back against the wall. "I know, but sometimes it feels like I’m walking on eggshells. It feels like he is going to wake up from his trance and he will hate me again."
Ellie placed a comforting hand on your shoulder. "Listen, I've seen the way he looks at you. He’s happier, lighter. You’ve brought out a side of him I didn’t think existed. And trust me, if he didn’t want this, he’d make it clear."
You took a deep breath.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Ellie asked.
“Me, falling in love with him,” you answer.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Ellie asked, her tone light but sincere.
You sighed, the weight of your fears pressing down. “Me, falling in love with him,” you answered quietly.
Ellie gave you a sympathetic look. "And why is that so bad?"
"Because," you began, struggling to put your feelings into words, "what if his memories come back and he realizes he doesn’t feel the same way? Or worse, what if I fall in love with him and he changes back to the old Joel, the one who couldn’t stand me?"
Ellie nodded, understanding. "That's a risk, sure. But you can't let fear keep you from living. You've been through so much together, and it's clear he cares about you deeply now. Maybe that won't change."
You bit your lip, the turmoil inside you reflected in your eyes. "I just don't want to get hurt, Ellie. And I don’t want to hurt him either."
Ellie squeezed your shoulder. "I get it. But if you keep holding back, you'll never know what could be. Sometimes, you just have to take a leap of faith."
You let out a shaky breath, nodding. "Maybe you're right."
Ellie grinned. "Of course I'm right. Now, let's get back in there. Joel's probably worrying himself sick."
You smiled, feeling a bit more at ease. "Okay, let's go."
As you walked back into the dining hall, you found Joel still sitting at the table, his eyes lighting up when he saw your return. He stood up as you approached, his concern evident.
"You okay?" he asked softly.
You nodded, giving him a reassuring smile. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just needed a breather."
Joel looked relieved, and he gently took your hand. "I'm glad you're back."
The evening continued with easy conversation, and as you all eventually made your way out of the dining hall, Joel walked beside you, his presence a comforting constant.
"Thanks for dinner," he said softly as you approached your door.
"Anytime," you replied, feeling a warmth in your chest at his words. "It was nice, being with everyone."
Joel nodded, his eyes lingering on you. "It was. And I meant what I said today. I’ll make you fall in love with me.”
You chuckled softly, feeling a mix of nerves and excitement at his words. "You're really set on that, aren't you?"
Joel nodded, his expression serious but with a hint of a smile that made you go crazy. "I am. Because I know what I feel now, and I’m not going to let it slip away."
You looked into his eyes, seeing the sincerity there. "Joel, this is new for both of us. We need to take it one step at a time."
He took a step closer, his hand gently brushing against yours. “Am I that unlovable?”
You blinked, taken aback by his question. "What? No, Joel, you're not unlovable at all. It's just... complicated."
Joel's eyes softened, and he took your hand in his, his thumb gently brushing over your knuckles. "I get that. But I need you to know that I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait as long as it takes."
You felt a warmth spread through you at his words. "I appreciate that, Joel. And I do care about you. A lot. It's just..."
"Scary?" he finished for you, his voice gentle.
You nodded.
Joel's expression turned thoughtful, and he nodded slowly. "Yeah, I get it. It is scary. But sometimes, the best things come from taking a leap of faith."
You took a deep breath, feeling the weight of his words. "It’s not just about taking a leap. It’s about making sure we’re ready for whatever comes next."
Joel squeezed your hand gently, his eyes never leaving yours. "I understand. And I'm ready to take it slow to give you the space you need. Just know that I’m here for you, and I’m not giving up on us."
You felt a mix of relief and trepidation, but Joel's unwavering support gave you strength. "Thank you, Joel. That means a lot to me."
He leaned in, resting his forehead against yours for a moment, his breath warm against your skin. "We’ll figure it out, one step at a time."
You nodded, closing your eyes for a brief second, allowing yourself to savor the closeness and the promise of what might come. When you opened your eyes again, you saw Joel’s smile—a smile that made you believe in the possibility of a new beginning.
"Goodnight," he whispered, his voice tender, holding back the desire to cupp your face and kiss you.
"Goodnight, Joel," you replied, your heart fluttering, feeling the same as him.
Now standing, this close, face to face, skins touching. One of you would give in before, and once that happened, there was no going to be a way to stop two hearts beating this fast.
Joel's eyes locked onto yours, the intensity of his gaze revealing the depth of his emotions. You could see the conflict within him, the longing that mirrored your own. His hand lingered near your face, his fingers almost brushing against your skin, his breath warm and steady.
The moment felt suspended in time, the air between you charged with unspoken words and electric anticipation. You both stood there, so close that you could feel the heat radiating from each other, your hearts racing in sync.
Joel’s voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t want to push you, but I also don’t want to pretend like I don’t feel this.”
You swallowed, your own voice trembling slightly. “I feel it too, Joel. But we need to be careful.”
Joel nodded, his expression a mix of desire and restraint. “I know. And I want to respect that. I just...” He hesitated, taking a deep breath as if trying to steady himself. “I don’t want to miss this chance with you. I’ve never felt this way before.”
Joel’s gaze flickered between your eyes and your lips, the desire and uncertainty evident in his expression. His hand gently cupped your face. His touch was tender, as if he were afraid to break the spell that bound you both.
You felt your heart race, every nerve ending alive with anticipation. Joel’s fingers brushed softly against your cheek, and you could see the struggle in his eyes as he fought to keep his emotions in check. His breath grew shallower, and his eyes closed for a brief moment, savoring the closeness.
Slowly, he leaned in, his lips brushing against yours in a soft, tentative kiss. It was gentle at first, a whisper of warmth and affection that sent a shiver down your spine. The moment felt both exhilarating and comforting, the culmination of all the unspoken words and feelings that had been building between you.
You responded instinctively, your lips moving softly against his. The kiss deepened gradually, a sweet exploration of new and uncharted territory. His hands moved to frame your face, his touch firm yet gentle, as if he were cherishing every second of this newfound closeness.
When you finally pulled away, both of you were breathless, your eyes locking in a moment of shared understanding. The kiss had been more than just a physical connection; it was a promise of something more, something that neither of you fully understood yet but were both eager to explore.
Joel’s smile was tender and full of warmth. “I’ve wanted to do that since I woke up that day at the infirmary,” he admitted softly, his eyes searching yours for any sign of hesitation.
You felt a blush rise to your cheeks at his confession. His words made your heart flutter even more, and you could see the sincerity in his eyes.
"I'm glad you did," you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper. "I've been feeling the same way."
Joel's smile widened, and he gently stroked your cheek with his thumb. "I didn’t want to rush things or push you. But now... now that we’ve shared this, I hope we can figure things out together."
You nodded, feeling a surge of hope and warmth. "I think we can. I want to see where this leads."
He took a deep breath, his gaze never leaving yours. "No pressure, just... being here with you."
You smiled, feeling a sense of calm and excitement. "I would like that.”
Joel nodded; his expression full of affection. "Good. Now, how about we get some rest? Tomorrow's a new day, and I want to spend it with you."
You felt a burst of warmth at his words and, inspired by the new closeness between you, you hesitated for just a moment before speaking up. “How about we go inside for a bit? I’ve got some tea. It might be nice to relax and talk more.”
Joel’s eyes lit up at the invitation, and he nodded with a smile. “That sounds perfect.”
You led the way to your house, the familiar surroundings now feeling different with Joel by your side. Once inside, you made your way to the kitchen and began preparing the tea. Joel watched you with an easy smile, clearly content.
As you waited for the water to boil, you and Joel chatted about lighter topics—how his recovery was going, plans for the community, and small anecdotes from your days. The conversation flowed easily, and the atmosphere between you was comfortable and warm.
When the tea was ready, you poured two cups and handed one to Joel. He took it with a grateful smile, his fingers brushing against yours. You both settled into a cozy corner of your living room, the soft light of a lamp casting a gentle glow around the room.
Joel sipped his tea, his gaze occasionally meeting yours. “This is nice,” he said softly. “Thank you for inviting me.”
Joel looked around your living room, the peaceful ambiance a stark contrast to the harsh world outside. He took another sip of his tea, then turned his gaze back to you. “You know, before all this, I had a pretty normal life. A family, a daughter named Sarah. She was... everything to me.”
His voice carried a tinge of sadness, and you could see the pain in his eyes. You nodded, sensing the weight of his memories. “I’m sorry, Joel. I can’t even imagine.”
Joel’s expression was somber but grateful. “Thanks. She was everything. When the outbreak happened, she... she didn’t make it. It’s been hard, you know? Trying to keep going and make sense of it all.”
You felt a pang of sympathy for him, knowing how devastating such a loss could be. “I understand. I lost my fiancé in a storm during the outbreak. We were caught outside, and he was... gone before I could do anything.”
Joel’s eyes softened with empathy. “That’s so tough. I’m really sorry you went through that.”
You took a deep breath, feeling the weight of your own memories. “It was the storm that made me afraid of them. Every time the weather changes, it reminds me of that day. I try not to let it control me, but sometimes, it’s hard.”
Joel reached out, placing his hand gently on yours. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that. It’s brave of you to face it every day.”
You looked at his hand on yours, feeling a comforting warmth from his touch. “It’s been a struggle, but having people like you around makes it a little easier.”
Joel nodded, his gaze steady. “We all have our battles. But we’ve found ways to keep moving forward. And maybe together, we can make those battles a little less daunting.”
+++++
The days turned into weeks, and your relationship with Joel grew stronger. The bond you shared was evident in the way you looked at each other and the ease with which you interacted. People in Jackson had noticed the change in both of you, and there was a sense of warmth and contentment surrounding your partnership.
One afternoon, as you were working in the infirmary, organizing supplies and checking on patients, Joel walked in. He had that familiar, easy smile on his face, and his presence was a comforting one amidst the hectic pace of the medical work.
“Hey,” he said, leaning against the doorway. “Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”
You looked up, your face lighting up at the sight of him. “Hey, Joel. Just busy as usual. How’s everything on the patrol?”
Joel shrugged, walking over to where you were working. “Not too bad. But I figured I’d come by and keep you company. I know you’ve been spending a lot of time here.”
You nodded, your smile softening. “Yeah, I’ve been needed here more often lately. But it’s good to see you.”
Joel moved closer, his hand reaching out to gently touch your arm. “I’ve missed you. It’s different when you’re not around.”
You felt a surge of affection at his words. “I’ve missed you too. But this is important. People need help, and I want to make sure I’m here for them.”
Joel nodded, understanding in his eyes. “I get it. Just remember to take care of yourself too. I’d hate to see you running on empty.”
You chuckled, appreciating his concern. “I’ll try. But having you here now brought a smile to my face.”
He smiled, his gaze lingering on you. “Well, I’m glad to be here. Can I help with anything?”
You thought for a moment, then nodded. “Actually, if you could help me restock some of these supplies, that would be great.”
Joel moved closer, his hand gently brushing against yours as he began helping with the supplies. The shared task created a comfortable silence between you, with only the soft sounds of organizing supplies filling the space.
As you worked side by side, Joel’s gaze lingered on you with an intensity that made your heart race. Without warning, he leaned in, his lips brushing softly against yours in a tender, affectionate kiss. The kiss was a sweet proof the connection you shared, and you responded with equal tenderness, savoring the closeness.
Just as the kiss deepened, the door to the infirmary swung open, and Dr. Ramirez walked in. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of you and Joel but quickly masked her surprise with a professional smile.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, her tone warm but slightly teasing. “I came to check on things and see if you needed any help.”
You and Joel pulled away; a bit flustered but smiling nonetheless. “We were just finishing up,” you said, trying to sound casual. “Everything’s in order.”
Dr. Ramirez nodded, her gaze flicking between you and Joel with a knowing look. “Alright, if you need anything, just let me know.”
As she moved to her office, you glanced at Joel, your cheeks still slightly flushed. “Well, that was embarrassing.”
Joel chuckled, his hand still resting lightly on yours. “Yeah, but I guess it’s a good thing everyone know you’re my girl.”
You looked up at Joel, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips. "I suppose it is. It’s nice to be able to be open about us."
Joel’s expression softened; his gaze warm. “It is. And I’m glad we don’t have to hide anymore.”
You squeezed his hand gently, feeling a sense of contentment. “Me too. It makes everything feel more real, more... solid.”
Joel nodded, his eyes never leaving yours. “Do you want to have dinner at my place?” he asked.
You looked up at Joel, a smile spreading across your face at the thought of spending more time together. “Dinner at your place sounds wonderful. I’d love that.”
Joel’s face lit up with a warm smile. “Great. I’ll make sure to have something good ready for us.”
You both made your way to Joel’s place, the evening air cool and crisp. The walk was filled with easy conversation and shared laughter, a comforting routine that had become a cherished part of your days.
When you arrived at Joel’s house, he opened the door and gestured for you to enter. The interior was cozy, with soft lighting and a welcoming atmosphere. He led you to the kitchen, where a simple but inviting dinner was laid out on the table.
Joel’s cooking was surprisingly good, and as you enjoyed the meal together, the conversation flowed effortlessly. You talked about everything and nothing—your favorite memories, plans for the future, and the little things that made you both laugh.
After dinner, you moved to the living room, where Joel had set up a comfortable spot with blankets and pillows. You both settled in, the atmosphere relaxed and intimate.
Joel looked at you with a soft smile. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
You snuggled closer to him, feeling a deep sense of contentment. “Me too. Tonight has been perfect.”
He wrapped his arm around you, his touch warm and reassuring. “Here’s to many more nights like this.”
You smiled, resting your head on his shoulder. “I’d like that.”
As the evening wore on, you both talked about your past experiences and shared stories from before the outbreak. Joel spoke about his life before everything changed—his family, the dreams he had, and the struggles he faced. You shared your own experiences, including the loss of your fiancé and the challenges of adapting to this new world alone.
Joel listened intently, his hand occasionally brushing against yours as if to reassure you. “It’s amazing how much we’ve both been through,” he said softly. “And yet, here we are.”
You nodded, feeling a deep connection. “Yeah. It feels like we’re building something meaningful despite everything.”
After some time, you both decided it was time to call it a night. You stood up, stretching slightly as you gathered your things. Joel walked with you to the door, his presence a comforting constant.
As you reached the door, Joel hesitated for a moment, then gently grabbed your wrist, stopping you from leaving. He looked at you with a mix of hesitation and hope in his eyes. “I was wondering… would you like to spend the night here? It’s been nice having you around, and I’d love to have you stay.”
You looked at him, surprised but touched by the invitation. The warmth in his eyes and the sincerity of his voice made it hard to resist.
“I’d like that,” you said softly, a smile spreading across your face.
Joel’s expression brightened, and he pulled you into a gentle hug. “Great. Let’s get you settled in.”
Joel led you to his bedroom, a space that felt both lived-in and welcoming. The room was simple but comfortable, with a bed covered in worn but clean linens and a few personal touches that spoke to Joel’s character—photos of his family, a well-loved guitar leaning against the wall, and a small stack of books on the bedside table.
He gestured to the bed with a slightly sheepish grin. “Sorry, it’s not much, but it’s home.”
You smiled, feeling a sense of warmth and acceptance. “It’s perfect.”
Joel nodded, his expression softening. “I’m glad you think so.”
You both prepared for bed in comfortable silence, the familiarity of the routine helping to ease any lingering tension. Joel showed you where you could find anything you might need—extra blankets, a lamp for reading, and a small cabinet for any personal items you might want to keep nearby.
As you both settled into the bed, Joel turned off the lights, leaving only a soft glow from a nightlight on the dresser. He slipped under the covers, and you followed suit, the warmth and comfort of the bed providing a welcome respite from the day’s events.
Joel turned toward you, his eyes meeting yours in the dim light. “I’m really glad you’re here,” he said softly, his voice tender.
You smiled, feeling a sense of peace as you settled closer to him. “Me too. It feels right.”
He reached out and gently took your hand, interlocking your fingers. The simple gesture was filled with meaning, and you could feel the connection between you growing stronger.
“Goodnight,” Joel whispered, his voice carrying a note of affection.
“Goodnight,” you replied, your heart fluttering with contentment.
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A few days later, you and Ellie were seated at a table in the bustling dining hall, enjoying a well-deserved lunch. The room was filled with the murmur of conversations and the clinking of utensils, creating a comforting background noise.
Ellie, always full of energy, was animatedly talking about a new comic she’d found. “You won’t believe this,” she said, leaning in with a conspiratorial grin, “but this one hero has the power to control weather. I’m telling you, if I had that power, I’d totally make it sunny all the time.”
You laughed, shaking your head. “Sounds like you’ve been reading too many comics. But I suppose a bit of sunshine wouldn’t hurt.”
Ellie grinned, grabbing a bite of her sandwich. “True, true. But, seriously, how are things going with Joel? You two seem... really happy.”
You smiled, feeling a warm flush at her question. “We are. It’s been nice, spending time together. He’s been really supportive, and I think we’re figuring things out.”
Ellie’s eyes lit up, clearly pleased with your answer. “I’m glad to hear that. He’s been a lot happier since you two started spending more time together. It’s like he’s found a new spark.”
You nodded, feeling a sense of contentment. “It’s been good for both of us. We’re still taking things one step at a time, but it feels right.”
Ellie’s expression turned thoughtful. “I know it’s been rough with everything that’s happened, but it’s nice to see people finding happiness again. Especially you and Joel.”
You appreciated Ellie’s support and her ability to lighten the mood. “Thanks, Ellie. That means a lot.”
Ellie glanced around the dining hall, then back at you with a mischievous grin. “So, are you guys planning any big adventures together? Or just sticking to the small stuff for now?”
You laughed softly. “We’re sticking to the small stuff for now. Just enjoying the moments, we have together.” You paused, “I’m still a little bit scared of him waking up hating me again.”
Ellie’s eyes softened with understanding. “I get that. It’s natural to be scared after everything you’ve both been through. But you’re doing great, and Joel is different now. He’s not going to just wake up one day and hate you.”
You sighed, a mixture of relief and lingering concern in your expression. “I hope you’re right. Sometimes, it’s hard to shake that fear, especially after everything that’s happened.”
Ellie nodded thoughtfully. “I think you both just need to keep talking and being honest with each other. The more you communicate, the more you’ll build that trust. And remember, it’s okay to have those fears. It just means you care.”
You managed a small smile. “Thanks, Ellie. It’s reassuring to hear that.”
Ellie grinned and took a bite of her lunch. “Anytime. And if you ever need someone to talk to or just need a distraction, you know I’m here. We can have a comic marathon or something.”
You laughed, feeling the warmth of Ellie’s support. “That sounds like a plan. I’ll definitely take you up on that.”
As you and Ellie finished your lunch, you stood up to clear your plates, the conversation easing into a comfortable silence. Just as you were about to head to the serving area, you suddenly felt two strong arms wrap around your middle, pulling you into a warm embrace. A soft, affectionate kiss was placed on your cheek, making you feel a surge of happiness and surprise.
You turned your head slightly, finding Joel’s smiling face close to yours. “Hey there,” he said, his voice full of warmth and affection. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, just wanted to steal a moment with you.”
Ellie watched with a grin, clearly pleased with the sight. “Looks like someone’s got a fan club.”
You blushed slightly, leaning into Joel’s embrace. “Hi, Joel. I was just catching up with Ellie.”
Joel’s gaze softened as he looked at you, his hand gently resting on your side. “I figured I’d come and see how you were doing. Plus, I wanted to see if you’d be up for a walk later.”
You smiled, feeling content in his arms. “A walk sounds nice. I’d love that.”
Joel nodded, his eyes twinkling with excitement. “Great. Let’s finish up here and head out.”
You and Joel exchanged a tender glance before you both started to clear your plates. Ellie gave you both a playful nudge. “I’ll leave you two to your walk. Enjoy, and remember, I’m always here if you need me.”
+++++++++++++
“So?” you asked, as Joel was smiling in complete silence.
“So what?” he asked without erasing that smile from his face.
“Aren’t you going to talk?”
Joel chuckled, his smile widening. “I guess I’m just enjoying the moment. It’s not every day I get to be this content.”
You raised an eyebrow, playfully nudging him. “Oh really? And why’s that?”
He looked at you, his gaze tender. “Because being with you like this, just walking and talking, it’s exactly what I’ve wanted. It’s simple and perfect.”
You smiled, feeling a warm glow from his words. “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. So, what’s on your mind?”
Joel glanced around, taking in the scenery before meeting your eyes again. “I was thinking about how nice would be if you go to my place tonight. Ellie’s gonna spend the night with Dina and I want to spend the night with you.”
“That sounds wonderful,” you said with a smile. “I’d love to spend the night with you.”
Joel’s face lit up with a genuine smile, and he took your hand, gently squeezing it. “Great. I was hoping you’d say that.” He leaned and kiss you on the lips, “No I gotta go helping Tommy, see you later, sunshine”
You pouted, grabbing his hand before he could go anywhere “Wait? That was all?”
Joel chuckled softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I thought I’d surprise you with the invitation, and I wanted to make sure you knew how much I enjoy spending time with you.”
You raised an eyebrow, playfully teasing. “Well, I didn’t realize the evening was just an invitation and a kiss goodbye.”
Joel grinned, clearly amused. “Alright, alright. If you want more, I guess I’ll have to come up with something better.” He pulled you into another kiss, this one longer and more lingering.
You smiled against his lips as you pulled away. “That’s more like it. But seriously, I was looking forward to spending time with you.”
Joel’s gaze softened, and he cupped your face gently. “I’m looking forward to it too. Just had to help Tommy out with something. I promise, I’ll make up for it.”
You nodded, still holding onto his hand. “I’ll hold you to that. See you later, Joel.”
He gave you one last smile before heading out, leaving you with a warm feeling and the anticipation of the evening ahead.
+++++++++++++
When you arrived at Joel's place, the sun had just dipped below the horizon, casting a warm, golden glow across the surroundings. Joel greeted you at the door with a welcoming smile and a quick, affectionate kiss.
"Hey, glad you could make it," he said, taking your coat and hanging it up. "I’ve got a few things planned, but we can start with something simple if you’d like."
You stepped inside, feeling the comforting familiarity of Joel’s home. “I’m sure whatever you’ve got planned will be perfect,” you replied, smiling at him.
Joel led you into the living room, where he’d set up a cozy area with blankets and cushions. The room was softly lit by lamps, and the atmosphere was inviting and warm. A few candles were flickering on the coffee table, casting a gentle glow.
“I figured we could start with some dinner and then maybe just talk or something else” Joel suggested, his eyes reflecting the soft light.
You nodded, feeling content with the simple but thoughtful setup. “That sounds great.”
Joel moved to the kitchen and returned shortly with a plate of homemade food—something comforting and hearty. He set it down on the table, then joined you on the couch.
As you both ate, the conversation flowed easily, just like it had during your earlier moments together. You talked about your days, your plans, and even some light-hearted topics. Joel’s presence was reassuring, and you felt completely at ease.
After dinner, Joel suggested putting on some music. He rummaged through his collection, finally settling on a classic that he thought you’d enjoy. You both snuggled up under the blankets, the music playing softly in the background.
Joel occasionally glanced at you, his hand resting casually on your knee. The song played, but most of your attention was focused on the comfort of being next to him, the warmth of his touch, and the quiet contentment that filled the room.
Joel turned to you, his gaze tender. “You know, I’m really glad we’re doing this. Just being here with you, it feels right.”
You smiled, leaning into him. “I feel the same way.”
Joel’s hand moved to gently brush your hair back from your face. “What’s your biggest fear?” he asked out of the blue?
You sighed, leaving his gaze for a moment “You waking up and forgetting you love me”
Joel’s brow furrowed slightly at your answer, a mix of concern and curiosity in his eyes. “Why would you think that? I don’t see any reason why that would happen.”
You took a deep breath, feeling vulnerable as you shared your fear. “It’s just….you knew I told you we didn’t get along before, in fact you hated me, Joel.”
Joel’s eyes softened as he listened to your concern. He took a moment before responding, his voice steady and reassuring. “I know things weren’t easy between us before. And yeah, I didn’t handle things the best way back then. But that’s in the past. What matters now is how we are right now.”
He reached out and gently took your hand in his. “The truth is, I’ve changed. And I see you differently now. I see you for who you are, and I realize how much you mean to me. Whatever those old feelings were? They’re gone. What we have now is real, and I’m committed to it.”
You looked into his eyes, searching for the truth in his words. “But what if one day you wake up and those old feelings come back? What if something changes?”
Joel shook his head, his gaze intense and full of conviction. “I don’t believe that’ll happen. I’ve come to understand how much you mean to me, and how deeply I care about you.”
He squeezed your hand gently, his expression earnest. “I’m not going to let those fears control us. We’re building something strong, and I want to keep building it with you. I’m here, and I’m committed to making sure we have a future together.”
You felt a wave of relief and warmth at his words. “Thank you, Joel. That really means a lot to me.”
Joel smiled softly, leaning in to kiss your forehead. “I’m glad. And if you ever need reassurance, just ask. I’m always here to remind you of how much you mean to me.”
You nestled closer to him, feeling a deep sense of comfort and closeness. The fears that had been troubling you began to fade as you focused on the warmth of his embrace and the sincerity in his voice.
Joel’s gaze lingered on yours, his eyes filled with a mix of tenderness and resolve. Slowly, he leaned in, his lips brushing softly against yours. The kiss was gentle at first, a careful exploration of newfound trust and affection.
As the kiss deepened, it became more passionate, conveying all the emotions and reassurances that words alone couldn’t fully capture. Joel’s hand cupped your face, his touch warm and reassuring as he pressed closer.
You responded to the kiss, your own hands moving to rest against his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. The kiss felt like a promise, a shared understanding of where you both stood and where you hoped to go.
When you finally pulled away, both of you were breathless, your foreheads touching as you gazed into each other’s eyes. The room seemed to fade away, leaving just the two of you wrapped in this moment of closeness.
Joel’s smile was soft, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I needed to do that. To show you just how much you mean to me.”
You smiled back, your heart full. “I needed that too.”
Joel gently brushed a strand of hair from your face, his touch lingering.
After that, everything happened in a flash. Neither of you realized when you removed your clothes, but there was too much desperation in your touch; you wanted to discover how his fingers could leave a mark on you, tracing invisible lines across your body.
He kissed you again, slipping his tongue past your lips, gasping when he felt your fingers running your fingertips across his bare chest, tracing the lines of a map leading to where you couldn’t stop.
With one of your hands, you pulled him down by his neck to hold you against your lips again. Once you tasted them, you couldn’t get over the taste of them over yours, and you couldn’t get over the whimpers he left in your mouth.
He was hovering over you, giving you a passionate kiss. He was between your legs, exactly where you wanted him.
He pulled his lips away from yours for a moment to glance down at you. To appreciate the features of your face and the nature of your body to admire the features of your face, and the nature of your body being displayed just for him right now. You felt the crimson color rushing up to your checks and for a moment you felt embarrassed under his stare, but he smiled at you.
“You look beautiful”. He swallowed hard, stroking your cheek with his thumb.
His hands on your tights only increased the sparks in the place you wanted him the most, you wanted to follow the path even when you knew it was leading to a treacherous destination.
You continued kissing slowly as he caressed your thighs with his gently touch, as he wanted to worship your body and devour every single sound coming out from your mouth. He kissed you down over your neck, kissing, nipping your skin between his teeth.
And God, he loved the way you were making him feel. The fact this time was different to everything you had experiencing before. At this moment, you weren’t driving for only passionate reasons, but for caring feelings for each other. You weren’t in a rush and that turned him on. He was hard for you and he wanted to meet where religion was, between your thighs.
This time he was making love because he had drowned himself on your religion.
Both of you gasped aloud the moment he began to push slowly inside you. His hands reached for yours, interlocking them as he kissed you softly, muttering, "You're so beautiful like this". He was mesmerized by the way you were nervously giggling and cocking your head back in delight. He bit your neck, prompting your hands to move up to his neck, and his hands ran down your entire body without a layer of clothing on you, focusing on every thrust and diving deep to ensure he was making you happy.
You opened your eyes and stared back at him, entirely focused on you. You couldn't help but roll your eyes as his hands massaged your breasts while he continued to devour your lips. Your back arched, followed by a moan against his lips. Every thrust felt so fantastic, you couldn't help but think you were in the celestial realm You could tell you were getting closer as you squeezed him and kept your gaze fixed on each other. He pushed harder, one hand caressing your cheek and the other gripping your knee to guarantee you fell apart.
The noises you made drove him insane, as he felt himself reaching the edge of the cliff. He wanted to stare at you under him as you came and with a loud gasp, he did it at the same time falling over your exposed chest, your heartbeats mingling.
You moaned softly beneath him, and Joel raised his head to look at you, flashing him a cute smile he hadn't tired of, as you kissed him on the lips.
"I love you so much," he replied, gazing at you with admiration. “I’m so in love with you.”
I love you.
I’m so in love with you.
Those three words were echoing in the shadows of your mind. Your expression softened and you felt your blood rushing. You were sure they had had an impact on you.
“And I love you so much” you whispered back, your voice trembling slightly with the depth of your emotion.
Joel’s expression softened even further, and he brushed a tender kiss against your lips once more. The connection between you was undeniable, a blend of passion and deep affection that had grown stronger with each passing day.
You rested your head on his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady and strong beneath you. The world outside seemed distant and unimportant in the warmth of his embrace. For a moment, everything felt perfect, and you allowed yourself to fully embrace the love and happiness you had found with Joel.
Joel gently ran his fingers through your hair, his touch soothing. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”
You nodded, your eyes closing as you savored the moment. “Yeah, we have. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Joel’s arms tightened around you, pulling you closer. “Neither would I. Here’s to more moments like this, and to whatever the future holds for us.”
You smiled, feeling a deep sense of contentment and anticipation for what was to come. “To us,” you agreed, your heart full of love and hope.
+++++++++++
The soft morning light filtered through the curtains, casting a gentle glow over the room. You stirred, waking up with a smile on your face. The previous night’s intimacy and love still lingered, and you turned to look at Joel. He was sleeping peacefully beside you, a contented expression on his face.
As you watched him, you felt a surge of happiness and affection. You reached out, gently brushing a strand of hair from his forehead, your heart full of love for him.
But as Joel’s eyes fluttered open and he met your gaze, his expression shifted dramatically. His sparkly brown eyes filled with love, widened in horror, and a look of confusion and fear crossed his face. He pushed himself up, scrambling back slightly.
“What...What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, his voice trembling with a mix of shock and fear.
You were taken aback, your smile faltering as you tried to make sense of his reaction. “Joel, what’s wrong?”
No. It couldn’t be that, right?
Joel’s eyes were filled with a pained realization. “Oh my god, you came to my house trying to seduce me into sleeping with you?”
You felt a sharp pang of pain at his words, and your heart dropped. The warmth you had felt earlier was replaced by a cold, unsettling feeling.
“No, Joel, that’s not what happened,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady despite the hurt. “We’re in love”
He chuckled. “In love? Me in love with you? I could never” he said.
Your chest tightened, and the hurt in Joel’s words felt like a physical blow. You struggled to keep your composure, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill.
“Joel, you can’t mean that,” you said, your voice shaking. “Last night, you said you loved me. We shared something real.”
Joel’s expression was a mix of confusion and pain. “I don’t remember saying that. Last night I was with Lori”
That’s it. You were back at were you used to be.
The weight of Joel’s words hit you like a punch to the gut. You felt a mix of betrayal and heartache, as the realization sank in. The warmth and affection from the night before felt like a cruel illusion.
“So, what? You’re saying last night meant nothing?” you asked. The tears you had been holding back finally spilled over. “You really don’t remember? You don’t remember how we talked, how you told me you loved me?”
“I don’t love you.” He said, sternly.
“But I’m your sunshine” you sobbed.
Joel’s laughter pierced through you like a blade, and you could barely stand the weight of the realization. Each word he spoke seemed to tear away at the fabric of your heart, unraveling the dream you’d clung to so desperately.
The room felt colder, the air heavier, as you fought to control your sobs. Every touch, every shared moment that had once seemed so real was now reduced to nothing more than painful echoes of a memory that never truly existed.
He didn’t remember the stealing glances, the kisses, the touches and the promises than now seemed to fade with the cruel destiny meeting the ending meant to be.
You had taken a risk at falling in love with the version of a Joel who loved you back, and he didn’t exist anymore. He had faded just when he had told you he loved you.
He didn’t remember falling in love with you, he didn’t remember all the time you spent together, and he didn’t remember loving you, but you didn’t think this would hurt this much.
“Joel” you said, pleading him to remember.
“Out.” He said, gritting his teeth.  
You stood there, the pain in your chest almost unbearable, as Joel's harsh words echoed around you. The warmth and affection you had shared just hours before now seemed like a cruel illusion, shattered by his denial.
"Joel, please," you said, your voice trembling. "Just think about everything we shared. It was real."
Joel’s eyes were hard, and he crossed his arms defensively. “I don't remember any of it. And I can't fake feelings I don't have.”
You felt a deep, profound sadness, the weight of his words making it almost impossible to breathe. The life you had envisioned, the love you had felt, seemed to slip away like sand through your fingers.
“Please, just—” you tried to reason with him, but the look in his eyes made it clear that any further pleading was futile.
Joel’s expression remained firm, a mix of regret and frustration. “Everything I know is that you took advantage of me.”
The sting of Joel's words cut deep, each one echoing the finality of a dream you had cherished. The accusation of taking advantage of him felt like a betrayal, intensifying the emotional agony you were already struggling with.
You took a shaky breath, trying to hold onto the fragments of your composure. "Joel, I never did that. We have something—"
Joel interrupted; his voice cold. "I don’t want to hear it. You need to leave. Now."
The finality in his tone left no room for argument. With a heart heavy with sorrow, you nodded, unable to find the words that might change his mind.
You were only on one of his shirts, trying to find your clothes.
You stumbled through the room, your movements disjointed as you searched for your clothes. The pain and confusion made every action feel like an immense effort. Joel’s gaze remained fixed on you, his face a mask of distant resolve.
You found your jeans, but it was crumpled and stained, and you struggled to put it on with trembling hands. The fabric felt rough against your skin, a stark contrast to the comfort you had felt just hours before. You glanced around for your other belongings, the room now feeling foreign and unwelcoming.
“I... I can’t find my blouse,” you said again, your voice a whisper filled with desperation and trembling.
Joel’s eyes flicked to you briefly before he spoke with a tone that brooked no argument. “Don’t worry about it. Just wear my shirt. I won’t wear it again.” His voice was cold and icy, not more softness as when they used to whisper things on your ear.
The coldness in his words made it clear that there was no room for negotiation or further conversation. You nodded numbly, the shirt you were already wearing now feeling like a heavy shroud setting your skin on fire.
As you finished dressing, you glanced around the room one last time, trying to memorize the space you were leaving behind. The sight of the room, so filled with the promise you fooled yourself onto believing.
There was an intensified the ache in your chest.
Joel stood by the door, his posture rigid as if he were bracing himself for something. His eyes didn’t meet yours, focusing instead on some distant point. The silence between you was heavy with the weight of the broken bond that never existed.
As you pulled on your shoes, your heart cracked completely sank in deeper. You looked up, meeting Joel’s eyes one last time.
“Joel, I’m sorry for everything,” you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper. “I never meant to cause any harm. I just wanted—”
Joel cut you off with a slight nod, his face still set in a hard expression. “Just go. Please.”
You swallowed hard, the lump in your throat almost making it impossible to speak. The intensity of Joel's gaze, filled with a mixture of pain and indifference, made it clear that any further words would be futile.
With one last, lingering look at him and the room that just yesterday had witnessed three empty words that now didn’t meant anything, you turned and made your way down the hall. Each step felt like a weight lifting off your shoulders, even as the burden of what you were leaving behind pressed heavily on your heart.
As you reached the front door, the cool morning air hit you, providing a stark contrast to the warmth you had felt just hours before. The quiet outside was a jarring reminder of the world that continued, indifferent to the personal turmoil you were experiencing.
With every step, you tried to reconcile the reality you faced with the memories of what you had thought was true, a momentary field of dreams. The pain was sharp and immediate. How would you continue life after losing another love?
+++++++
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