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you've got to be kitten me! ☆ jungwon yang

☆ class president! jungwon x troublemaker! fem! reader ☆ summary: jungwon yang, the stuck-up class president, had a secret: at night, he transformed into a cat. when you, the class's residential troublemaker (and one of the people that jungwon simply couldn't bring himself to understand), accidentally discovered his secret, jungwon found himself questioning his role in the school hierarchy. ☆ genre: fluff!!!! highschool! au, classmates to friends to lovers!!! very silly supernatural occurances, follows the asian school system btw, jungwon is lowk a loser and kinda assholey at the beginning ☆ warning(s)? this is very silly!! minor violence (toward animals) ☆ word count: 15.8k ☆ this isn't my usual writing style, or even my usual progression of events, but i was rlly inspired by those old shoujo animes so i tried to emulate certain features common in that genre! lmk what u think! btw it's not edited, i will go back and edit later but rn i'm j tired lol enjoy!

There were two things that Jungwon Yang hated:

Troublemakers, and teachers that talked too much.

Unfortunately, he was now sitting in a room with both types of people.

"You know why you're here right, [Name]?"

[Name] [Last Name]. You were the class’s relentless troublemaker. He’d known you since elementary and middle school, and you’ve always been the same. Brusque, aggressive, and a little too happy to use your fists.

Jungwon and you were in the same year, and he was the class president. Currently, the class advisor, Jungwon, and you were seated in your shared homeroom class after school.

Simply put, you've been causing trouble for the past few weeks, whether it be arguing with teachers or other classmates. Initially, the class advisor decided that although you were causing trouble, it was barely disruptive.

Until today. When you punched a classmate, a guy named Jiho Jang, in the face.

You leaned back in your chair, rolling your eyes. Your gaze hardened, before you let out a sigh. "Yeah, yeah, whatever."

As Class President, it was Jungwon's job to collaborate with the class advisor to enforce school rules and punish those that failed to adhere to them. His lips curled at your sheer lack of regard for anything around you. It was annoying how you broke every rule in the book, prancing around like you owned the place. Why was it so difficult to just not cause trouble?

"Jungwon, what do you think?"

"Ahem," he cleared his throat, "I think [Name] broke a rule—" you cocked a brow at him, but he ignored you, "By assaulting another student, she should be punished for it, shouldn't she?"

Being the Class President, Jungwon had learned to be well-spoken and level-headed, but sometimes, it was utterly difficult to keep a diplomatic attitude. Because although he disliked people that caused trouble, he disliked teachers that talked a lot just as much.

The class advisor went on talking for a few more minutes, using many words but truly saying nothing. Jungwon learned how to make it look like he was listening when he really wasn't, nodding his head and smiling mindlessly.

God, just shut up, he wanted to blurt, but he caught himself.

Meanwhile, you clearly did not give a fuck. You looked at your nails, yawned, rolled your eyes, put your feet on the table. You even let out a very loud exasperated sigh. It was almost laughable the way you didn’t care, to the point that Jungwon almost caught himself letting out a laugh at your clear and abject expressiveness.

"Well, Jungwon, as class president," the advisor finally finished her long and drawn-out speech about school rules, "What do you think [Name]'s punishment should be?"

"Punishment?" It wasn't like Jungwon didn't punish people for breaking rules, but for him to punish someone directly felt so foreign to him. "Well, [Name] explained that she did what she did today in defense of another student, and there's evidence to back her up." Jungwon glanced at you, swiping his tongue over his bottom lip. "So, I think we should give her lunch detention for a week."

Jungwon disliked you. No, he disliked your behavior. But as the President, he was fair. You had thorough evidence to back you up, so he decided on a punishment that reflected on your circumstances.

Except, the advisor audibly reacted. "Ooh, I don't know about that."

Jungwon's brows furrowed. That was a more than reasonable punishment. "Why not?"

"None of the teachers are available to sit in for lunch detention this or next week," the advisor explained. "What about suspension for a week?"

Suspension wasn't even remotely similar to lunch detention!

"No!" Jungwon blurted. When he realized his outburst, Jungwon felt his ears burn. He cleared his throat. "I mean, I feel like a suspension is too extreme of a punishment."

His eyes flickered over to you.

You better thank me, he thought.

"If it's possible, I don't mind administrating lunch detention this week and next week, since none of the teachers are available."

The class advisor stayed silent for a few moments, before collecting her papers in a neat stack, and shoving it into her desk. "Very well, then." She turned to you. "[Name], you will have lunch detention starting tomorrow. Jungwon will be administrating it."

Then, you were dismissed. Jungwon had to stay back for a few minutes to discuss other class plans with the advisor, before leaving himself. By the time Jungwon walked out of the school building, the sun was beginning to set. However, as he walked out into the school courtyard, he spotted you.

You stood alone under a plum blossom tree. The pink-yellow flowers, now beginning to blossom as winter flew by, were sprawled across the ground, and your shoes, covered in dirt from the early-spring rain, trampled all over them with little regard. As you always did.

And, before he knew it, Jungwon was walking toward you.

It was common courtesy, at least for him, to greet whoever he saw.

"[Name]!" he called out, lips moving faster than his mind. Your head whipped over to him, quirking a brow.

"Hi?" you looked at him with suspicion.

He couldn't blame you. Jungwon and you were on completely different spectrums of the school social hierarchy. Jungwon was well-known with a clean reputation, and you were infamous at least and a delinquent at most. It wasn't like he had never interacted with you before, but those interactions were few and far between.

"... Did you need something?" You almost looked irritated that he was talking to you. Were you incapable of at least pretending like you cared?

"I just, " Jungwon had to admit, your gaze was intimidating. He’d heard rumors of you beating up kids that tried to talk to you, and although they were a little ridiculous, Jungwon wanted to be cautious. But, when words came to mind, his wobbly lips formed a soft, forced, smile. "I just wanted to say, I thought it was cool that you punched Jiho today."

When you only stared at him incredulously, Jungwon continued.

"Like, It was cool that you were trying to defend someone, and I thought that Jiho really deserved it," Jungwon added. "I'm sorry about the detention thing."

He was being partially truthful. Of course, Jiho had it coming. Anyone that picked on underclassmen were just shitty, but cool to use violence against him? Maybe not. It was the first word that came to his mind.

A few silent pulses passed, and Jungwon shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

"Thanks?" you said slowly, your expression painted with confusion— because why was the Class President praising you for assaulting someone? "Um, I don't think you need to apologize."

Jungwon nodded, his fake smile still painted across his cheeks, ready to spill more courteous words at you.

"You were just doing your job— Hey, are you okay?"

A sudden fuzzy feeling at the back of Jungwon’s head pierced through him. Almost like a switch had turned off inside him, Jungwon was suddenly wobbly on his feet, his eyes looking cloudy and dazed, rolling back in his head.

"Hey, Jungwon—" you grabbed his arm to hold him upright, your brows crashing together. "Jungwon, are you okay?"

Jungwon's knees felt weak, his head full of static. When his eyes caught a glimpse of the sky, it was a dark, gray-blue mixed with orange.

Shit, he should have kept track of the time. For someone who prided himself for how responsible he was, Jungwon had to admit that he was a little stupid right now. As Jungwon slowly slipped out of consciousness, his mind raced. No, no, no. He did not want this to happen right now, not in front of you.

You freaked out, frantically holding onto him. Why was Jungwon Yang practically fainting on you?

All of a sudden, a big puff of smoke appeared. As you coughed, using your hand to wave away the smoke, you noticed that Jungwon's shoulders were no longer in his hands. In fact, his entire person disappeared from in front of you.

When the smoke cleared, Jungwon was no longer with you. Instead, there was just a pile of his clothes before your feet.

"Jungwon?" you asked, bewildered out of your mind. "Hey, Jungwon, what the fuck just"

Meow!

Did something just meow-

Meeeeowwww!

From under the pile of clothes, a small, black cat poked its head out. Your jaw dropped, panic overtaking your system.

The cat let out another meow, before it began inching toward you. Out of sheer panic, you took many steps back, letting out a small yelp of fear.

"Stay back, cat!" you cried.

Meeeeowwww! the cat meowed at you, only inching closer to you. Each step it took toward you, you stepped back, until your back was pressed against the tree.

Who could blame you? Jungwon Yang just disappeared into thin air before your eyes, only to leave a cat! How could you not be afraid of that cat?

However, instead of killing you (or whatever you thought would happen if the cat got too close), the cat only pawed at your shoe. It let out another meow, but this time a much softer one. It continued to paw at your shoe, meowing profusely like it was trying to tell you something.

You watched it in disbelief.

You've seen many cats before, it wasn't like seeing a cat was some rarity to you. Just... where the hell did Jungwon go?

Experimentally, you reached out to touch the cat, only for it to jump away from you. You blinked at it. You and the cat stared at each other for a few moments, before it seemed to let out a small huff and stepped toward you. You reached out to it again, and this time, it didn’t jump away. You picked up the cat, holding up to your face so that it was at eye-level.

"Hey, kitty," you gently said, a small frown painting itself on your lips. You pet its soft, black fur, your fingers gracing its ears. Looking around, you bring the cat closer to your face. "Do you know where Jungwon went?"

Meow! was all you got in response, making you frown even more. You gently rubbed your thumb over its nose and soft, black fur.

"Did you take him, kitty?" you wondered, more to yourself than anything. When the cat only meowed, you couldn't help but crack a grin. You booped its nose, before cradling it in your arms.

You glanced at the pile of Jungwon's clothes a few inches away from you. You looked around, for any sign of him or anyone at all, before sighing to yourself. You crouched down, placing the cat down, too. You neatly folded the pile of clothes, tucking it under your arm. You picked up the cat once more, scanned the courtyard, and started your way home.

Despite what a lot of people liked to think, you were actually gentle. But only sometimes.

There were some perks to living alone, hundreds of miles away from your family. One of them was that you could bring home whatever animal you wanted, and no one could stop you.

On your way home from school, you decided that you'd keep the cat, whom you named Kong-ee (since its nose looked like a bean). How could you not? It was so tiny, and soft, and cute. Every time you rubbed its cheek, it let out a small meow. When you kissed it on the head, it started meowing profusely. It was so adorable!

If anyone at school saw you right now, they'd think they were dreaming.

You, that one mean and rough girl, playing with a little cat? You, not screaming and fighting every three seconds? Impossible!

You cracked a grin to yourself as you thought about the events that transpired earlier. Jiho Jang was picking on some underclassman, so you gave him a little nudge. When that didn't work, you punched him square in the nose. As you unlocked the door to your apartment, you thought back to how the school administrators reacted. For some reason, it felt like they favored Jiho over you, seeming to take his side before you even explained yourself.

You placed the cat down on your bed.

"Stay here, okay, kitty?" you gently pet Kong-ee. The cat stared at you with its large, feline eyes, and you laughed, kissing its cheek. The high-pitched meow it let out was cute, so you booped its nose again. "I'm gonna go run you a bath, 'kay?"

As you set your things down to run the bath, you suddenly remembered your Class President, Jungwon Yang.

It seemed like among everyone involved in the situation, he was the only one that was fair. You appreciated him reiterating that fact that you were, in fact, acting in defense of another student, and you could tell that he was trying to give you a gentler punishment. However, you couldn’t shake off the feeling that he disliked you. He had this weird attitude, one where he seemed to think of himself as superior to you. You could tell that he didn’t like you, probably because of your ‘troublemaker’ reputation.

Come to think of it, have you ever spoken to him? Sure, you went to the same elementary and middle school as him, but you swore that you've never really spoken to him. You still had no idea what happened to him earlier. He just randomly disappeared from the face of the earth. You still had his clothes, which you threw into the washing machine.

You didn't think of him any more for the rest of the night.

"Kong-ee," you cooed as you poured warm water over the cat's head. For a cat, Kong-ee was very calm in water. You muttered to yourself, "So cute,"

After drying Kong-ee, you went to eat dinner, study, and at last, go to bed.

You didn't have a bed for Kong-ee, and you didn't move a lot when you slept, so you just let the little cat lay on your chest. The warmth of the cat was like an extra blanket anyway.

Your eyes felt heavy, so you were fast asleep just minutes after your head hit the pillow.

Jungwon thought he was a pretty smart guy.

But right now, he was absolutely stupid.

He completely didn't take into account the fact that during winter, nighttime came much quicker. He was so distracted by school duties that he totally forgot his curse.

That's right. Curse.

About a week ago, Jungwon was hit with some curse, where every day, the moment that the sun began to set, he would transform into a cat. He'd only turn back to human when the sun rose the next morning. These past few days, Jungwon had been leveeing excuse after excuse about why he couldn't attend a certain event, or why his homework was done so quickly.

Yesterday, even when he should have been running home because he was literally about to transform into a cat, he decided to go talk to you instead.

And now there he was, still in his cat form, laying on you, that one girl from class that couldn’t follow a rule to save her life.

As a cat last night, he decided that he’d escape out your window the moment you fell asleep. However, your apartment was many stories high, and he couldn’t fight off his feline instinct to snuggle up into something warm. So there he was, laying next to your sleeping face.

In his cat form, Jungwon could see your alarm clock. These days, sunrise was around 7AM, and it was 6:57. Just a few more minutes, and he should transform back into human. Hopefully, he won't wake you up.

Jungwon's plan was the moment that he transformed back into his human form, he would take his clothes (the one that you picked up and washed yesterday), and leave. The last thing he wanted to do was scare you. Hopefully, you’d forget all about this, and his life would resume.

Meanwhile, Jungwon observed your sleeping face. It was weird. You usually had a scowl on your face, but your sleeping face was completely peaceful. He’d never seen you so… calm. In fact, last night was probably the most normal he’d ever seen you. Jungwon always kind of expected you to be rough with everything, but the way you treated him as a cat was almost… kind of nice?

With his paw, Jungwon gently touched your face, a small meow escaping his mouth. Your lunch detention started today, so he’d have to spend his next few lunches stuck in a room with you. He dreaded it. He had other things he wanted to do, even though he was the one to suggest that he administrated–

Poof!

With a puff of smoke, Jungwon transformed back into his human form. Except, he was now naked, sprawled on top of you.

Quickly, though with wobbly feet, he stumbled over to the clean folded stack of his clothes.

Just as he was finished putting on his pants, reaching for his shirt, Jungwon heard a shrill scream.

He whipped his head around to see you, staring at him horrified.

Oh.

Shit.

The last thing you expected was to wake up to a shirtless Jungwon Yang in your room.

"What the fuck are you—" you, still groggy, pulled your comforter over your shoulders, suddenly feeling exposed— "Jungwon, what the fuck? What are you doing here?!"

The boy only stared at you with eyes as wide as saucers, jaw dropped. It was only when you began throwing pillows and plushies at him that he began to get defensive.

"W-Wait, [Name]!" he staggered over to you, amidst the slew of pillows being projected at him. "[Name], let me explai— Ow!"

"Get out, Jungwon!" you shouted, hurling nearly every object on your bed at him. Simply for the reason that your Class President was literally half naked in your room, your face felt warm. With anger. "Get out, get out, get out— Oof!"

Behold, Jungwon tripped over one of the pillows as he floundered over to you, leading him to fall right on top of you on your bed.

A moment of thick silence engulfed your bedroom as the two of you stared at each other. Jungwon's cheeks flared. It was absolutely over for him now.

With a rough, but flighty, hand, you pushed his chest off of you with a scowl.

"Get off," you grumbled, shoving him again.

"Right..." Jungwon quickly pulled away from you. He sat at the edge of your bed, his head hanging low. His entire neck and face were red with embarrassment and shame. You probably thought he was a creep, a pervert, a weirdo! Would you tell people at school? He could already hear the rumors: “Class President Jungwon Yang is a freak!”

"Well, aren't you going to explain yourself?" you nudged him harshly with your foot. You still covered yourself with your blanket, looking at him with the most hostility that he'd ever seen from you.

"Wait a minute," you muttered to yourself. You shifted around your bed, feeling around your comforter. "Where's Kong-ee?"

Jungwon let out a nervous laugh.

"About that...."

(Long story short, you grabbed Jungwon by his shoulders, and said, "You're lucky that you were cute as a cat, because I was considering kicking your ass.")

Honestly, you thought Jungwon was a little weird, if not snobby. If you were asked how you felt about him a few hours ago, you would have said that he was a little self-important. But after the fiasco this morning, the only word you had to properly describe him was strange.

You supposed that you couldn't blame him. He didn't choose to be cursed into a cat, and he most definitely didn't choose for you to take him home. It was just a little embarrassing that the entire time, the cute cat that you were excited to take care of was just your Class President that probably hated you. It made you squirm a little bit.

After Jungwon gave you a (very thorough and evidence-based) explanation, you kicked him out and got ready for school as you always did.

When you got to school, you couldn't bring yourself to meet Jungwon's gaze, and luckily, it seemed like he couldn't either. You weren't shy, and you weren't the type to get actually flustered, but you felt a twinge of humiliation.

Why, of all people, did it have to be the guy that you were spending your lunch detention with?

In fact, as you sat in lunch detention, there was a thick tension in the air. It was just you and Jungwon in an empty classroom, completely silent save for the sound of chattering and people talking from the other rooms down the hall.

You were supposed to be doing homework, or something, but you preferred staring out the window. Meanwhile, from the corner of your eye, you noticed Jungwon sitting at the teacher desk, writing something out.

Minutes passed and you were getting bored. Normally, you were perfectly fine with getting lost in that head of yours, but for some reason, today all your thoughts were just... stale.

"Yah," you suddenly said, directed at Jungwon. The boy's head immediately shot up. "What are you doing right now?"

"Writing..." he answered curtly. His expression was awkward, very different from his usual composed face, the one that he used when he ordered people around. You tried not to show your discomfort on your face, but Jungwon was just an open book.

"I'm bored."

He blinked at you owlishly, before narrowing his eyes. "Well, do you want a book?"

You groaned, leaning back against your chair and throwing your head back. If this was how lunch detention was going to be for the rest of the week, you'd die.

Jungwon watched you silently. He let out a sigh, before setting his pen down. He picked up the papers that he was just writing on, holding it up to his face so that he could read it.

"Jungwoo and Sullyoon." You shot him a questioning look, and he continued. "Liz and Minji."

"What the hell are you saying?" you questioned.

Jungwon held up the papers; on them were elaborate charts with many columns. It was a list of some sort.

"It's the beginning of the month," Jungwon began. "I have to make a schedule for who's on cleaning duty."

You cocked a brow at him, making him continue.

"I might be the president, but I don't know a lot of our classmates well," the boy's feline-like eyes fluttered over to you. "I'm having trouble making the pairs. I don't know who gets along with who."

He stared at you for a few pulses, almost like he was asking you to help him. You finally huffed, rolling your eyes. You pulled a chair over to where Jungwon was sitting, plopping down. This was better than doing homework.

"All right then," you snatched the paper. You scanned the list, your nose crinkling at some of Jungwon's choices. "Why would you put Bae with Aran?"

Jungwon’s brows crashed together, just by the way you seemed so indignant about his choices.

"I don't know," Jungwon shrugged, unable to hide the slight offense on his face. "I thought they were friends."

"Nah," you sucked in a sharp, exasperated breath. "Bae was trying to get with Aran's boyfriend, so Bae and her friends jumped her."

The way it came out so casually from your lips was almost laughable.

"Ouch."

"And why would you put Jihan and Rei together?"

"Why, are they not friends?"

"No, because Rei is friends with Liz, and Jihan hates Liz."

"Well, what about Rei and Hikaru?"

You groaned, punching Jungwon in the arm. "I'm actually gonna kick your ass."

Out of nowhere, completely out of character, Jungwon couldn't help the laugh that escaped his lips. There was something so laughable about you, of all people, knowing the business of your classmates, and not him, the literal president. It was almost ironic, the way you seemed to be so passionate about the ongoings of the classroom. He immediately clamped his hand over his mouth the moment you shot him a glare, but he was unable to swallow another laugh.

"Yah, laugh again and I'll actually do it."

Jungwon let out another laugh. You grabbed his forearm, softly punching his shoulder again. The way your lips jutted out, the gloss on them shining under the light, was too much for Jungwon to handle. For someone so tough and violent, you looked so petulant, almost like a child, when you were angry. Your brows furrowing like caterpillars and the way your lips parted in offense was his favorite part.

You stood up abruptly, grabbing Jungwon's collar and pulling him up with you. Your lips pulled together in what could only be called a frown.

"You're so annoying," you grumbled, tightening your grip around his collar. "Kill yourself."

Jungwon's lips pulled upward to reveal his sharp canine teeth.

"Sorry," he said with a smile. It was weird, the way that it was a genuine smile, as opposed to the fake one that he found himself giving out.

You rolled your eyes for the nth time that day, but you loosened your hold on his collar. When he let out another small laugh again, you raised your fist at him. It was supposed to be purely threatening, you weren't actually going to punch him. And Jungwon could tell, just by the look on your face.

But that was when the worst possible person walked into the detention room: the class advisor.

"[Name] [Last Name], are you trying to assault the Class President?!"

And that's how you got after school detention, too. Administrated by the one and only Class President himself.

"Look, [Name], I'm sorry—"

"It's whatever."

And it really was whatever.

No matter how many times Jungwon explained with the advisor and administrators, they all wouldn’t believe them. He clarified seemingly hundreds of times that you, in fact, were not trying to beat him up. Still, they wouldn’t listen. Because he was the president, they simply assumed that Jungwon was defending you to not cause trouble.

You appreciated his efforts, you really did. The way his face scrunched with frustration as he let out a deep, exasperated sigh was enough for you.

“It isn’t whatever,” Jungwon ran a hand through his dark locks, huffing. “It’s unfair.”

Now the two of you were back in that detention room. You were sitting down, bored, while Jungwon paced around. He couldn’t say that he liked you, but he couldn’t stand for something so utterly ridiculous.

"It's not a big deal," you seemed more unbothered than Jungwon was. When he looked at you with a pinched expression, you sighed. "I really mean it, it's not a big deal."

Jungwon chewed on his bottom lip pensively. "But they're not being fair."

You shrugged. "This isn't the first time that it's happened, you know."

When the boy frowned, you continued. "Sometimes, the administrative system is kinda fucked. It's just something we hafta accept."

Jungwon's nose scrunched, before he made his way over to where you were sitting. He stood at the edge of your desk before you, his fingers tapping anxiously. He studied your face: your expression was painted with sincere and utter indifference. You didn't care. But he did.

"I'm serious," you noticed the uneasiness on his face. "Just let it go, Jungwon."

"It's just..." he breathed, "I'm the President, aren't I supposed to be the one with a louder voice? Why won't they listen to me?"

You gazed at his face.

Jungwon Yang, the Class President. He’d always seemed snobby, but he was surprisingly earnest. There was an essence of naivete in him, a sort of innocence and optimism that you couldn't shake off. Jungwon was almost intense with the amount of conviction he had.

"Well," you finally said. Under the desk, you tapped your shoe against his. "We can't do anything about it now."

You brusquely got up, moving toward the teacher desk.

"B-But—"

You plopped down on the teacher chair, kicking back. "Are you going to let me help you with your presidential duties or what? I’m bored."

You looked at him, dead serious. You gestured to the papers sprawled across the desk. 'Well, aren't you going to join me?'your expression read.

Jungwon finally exhaled.

He couldn't argue with you.

Because like him, your conviction was just as strong. You were realistic, too realistic that it was almost painful. But the intensity in your judgment was not to be challenged.

"Fine."

You never expected Jungwon's presidential duties to be so tedious. But what was surprisingly unsurprising was Jungwon's crazy amount of effort. Of course he put every ounce of his energy into perfecting the class calendar or the class seating arrangements. Although you did help him, there were a few moments of complete silence, as Jungwon sat in deep thought trying to figure out how to approach a certain issue. His zeal was almost freakish.

You let out a yawn. "Hey, what time is it?"

"Time?" Jungwon perked up, glancing out the window. Shit. It should be sunset soon. Why does he keep losing track of the time? He began shuffling his papers together, shoving them into his school bag. "Shiiiit, I have to go now."

"Man, I feel like I've never heard you swear—" Realization hit you. "Oh, right."

You helped him put his things away, but it was too late. Within seconds, a puff of smoke already engulfed the room, leaving a pile of clothes, and a tiny black cat.

You groaned. Not again.

"You’ve got to be kidding me.”

You decided that you'd take Jungwon home with you once again. As you laid on your back in your bed, you held his cat form up carefully, yet your words were harsh.

"God, you're so stupid, Jungwon," you scolded him. "Does this happen a lot? Where you don't keep track of time and just transform out of nowhere?"

Jungwon let out a small meow, hanging his furry head in shame.

"Ughhh," you lamented. You gave the top of his head a small tap, equivalent to you hitting the back of his head if he was a human. "Do your parents know?"

Jungwon responded back with a bunch of meows, like he was trying to talk to you.

"Whatever," you tapped his nose with your knuckle. Normally, you’d probably recoil at the thought of being this close to your Class President, but because he was a cat, you couldn’t help the desire to smother him with love. You held Jungwon's face close to yours. You rubbed your nose against his, cooing at the small meows he let out. You chuckled. "You're so much cuter as a cat, you know that right?"

Jungwon meowed, his short paws extending out to touch your face. You grinned, leaning into his touch. "You're so annoying at school. So annoying that I thought about punching you once. But I like you more as a cat."

Meeooowww!

"Have you eaten yet?" you brushed his fur back, rubbing the spot behind his ears, earning a purrrr. Jungwon shook his head. Then, you scratched his chin. "Can you even eat human food?" Jungwon shook his head again.

"Fine," you muttered, more to yourself. "I'll go buy you cat food."

The walk to the convenience store was quiet, save for your coos at Jungwon. On Jungwon's end, he was ecstatic. Each time you kissed his head or babbled back in response to his little meows, Jungwon couldn't help but feel a twinge of embarrassment. It was weird, so weird, to see you be so… gentle, and loving, and caring. It was like a flip switched the moment you stepped out of school. Weren’t you supposed to be a delinquent? Why were you so tender? He hated it, he hated it so much. But now you were peppering his face with kisses, and Jungwon couldn’t resist leaning into your warm touch.

"Which one do you want, Jungwon?" You took him through the aisles, letting his small, black paws dictate what you'd buy.

"Are you serious? Salmon Gravy Poultry shreds?"

Jungwon meowed profusely, his paws flailing around almost offended. He couldn't control his feline cravings in his cat form! What did you expect him to choose, a Triple Dipple Mcdouble Wouble Hamburger?

You threw your head back, laughing at his cute frustration. You pinched Jungwon's nose, before going to the cash register.

That night, you sat with Jungwon wrapped in a blanket on your lap.

"You can still help me with my homework, right?" you said, petting Jungwon.

Meoooowww! was his response (as always), but the way his feline eyes squeezes into thin crescents, his mouth turning upwards, told you his answer was a very enthusiastic "Yes!"

You and Jungwon came up with a system.

One meow was yes, two meows were no.

It was safe to say that Jungwon let out many double meows in succession.

"Maybe I was wrong," you grasped his little paws like they were his hands. "You're still annoying as a cat."

Meow!

You giggled, before turning off your lights.

You gave Jungwon his own bed— a stack of pillows and blankets. You didn't want another incident, did you?

Oh. My. God.

It was past 7AM. The sun was up in the sky shining its yellow face so obnoxiously through the blinds.

However.

Jungwon was still a cat.

For the past week or so, he turned back into his human form the second the sun peeked through the clouds. But why not today? He had to figure this out before you woke up, or you might freak out, and that would make him freak out—

"Oh my god, Jungwon, why are you still a cat?!"

Long story short, you took him to school with you.

If Jungwon was a human, he would have refused profusely. Curse him and his tiny body, he had no way of refusing you.

And that's how Jungwon found himself stuffed in your pocket.

"Stop fussing!" you gently smacked the back of his head. "You're gonna get us caught!"

Meeowww! was all he could say. It was strange seeing the school through such a tiny lens. It didn't help that he felt like he was on a goddamn rollercoaster because for some reason, you decided to walk with a pep in your step today.

"Where's Jungwon? He's normally not late like this," Wonyoung Jang, the class's secretary asked just as you walked in. After a round of "I don't know's" it seemed like everyone suddenly remembered what (allegedly) happened yesterday: you assaulted him.

"Hey, [Name], did you do something to him?" someone asked. You shot them a questioning look. You ignored them, taking your seat in the back, being careful to not crush Jungwon.

"Yah, [Name]," one of the boys in your class (was his name Haruto, or something?) came up to your desk, slamming his hands down on your desk. "What did you do to Jungwon?"

You looked around the classroom— they had to be playing with you, right? Such a ridiculous accusation based on ridiculous evidence from the most ridiculous people.

"Uh. I didn't do anything...?" you answered sincerely, confusion strewn across your face.

"Hey, let's not lie, [Name]," Jinni, the class treasurer, smiled at you. "Just tell us the truth. What happened to Jungwon?"

"I don't know," you shrugged.

"You were the last person to see him yesterday," one of your classmates pointed out. "Something's fishy."

"Well, I don't know what you guys want me to say," you scowled. "I'm sorry, I guess? It's not really my business what goes on with him."

Before another person could join in, and most definitely escalate the situation, the bell rang, starting class.

Meanwhile, Jungwon internally frowned. Why was everyone so quick to accuse you? Sure, you got into scuffles, but they were being baseless with their accusations. All you did was walk in, and you were bombarded with questions. While class went on, he let out a soft meow, using his paw to touch your hand.

"Jungwon, what do you want?" you whisper-yelled at him.

Jungwon couldn't imagine what it would be like to have everyone see you with suspicion. When the teachers didn't believe him earlier, it was frustrating. He never considered how you felt. Your quick resignation to the flawed administrative system was upsetting.

Almost like he was trying to comfort you, another small meow came from him, his paw petting your hand.

You smiled gently, bonking him softly on the head, before turning back to the board.

As the day went by, Jungwon caught a real glimpse of what it was like to live like you.

From the pocket of your sweater, he could see the nasty glares that people sent you, simply for being in the same room as them. The way that people would scurry away from you, cower under your gaze like you were some kind of monster. Jungwon didn't know how anyone could endure that for much of their high school career. The more he watched you from your pocket, the more he could see your hard exterior cracking. You were genuine in that you didn't like people that much, but he could tell by the way that your lips twitched slightly, eyebrows knitting together for a split second as you wistfully watched groups of friends giggle together.

As lunchtime started, you slowly made your way to the detention room. That entire hall was mostly empty, probably because no one wanted to be near where you'd be.

You reached inside your pocket, your knuckle brushing against Jungwon's ears.

"Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish you were human right now," you said quietly to him. Jungwon meowed, rubbing his cheek against your finger. "I’m gonna be so bored."

As you cracked the detention room door open, you were met with a group of boys.

Of course you knew them. Everyone liked to lump you in with them, as "bangers," but anyone that understood who they were knew that you were far from their friend.

While you just caused trouble occasionally, they were actual delinquents.

"Hey there, [Name]," one of them grinned at you. You stopped at the doorway, narrowing your eyes at them. They never talked to you unless they wanted trouble.

"What do you want, Gyuvin?" you huffed. Jungwon from your pocket peeked his head out.

"We don't want anything from you, [Name]," another of them, Ricky Shen, took a step forward toward you. The rest of the boys followed suit, pulling you into the classroom and surrounding you.

You dug your teeth into your bottom lip. The way they were circling you certainly triggered your panic mode, but you swallowed it down, choosing to keep a hardened gaze instead.

"Right," you nodded slowly.

The next thing you knew, you were pushed to the ground with a yelp and thump! The way that the rest of them peered down at you condescendingly. You heard a small meow come from your pocket, so your hand shot to your pocket, your palm protectively cradling Jungwon.

"We're just bored, really," Gyuvin smiled, leaning down toward you. "Just wanted to see if this kitty bit back."

Silence enveloped the room as you glared up at them. You had to think fast. You honestly did not have the energy to put up a good fight right now, and you didn't want to. How could you evade this?

Your eyes shot around the room for some sort of escape. Unfortunately, there was only one: the door, and it was blocked by a few of the boys.

"Oh? What's that in your pocket?" It seemed like they noticed your hand clutching your pocket so firmly.

They yanked you up roughly by the arm, shoving their grubby hands into your pocket while others held your arms back.

"Hey!" you yelped, struggling against their grip. They're gonna find Jungwon!

Your worst fear came true. Gyuvin pulled out a thrashing Jungwon from your pocket. Even in his feline form, you could see the panic in his eyes. You tried to escape their grip, pulling away as hard as you could, but they overpowered you.

"What's this?" Gyuvin asked, a nasty grin on his face as he observed Jungwon.

"Give him back," you grumbled behind gritted teeth. You tried to pull away again, but it was no use. Gyuvin cocked a brow at you, before throwing Jungwon on the floor. Jungwon let out a small meow of pain, but as the boys approached him, he hissed loudly, his pupils dilated and his black fur standing up on his back.

Ricky glanced at you, making sure that you were watching, when he landed a kick at Jungwon.

"Jungwon!" you shouted, straining against the boys that held you back.

"Fuck," you muttered to yourself. You didn't want to fight. Jesus Christ, the last thing you wanted to do right now was fight. But you could not stand for this.

"Jungwon?" A smile was growing on Ricky's features. "Y'know, [Name], I thought that you murdered Mr. Class President or something. But it looks like you're obsessed with him more than anything."

Your hands balled into fists, biting your lip so hard that you could taste blood.

Assholes. That's what they all were.

It was Ricky's turn to land a kick on Jungwon.

That's when you had enough.

With all the force you could muster in your body, you stepped on the guys who held your foot. You didn't know how hard it was, but it was hard enough for them to loosen their grips on you, letting out cries. Your body was on overdrive now. The only thing you focused on was getting the fuck out of there.

"Yah, get her!"

You dashed to Jungwon, snatching him up and jamming him into your pocket. You flung the door open, but Ricky and Gyuvin grabbed both of your hands before you could make a run for it. Ricky pulled you in by the waist, so that you were flush against his chest, while Gyuvin pressed against you from the front.

"Let go of me," you protested.

"Nuh-uh," Ricky whispered in your ear.

"Why're you so resistant to us, [Name]?" Gyuvin rasped. "We just wanna be your friend."

Meanwhile, Jungwon, although injured, creeped out from your pocket. With them so close to you, it would be awfully easy for Jungwon to land a few claws on them. It wouldn't hurt to give them a few scratches, right?

With a loud hiss, Jungwon jumped out from your pocket, landing on Ricky's chest. With all the might that his small body could gather, Jungwon scratched the boy's chest with high-pitched shrieks. Almost immediately, Ricky stumbled backward, letting go of you. You took that opportunity to land the hardest kick you could to Gyuvin's crotch. Then, you plucked Jungwon up, and made a run for it.

You ran until you reached the girl's bathroom of the south building, far enough from Ricky and Gyuvin and their little henchmen. You took in shallow breaths, staggering into the bathroom. You held onto Jungwon tightly.

Finally, you dropped down to your knees, slumping against the wall. With a hiss, you observed the bruises on your wrists, where the boys had held you.

You took off your sweater, gently placing Jungwon on it.

He nuzzled his face against your leg, purring when you pet his head.

"Hey, Jungwon," your voice was quiet, the quietest that he'd ever heard. "You okay?"

Meow!

Your nimble fingers ran against his fur, and when you ended up on his side, Jungwon hissed. Upon closer inspection, that part of his abdomen was bruised from the earlier assault.

"I'm sorry, baby," you unconsciously used that name, your heart hurting for him. It must be horrible being so small and helpless. You tenderly caressed his face, with him leaning into your touch. "Does it hurt?"

Jungwon nodded. Although all the energy was sucked out of you from that scuffle alone, you jumped to your feet.

"The nurse's office is just down the hall," you said to him. "I'll go get some things, okay?"

Jungwon meowed to you as you left.

He'd never actually seen you fight anyone.

Were you harassed like this often? Was that why you were reported to be fighting people, when you were really just defending yourself? Why did people want to bother you so badly?

The pain in Jungwon's side was bearable, but the way you were so quick to get help was so admirable.

In fact, all this time that he spent with you, you never looked to fight people. Instead, you were actually so eager to be helpful. How did you become known as the class's troublemaker when you actively avoided trouble? All you’ve been so far was kind to him.

Was he wrong about you?

Just as Jungwon was about to go on pondering...

Poof!

Jungwon coughed, and suddenly, he was human again.

But, like always, naked.

He scurried into one of the stalls, shutting and locking the door.

"Jungwon?" you wandered back into the bathroom, unable to spot a little black cat. "Jungwon, where'd you go?"

When a deeper, masculine voice responded, you almost jumped out of your skin. "I'm... in the stalls."

"You turned back?!"

Jungwon felt his cheeks warm up. How was he going to explain this to you?

"Why are you in the stalls?"

Jungwon cleared his throat awkwardly, squeezing his eyes shut. "I'm... uh.. naked right now."

"Oh."

"C-Can you please go get me clothes?"

When you came back with a set of male school uniform (that you stole from some kid's locker), you threw it over the stall door, a little flustered.

Jungwon finally came out of the stalls, an awkward expression on his face.

"Did the clothes fit right?" you asked. Granted, you thought you stole from the underclassmen, so the clothes you got him might be too small. "Are they too small?"

"No," Jungwon quickly answered. "They... They fit just fine."

He stared at you. "Thanks, by the way."

You blinked at him. "For what?"

"For everything you did for me back there," Jungwon took a deep breath. He still couldn't wrap his head around how your status as the class delinquent came to be. "You were really cool."

"Cool?" You raised a brow at him, but you couldn't hide the curve in your lips. "I thought it was pretty cool how you scratched Ricky."

Jungwon snorted. "That's nothing compared to the last-minute kick to Gyuvin's crotch."

You laughed, but clamped your hand over your mouth.

"Sorry," you murmured.

"I mean it," Jungwon was looking at you with wide eyes. He swiped his tongue over his bottom lip. "It was, like, straight out of a comic book."

"Right," you nodded slowly, the corners of your lips quirking up. You perched down next to him, pulling the first-aid kit you nicked from the nurse's office. You didn't know how Jungwon's cat-human curse translated injuries. That is, you didn't know if he'd have the same injuries he sustained as a cat in his human form. "D'you mind lifting up your shirt for me?"

Lift... up... his... shirt... for... you?

Jungwon choked on his spit, coughs spouting from his throat. As he coughed up a storm, a sharp pain in his abdomen pierced through him. He clutched his side, letting out a soft groan of pain.

"Shit," your fingers reached for the hem of his shirt, "You're bruised there, aren't you?"

You began to flip up his shirt to get a better look of his wound, but Jungwon quickly stopped you.

"W-Wait!" his cheeks flared. You gave him a weird look. "How am I going to get married if you see me shirtless?!"

For the Class President, Jungwon Yang was a little dumb.

You gave his head a soft smack.

"You dumbass," you chided him. "I've already seen you shirtless."

Jungwon's eyes widened into saucers. You sighed, rubbing your temples.

"Remember when I woke up to you half naked the other day?"

Oh. Right.

"And you're not going to be tainted if I see you shirtless. Stop being a baby and just let me see your injury, you loser!" With flighty eyes and red ears, Jungwon let you pull up his shirt, your fingers gently brushing against the brownish-purple bruise beginning to form on his side. He let out another hiss of pain when you pressed on it. "Does that hurt?"

"Y-Yeah."

Carefully, with the roll of bandages, you wrapped his torso. Although it was completely normal to you, Jungwon felt weird as your arms circled his waist. He could almost feel your breath on his neck. He'd been close to you like this as a cat, but it just felt different when he was a human.

You then gave him an ice pack, instructing him to hold it against his side.

"You're good at this," he complimented. You were very knowledgeable on how to treat wounds.

"Well, I get into a lot of fights, y'know?" You flashed him a toothy grin before treating your own bruises.

Jungwon's heart dropped to his stomach. That was... really sad.

"Wait!" he blurted, reaching out to clutch your arm as you wrapped your wrists. "Let me help you with that."

"Um, okay."

Jungwon wasn't nearly as experienced as you, and his bandaging job was very clumsy. But you appreciated the effort.

When you were done, the two of you sat in a short silence.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked you.

You thought for a few moments. "I think I'm gonna jump the fence and leave."

"Huh? Why?"

You shrugged. "I refuse to go back there after what happened. Plus, lunch already ended, and I don't feel like serving after school detention today."

You'd already made up your mind, beginning to collect your things.

Jungwon blinked.

For the first time ever, he, too, didn't want to go back. Jungwon had never skipped a class in his life, let alone jumped the fence.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" you nudged him with your foot. He looked up at you; you were ready to leave.

Jungwon breathed. This might be one of the hardest decisions of his life.

"Can I come with you?"

"If you're going to be worried, you should probably go back."

Jungwon swallowed down hard. He'd never skipped class before, and even if he really wanted to, he couldn't ignore the anxiety bubbling inside him.

"I'm not worried,” he clenched his fists.

"Right."

After jumping the fence, you and Jungwon were free.

"Where are we going now?"

"Home."

Jungwon felt like he'd come home with you so much the past few days, to the point that he nearly memorized the way there.

Except, as he entered the doorway, your entire apartment looked different.

"Why are you so surprised?" you switched on the lights. "You've been here many times already."

"I know, but," Jungwon scanned your kitchen and living room. "Nearly every time I've been here, I was an 8-inch tall cat."

You went into your bathroom silently, leaving Jungwon to walk about your apartment. He'd never really got a good look at it. He observed the picture collage on your fridge, of you and your parents and friends, smiling so brightly. The peach soda - scented candle on your counter seemed so out of character for you, but for some reason, it made so much sense. From the arrangement of the throw pillows on your couch, to the fuzzy rug, to the pile of mail sprawled on the coffee table, your apartment felt so you.

When you emerged from your bathroom, Jungwon did a once-over. He'd seen you in your pajamas before, but for some reason, when he saw you now in your cute polka-dotted fluffy pajamas, you almost looked... cute. Someone as brooding as you in such cutesy pajamas gave him whiplash.

"What are you staring at?"

"Nothing..." but Jungwon couldn't hide the way his lips curved upwards.

You yawned. "I'm gonna take a nap."

"Okay."

"Can I join you?"

Jungwon had expected you to throw him a pillow and blanket on the floor, similar to what you did with him as a cat. But you didn't.

You patted the spot next to you on your bed, looking at him expectantly.

And that's how Jungwon found himself laying next to you like a sardine.

He felt like a child the way his hands felt clammy, feeling a wave of anxiety with each movement you had. In his defense, he'd never slept in the same bed with a girl. In fact, he couldn't remember a time where he was as close to a girl as he was right now.

"If you're uncomfortable, you can-"

"No, I'm okay!"

He felt your eyes on him for a few moments, before you sighed. You jammed a pillow between the two of you, creating a border of some sort.

"Is that better?"

Jungwon didn't know why, but he felt a twinge of disappointment.

"... Yeah."

The next few minutes were full of silence. Jungwon laid still like a statue. From the corner of his eye, he could see you snuggling up with a plushie, almost kind of like how you snuggled up with him when he was a cat.

An unconscious frown spread itself on his cheeks.

He.... also wanted to be snuggled like that. Was it weird that he craved that closeness to you? He reasoned to himself that he was just used to it, since he’d spent the majority of his time with you as a cat.

In a moment of pure boldness, Jungwon snatched the pillow between you and him away, throwing it on the floor.

You sent him a confused look. "Hey there."

Jungwon's eyes were shaky, yet they trained on the plushie you had in your arms. Then he looked at your face, then back at the plushie, then back at your face.

"You need something, Jungwon?" you asked, almost concerned.

"I— Uhm," his eyes kept flickering from your face to the plushie. At a certain point, he was glued to the plushie, unable to hide the pout formed on his lips.

For someone who was good at pretending to smile, he wore his feelings on his face so clearly, you rolled your eyes.

"You're so annoying," you muttered under your breath. You chucked the plushie in your arms to the side. You then threw your arm around his shoulder, pulling him closer. Jungwon let out a surprised yelp, but you ignored him. You wrapped your arms around his torso, careful not to touch his bruised abdomen. You pressed your cheek against his shoulder, the faint scent of his cologne filling your senses. "Is this better?"

Jungwon audibly gulped, but he eased into the feeling of your arms around him. "Y-Yeah..."

You were so close! He could smell the faint scent of your perfume, mixed with the scent of fresh laundry. You snuggled up against him, the sound of your soft breaths, which were slowing down into a steady rhythm, filling his ears.

Jungwon took a deep breath, and melted into the warmth that was your arms.

He wouldn’t mind doing this many more times, he thought. Would he?

And soon, he drifted off into dreamland, too.

Your eyes fluttered open a few hours later. Your bed was usually warm, but this time, it was very warm. So warm that you wanted to melt into it, completely and utterly disarmed by the comfort that you felt.

What time is it? was the first thing you thought.

The second thing you realized was that you could hear a heartbeat in your ears. Not your heartbeat, but the heartbeat of someone else. In fact, you were laying on someone's chest.

Jungwon's chest.

There the two of you were, sprawled out on your bed. Jungwon gently held your head against his chest, his other arm loosely wrapped around your shoulders, while your arms wrapped around his torso. Your legs were tangled. You didn't remember falling asleep like this, but it wasn't like you minded the position. You simply sunk back into him, basking in the warmth.

But Jungwon did.

As his eyes shot open, he immediately noticed the current position you and him were in. You felt him tense under you, his arms beginning to curl back into himself. But the warmth that he provided as your personal human heater was just too good, so you grabbed his arms, putting them back into the position they were holding you in.

"It's cold, Jungwon," you muttered, snuggling up against him.

“[N-Name],” Jungwon’s voice came out soft. He’d just woken up mere minutes ago, yet he was wide awake. There was a weird pounding in his chest that he couldn’t explain, one that thrummed so loud that he could hear it in his ears. Your touch felt like burns on his skin, an unforgiving scalding boil, hot to the touch. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. Why was he suddenly feeling this way? Was he ill? Was he going to transform into a cat?

“[Name],” Jungwon whispered again, a little louder. His words got caught in his throat the moment he said it, wanting to swallow it the moment they left his lips. He didn’t know what he would say, but he just said your name to hear it on his tongue.

“What?” you groaned, eyes gently shut but words lazily spoken.

Jungwon peered down at you. His ears felt like they were going to melt off his head. His skin seared with that scorching type of sting, the one that ached.

“Nothing,” he murmured, his chest rising and falling with each soft breath you took. Soon, your breathing stilled, and Jungwon was sure that you’d fallen asleep completely.

He observed

It was weird. He'd seen you up close like this before as a cat, but now that he was human-sized, it somehow felt so much more... intimate. Jungwon found himself digging his teeth into his bottom lip as he watched you sleep. He couldn't bring himself to tear his eyes away from you.

Plunk!

Hey, what was that sound?

Plunk!

Jungwon's head shot to your bedroom window. Then, he heard yelling outside.

As he got up to check out the commotion, you tugged on him.

"I already told you..." you murmured dreamily. "It's cold."

Jungwon narrowed his eyes. "But, what's going on outside-"

"Ricky and Gyuvin," you answered, this time tightening your hold on the boy. "They like to... torment me... sometimes."

Just sometimes? Jungwon thought. Really, how often were you getting harassed like this?

Before Jungwon could answer, you were fast asleep again. From then on, Jungwon refused to move, not wanting to disturb your peaceful slumber.

But, there was one thing that he took heavy note of.

First, it was 7PM. It was completely dark outside by now, the blue-gray shrouded with clouds, only the yellow moon illuminating the sky.

And second, that he was still human.

Ever since that day, Jungwon hadn't turned into a cat even once.

However, while one phenomenon disappeared, another one emerged.

Jungwon's insanity.

Jungwon considered himself one of the, if not the most, sane person in every classroom. But right now, insanity was spiraling onto him like no other.

Weeks passed, and Jungwon couldn't shake off that tender, yet explosive, feeling he got when he was close to you.

After your week of detention was lifted, you and him slowly saw each other less and less. He couldn't help but feel disappointment when he locked up the detention room one last time, saying his goodbye to you.

You two were still in the same class, still saw each other everyday, but he didn't get to speak with you.

And that was when Jungwon resorted to observing you.

He was naturally observant, but all this time, Jungwon had been observing the bigger picture.

It started off with watching the doorway in the morning, praying that every person that passed was you. Then, Jungwon found himself watching you every passing period. Who did you talk to? Who tried to talk to you? What expression did you wear on your face?

Then, Jungwon took to roaming the school perimeter, under the excuse that he was just "patrolling the school for any trouble," when really, he was hoping that he'd run into you. This extended to after school. On the occasions that he actually ran into you, you'd shoot him a sly grin, making cat hands or ears over your head. He knew that you were doing that to tease him about his cat days, but his cheeks felt warm for another reason.

Have you always been that pretty? Of course, you'd always been cute, but did you always glow like that? Was Jungwon always into girls that looked like they could kick his ass? Why did the intimidating look on your face make his heart race?

Jungwon was in denial for a while, until he was at a Class Council meeting, when one of the members asked him casually, "Hey, what actually happened between you and [Name]?"

In retrospect, they were clearly referring to that one time you "assaulted" him. That incident remained shrouded in mystery for a while, as Jungwon refused to talk about it.

However, Jungwon jerked up at that question, his face painted with a look that could only be described as “constipated” at the sound of your name. Did someone find out about his cat transformation curse, and how you took care of him in that state? No, that would be too specific.

"Jungwon?"

"Y-Yes!"

Wonyoung and Jini shared a look, before a grin spread on their faces.

"You make it seem like you guys were kissing, or something. We’re just curious about what actually happened."

A weird noise came out of Jungwon's throat, his eyes wide like saucers.

Kiss...ing?

"Oh my god, don't tell me you actually kissed [Name]--"

"I didn't!"

And he was telling the truth. But the bright, red color on his face betrayed him. The Council teased him all about it, even going so far as patting him on the back for "scoring a baddie" (Wonyoung's words, not his). He denied it, he denied it with his full chest. He held his head high, nose pointed to the sky, denying it like his life depended on it.

But Jungwon couldn't help the weird feeling of pride that swelled in his chest. He liked the thought of kissing you, and in a weird, twisted way, he liked the way that people thought that you and him were together. Of course, he gave all of them a scolding for jumping to conclusions, but later in the day, when he was alone and reflected on the day, his cheeks began to hurt.

And that marked his actual descent into madness.

You began showing up in his dreams, smiling at him with those pretty, glossy lips, which he hadn't noticed until now. The grins you’d flash him across the room when he passed by, and the way you’d make cat hands or ears over your head whenever you saw him to tease him, made him feel weird. Gosh, did you have to be so pretty? Jungwon couldn’t tear his eyes away from you. He craved your warmth, the warmth you gave him when you held him to your chest, the warmth you gave him when you hugged and called him annoying. Was it weird that he liked the way you could beat him up?

Jungwon was pulled out of his thoughts when his phone dinged.

Today was another mundane day, where he spent his lunch period in the Council room, looking through the schedule.

It was the Class Council group chat.

wonyoung jang: my friend said something fishy is going on in building b

wonyoung jang: someone go check it out?

jini choi: can't, i'm in a meeting rn

jini choi: jinwoo?

wonyoung jang: forget it he never checks the gc

wonyoung jang: jungwon?

Jungwon was already on it.

It wasn't uncommon for people to cause problems during lunch. In fact, that seemed to be the time when most people created the most commotion—

Oh my god, it was you.

When he rounded the corner, there you were. You had your arms crossed over your chest, backed up against a locker. The ones cornering you? Ricky, Gyuvin, and their lackeys.

"You're getting boring, yeah [Name]?" Ricky grinned. "I don't see you fighting back as much."

You shrugged, but you were clearly tense, narrowing your eyes. "I don't want to deal with you guys anymore."

Ricky slowly buttoned his shirt, revealing scars. Scars from scratchmarks. The same scars that Jungwon gave him.

"You see this?" his gaze hardened. "You and your goddamn vermin gave this to me.'

You looked at him incredulously, but you couldn't hide the small curve in your lip. "Okay. And?"

Ricky slammed his fist against the metal locker next to your head, making a loud clang! You cried out in surprise, jolting in place. Heck, even Jungwon was startled, quietly jumping out his skin for a second.

"You think this is funny?" Ricky slammed his fist again, relishing in the way you squeezed your eyes shut in sheer bewilderment. "You think you can get away with this shit?"

Your eyes darted around. Clearly, you were out-numbered and overpowered. Yet, you wouldn't go down without a fight.

"Yeah, I do," you muttered. "It was funny, the way you screamed like a girl, Ricky."

Ricky snatched your face, his hand clutching your chin. He leaned in close to you, so close that you felt his breath on your face.

"You bitch."

Meanwhile, Jungwon's heart raced in his chest.

It was getting out of hand: how many people chose to bother you. You were honestly just minding your business, why did people want to pester you so much? He needed to step in before things escalated. And get you the fuck out of there.

Jungwon's body moved quicker than his mind.

"Hey!" he shouted, making his presence known. Everyone's head whipped over to him. Jungwon gulped as his mind went into overdrive trying to figure out what to say. Curse himself, why did he jump into this without thinking? What a genius.

"Look who it is," Gyuvin slyly stepped forward. "[Name]'s little crush."

If Jungwon wasn't about to be jumped, he would have turned red at that little comment. He was too focused on the fact that you were in possible danger.

"Yanno, Mr. Class President," Gyuvin paced toward him, his brows raised to his forehead. "[Name] here named her cat after you. Isn't it weird how she's obsessed with you?"

Your eyes were wide like saucers, sending him warning signals.

'You need to leave,' your eyes read, but Jungwon ignored it. This entire time, he pranced around as the Class President, feeling righteous, yet he never even tried to empathize with someone like you. How could he claim his title but be so clearly blinded by dumb prejudice?

Gyuvin gestured for Jungwon to come closer, pulling him so that he was right in front of you, face-to-face.

"This one causes a lot of trouble, doesn't she?" Gyuvin rasped. "Parading around like she's some kind of queen, when really she's just a little cunt."

"I know you're angry, Jungwon," Ricky added, motioning to you. "Let your anger out, won't you?"

They were right about him being angry. But not at you, not at the world, not at whatever internal conflict he had.

At them.

Jungwon's hands balled into fists.

"You guys are out of your fuckin' minds," he grumbled, his shoulders shaking. Before they could respond, Jungwon raised his fist, and swung in as hard as he could at Gyuvin, square in the jaw. Immediately, the rest of their lackeys stumbled back, screaming out their leader's name.

This was your opportunity to fight back. Kicking off the wall, you landed a kick at Ricky in the stomach, pushing him to the ground. "Your breath stinks, by the way."

With your back turned, the next thing you heard was a yelp of pain.

Shit, Jungwon!

You yelled his name.

Jungwon, to your knowledge, was not a fighter. He didn't fight people daily, he wasn't violent, he didn't tell people that he'd "kick their asses" like you did. For goodness's sake, he was the Class President. He'd never even had a missing assignment, he was most definitely not going to be able to fight back, let alone land a punch—

But instead of seeing the poor guy on the floor with everyone else beating the crap out of him, you saw the opposite. Jungwon, with only a minute cut on his cheek and bruised knuckles, stood tall, while the rest of the guys (including Gyuvin) groaned on the floor.

How did he..?

Jungwon snatched your hand. Before you could process what the hell just happened, he started profusely asking you if you were okay, if you were hurt. Right in the middle of a whole bunch of dudes groaning in pain.

You squeezed his hand, before running off, pulling him with you.

"You're so annoying, Jungwon!" you scolded him as you wrapped his knuckles in the nurse's office. "Why would you jump into a fight like that—"

"You were in trouble," was all he said solemnly.

"So what?!" You looked at him incredulously. "You're insane. You're the President, why would you—"

As you chided him, Jungwon found it difficult to focus. Maybe it was the adrenaline still coursing through his veins, or the way that you were so close to him. As he sat on the counter, you found your place in between his legs, dabbing rubbing alcohol on the cut on his cheek. It stung, but he only dug his teeth into his bottom lip, instead gluing his eyes to the way your lips moved.

"Jungwon, are you even listening to me?!"

"Yeah, yeah."

You smacked his shoulder. "And you're still recovering from an injury from a few weeks ago, what would you do if they tried to kick you in the stomach again?!" You flicked his forehead.

Jungwon couldn't help the way he felt his lips lifting up. The way you worried about him made his chest feel warm, mindlessly nodding along and agreeing with every word you said.

"You know what?!" you huffed, a hand coming up to rub your temples. "How the hell did you beat them up so quickly back there?! That— That was unreal."

Jungwon opened his mouth to answer, but you cut him off. "— Do you also have some curse that makes you unnecessarily ripped all of a sudden?"

Your hand came up to squeeze his bicep. Although it was hard, especially when he flexed it for you with a grin, revealing his toned arms, it still didn't explain how the hell he was so strong.

"I didn't tell you?" Jungwon smiled. "I used to do Taekwondo."

"You did not tell me. I don't think there was ever a conversation where that came up—"

Jungwon threw his head back, letting a laugh tumble from his lips. "Well, now you know."

It must have been something in the air, because Jungwon would not have done this any other time, but he slithered his arm around your waist as you cupped his cheek gently, fixing up the cut on his face. His hand dangled at your hip, his fingertips brushing up against your thigh. Your eye fluttered over to it briefly, but you didn't seem bothered. In fact, you actually leaned in closer, your other hand sliding up his chest to grip his shoulder for stability. As he was sitting and you were standing, his head angled up at you. The way you gaze down at him, your expression rested, made him almost feel light-headed.

"What if they spread rumors about you, Jungwon?" you asked quietly.

"I wouldn't care," he answered simply.

"But you're the President," your brows knitted together.

"So what?" Jungwon breathed. "Should the President be concerned over silly rumors?"

"Won't people be suspicious if it suddenly came out that Jungwon Yang beat up a few guys?"

If you asked Jungwon this a few weeks ago, he'd be worried out of his mind. He'd be afraid of his reputation being ruined, he'd be afraid of what others thought of him. But for some reason, it didn't concern him that much anymore.

"That's their problem, not mine."

Just as those words left his lips, his phone began to blow up. He glanced at it briefly; it was probably the groupchat or something, but as it continued to ding, you motioned to it.

"You might want to check that out."

So he did.

wonyoung jang: jungwon we need you right now

wonyoung jang: it's BAD BAD

wonyoung jang: everyone's saying you jumped ricky and gyuvin

jini choi: mr president we need you NOWW

You peeked over his shoulder, only seeing the last message.

"You should go, Jungwon."

"I don't want to."

You gave him a look.

"Suddenly so rebellious?" you nudged his shoulder, the corner of your lip raising. "C'mon, you have duties."

Begrudgingly, Jungwon up and left the nurse's office, sending you the brightest smile he could muster.

The moment Jungwon stepped into the classroom, he was bombarded– no, completely besieged– with questions. The mere amount of people hounding him with questions was so much, that all their words blended together.

“Okay, okay!” he shouted, putting his hands out in front of him. “One at a time, Jesus Christ.”

They called for a very "needed class discussion."

Long story short, Jungwon thought that everyone was kind of dumb. The way they were all concerned about whether or not he actually beat up Ricky and Gyuvin was ridiculous. Although Jungwon was honestly tired, he wanted to be smart with his words. He didn't want to scare them, did he?

"No comment."

"I don't feel like talking about it."

"I have nothing to add to that."

He found himself crinkling his nose a little too often as those words came out of his lips more times than he could count.

"Jungwon," some girl in the back of the class spoke up. "I heard rumors that you and [Name] are dating. Is that true?"

The class erupted with even more talking, people from other classes even lining the doorway to listen to it. The way that lunch should have ended a long time ago, but the teachers let this continue because they were also nosy and wanted to know. Did it really matter that much?

"Man, I don't know how I feel about that."

"But Jungwon's too good for her."

"[Name]? Of all people?"

They didn't even know you, how could they come to that conclusion if they never even spoke to you?

"But [Name]'s a bitch!"

"How is our Class President dating a bully?"

Jungwon's lips pressed together to form a thin line as thin as paper. He'd always thought that he'd been good at controlling his emotions, but the anger that was threatening to spill out of his throat was rising to a boil, bubbling to the point that if he didn't do something about it now, he'd absolutely implode.

"That's enough," he said, too quiet for anyone to hear. He sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes narrowing, behind Jungwon slammed his hand on the front table. "That's enough!"

The room went silent.

He took a deep breath, trying his hardest to contain his feelings.

"I don't see the relationship between my love life and the class's affairs," he said simply. "We are having a class discussion, and in our class discussions, we discuss problems relating to the class. In what way is the person I'm romantically interested in a problem that relates to the class?"

Silence.

Jungwon looked around with a cocked brow, expecting an answer.

Silence.

Jungwon narrowed his eyes.

He was tired.

As he pushed past people crowded at the door, Jungwon turned over his shoulder.

"By the way, I think [Name] is pretty cool. You guys should talk to her some time, maybe you'd be happier if you did."

And then he left.

Jungwon expected to find you back in the nurse's office, but he found you down the hall, your arms crossed over your chest, leaning against the wall.

He rushed to you, clutching your hands.

"[Name]," he said, "Hi."

You raised your brow at him, the corner of your lip lifting. "I'm pretty cool, aren't I?"

"Shut up," Jungwon muttered under his breath, but his eyes stayed stuck on you. He squeezed your hands. "Everyone's so annoying."

"I know," you squeezed his hand back. "You were cool back there, Jungwon."

Jungwon's cheeks warmed up at that compliment. Now that he realized that way your hands were in his, he felt his face prickle with heat. "Thanks..."

Somehow, your gaze felt too much for him to take. Jungwon avoided your eyes, choosing to look down at the floor. He felt your hand gently grasp his jaw, before forcing him to look at you.

"I really mean it," you said. "You're really the coolest. It's almost scary."

Jungwon opened his mouth to respond, but before he did...

Poof!

But this time, it wasn’t him that turned into a cat.

It was you.

"Not again!"

Jungwon seemed like a cat person. And he most definitely was one.

The moment that your cat form appeared at his feet, he scooped you up. Taking off his uniform blazer, he carefully wrapped you in it, before (to your complete and utter surprise) he jumped the fence, skipping class.

You meowed profusely. You had no idea how Jungwon did it; as words tumbled out of your mouth, they only came out as meows, and when you tried to clutch his forearm, all you could do was curse your annoyingly small paws.

If it weren't for your feline form, you'd be scolding him, chiding him for skipping class.

He was silent until the two of you reached a stoplight, when he took you out of the wrap that was his blazer. With his thumb, gently rubbed the spot behind your ears. Without even realizing it, you purred, leaning into his touch as if to say,"More!"

Jungwon chuckled, and you could feel his chest rumbling.

How embarrassing! How did he do this everyday for nearly a week and not go completely insane?! When he began rubbing your nose, laughing at the way that you fussed, Jungwon softly squeezed your stomach.

"It's my turn to take care of you, [Name]," he murmured, holding your feline face up to his. From your much smaller form, you could see every detail of his face— from the curve of his eyes, to the blemishes on his nose, to the divots in his half-chapped lips. You'd be lying if you didn't say that Jungwon had a nice face. You brought your paw up to his cheek, to which he chuckled again. He took your paw with his hand, before nuzzling his cheek into it.

When Jungwon finally arrived at his apartment, your question (where were his parents?) from weeks ago was finally answered: he lived away from them.

"Just like you," he whispered against your fur, rubbing your head as he flicked the lights on.

The next thing you knew, you were being bathed in warm, soapy water, as strawberry-scented bubbles filled the little bathtub. Jungwon dried you with his softest towel, and then you were eating the cat-equivalent of a five course meal.

"I feed the stray cats sometimes," he explained to you when your feline eyes gazed at him questioningly.

Was it normal for you to be so tired? You usually weren't this sleepy at this time in the day, yet you were. As you laid on Jungwon's lap, purring at the way his fingers ran through your fur, your eyes felt heavy.

It wouldn't hurt to doze off, right? After all, you were with Jungwon.

Jungwon tucked you into his bed, placing you on a pillow before covering you with a small blanket. He booped your nose.

Although he'd willingly skipped class today, he still had his own responsibilities that he'd like to attend to. He looked over all his homework, filing through all his important Presidential duties, and jamming in all the extra studying that was necessary.

It was a quiet few hours for him. Every hour, or so, he'd go to check on you. Each time he did, you were soundly sleeping. Since you transformed into a cat during the day, there was no telling when or how you'd transform back. He wondered how you'd react when you transformed back. Would you be bashful about it? Or, like always, would you call him annoying, and tell him that he spread his "disease" to you? Jungwon's lips curved at the thought of that. You were cute as a cat, but he thought you were cuter as a human, obviously.

As he worked away, Jungwon didn't notice the way the sun slowly sank into the horizon, its yellow face eventually disappearing. He was deep into focus when he heard a crash, and a small yelp. Coming from his room.

"Jungwon?" your voice called.

Immediately, he dropped his pen, dashing straight to his room. You were awake now, he thought. Maybe he could fit in a nice conversation with you, get closer to you, but that might be difficult when you were so pretty—

Oh.

The moment that Jungwon busted his bedroom door, he really didn't know what he expected.

But he definitely didn't expect to see you.

Naked, sprawled on his bed.

!!!

You let out a shrill scream. Jungwon's face flared with heat, immediately turning around. He buried his face in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut.

"S-Sorry!"

He felt like he could have increased the global warming rate and melted multiple ice-caps just by the sheer amount of heat radiating off of his face. It was so bad that his eyes began to water from pure embarrassment.

Jungwon must be dying, he thought. He might actually drop dead now.

He heard rustling, before your voice, much quieter than he'd ever heard it, murmured, "You can look now..."

Jungwon turned around, but he still kept his eyes shut. If he looked you in the eye now, he'd probably combust on the spot. Slowly, his eyes peeled open, to reveal you, just as embarrassed as him, curled up on his bed, with his blankets wrapped around you.

"Sorry," you muttered, your eyes glued to the floor, too shy to meet his. Your bottom lip jutted out to form a pout, your brows softly furrowing.

Jungwon waved his hands in front of him profusely. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Y-You have nothing to apologize for."

"Right."

"Jungwon, I'm naked—"

He was already on it. Your school clothes were still in the washer, so Jungwon dug through his closet, throwing you one of his t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. He let you do your business, and just when Jungwon thought that all his embarrassment was gone, he saw you in his clothes.

Shit.

Jungwon clamped his hand over his mouth, unable to hide the growing smile on his cheeks.

You looked so... cute.

"Yah," you kicked him with your foot, still buried in his blankets. He could see the way your eyes were shifty, still avoiding his. "What're you laughing at?"

"Nothing," was all Jungwon said, but a smile was apparent in his voice.

"Stop laughing!" you threw a pillow at him.

This scene has happened before.

Jungwon laughed, his eyes pressing into thin crescents as his sharp teeth came into view. You dug your teeth into your bottom lip. Why did he have to look pretty when he laughed?

You threw another pillow at him. Jungwon snatched the pillow off the floor, charging toward you. You let another shrill shriek escape your lips when he managed to land a hit on you with the pillow.

"Jungwon!" you cried, as he grabbed another pillow, hitting you on the top of your head. You struggled for another soft and plush weapon to use against your assailant, but alas, he was much faster and stronger than you, "Jungw— Hey!"

"You started it!" He was kneeling at the edge of the bed, when he reached for yet another one of his pillows. When he did this, Jungwon had to climb onto the bed entirely. You hit his hand away from his target pillow.

"You already have two pillows!" you nudged him with your foot. "Don't be unfair."

"All's fair in love and war," Jungwon said simply.

You stared at him incredulously, before you bursted out laughing. Jungwon's ears burned, but he didn't budge.

"Okay, you nerd." With that, you seized the pillow that he was so desperately trying to obtain, only for Jungwon to try to rob you of it. For the next few minutes, you and Jungwon struggled over the pillow, ripping it out of each other's hands.

"Let go!" you cried.

"Absolutely not!"

It was going just fine. A friendly pillow fight. Right?

Except, Jungwon miscalculated one of his movements, causing him to launch himself forward. He landed right on top of you, his hands right beside your head with his arms caging you below him.

Oh.

With his dark locks falling over his face, Jungwon gazed down at you with wide eyes. The way you looked back up at him, eyes glittery and lips parted, your breath heavy from the earlier play-fighting, made his heart race. Why were your lips so glossy under the light? Why did his bed fit you so perfectly? Why did you look so pretty when you were in his clothes in his bed in his arms? Why did he want to lean in and—

On your end, your heart was palpitating just as much as Jungwon's was. But of course, you didn't know that.

The lamp next to his bed casted a dim, orange light, and even under the shadow, Jungwon's honey tan skin glowed.

There was something about the way his toned arms dangled over your head, or the way you could see his collarbones peeking out of his shirt, or the way that his neck just looked so goddamn kissable right now—

The two of you could have been staring into each other's eyes for minutes or for hours, there really wouldn't have been a difference.

"Uh, sorry," Jungwon finally said, the embarrassment finally settling in. He began to maneuver off of you, the warmth of your touch being ripped away from him.

No! You didn't want him to get off of you! You wanted him to be close to you!

You grabbed his wrist, yanking him down. Instead of caging you, Jungwon instead was now met with a faceful of your chest, much to his embarrassment.

"[Name]...!" he spluttered, but you didn't care. You pressed your hand on his back, making the rest of his body relax into yours, before you ran your hands through his hair.

"I'm tired," you muttered in his ear. "I want to sleep."

"Y-You just woke up..!" his voice was muffled by your chest and shoulder.

"I don't care." Your fingers stopped in his hair, before you reached for his lamp, switching it off. "We're sleeping."

All Jungwon could do was sigh, admitting defeat to you. He relaxed into your body, taking in your sweet scent, though with reddened cheeks. He thanked the newfound darkness for concealing the color of his face. Realizing that you were no longer playing with his hair, Jungwon clutched your hand, dragging it and plopping it right on top of his head.

"Play with my hair, [Name]."

"You're annoying," you whispered, but you complied. You were so warm, and soft, and calming. Jungwon felt all his worries melt away, which was why he couldn't help but nuzzle his face into your chest. You cocked a brow at him, pausing to flick his forehead. "Okay, you perv."

Jungwon shot up. "I'm not a—!"

You pushed his head down back into your chest, your other arm coming up to hold him in place. "Go back to sleep."

And who was he to refuse you?

Jungwon and you saw each other quite often after that. In passing, you'd always shoot him that signature smile, accompanied by a punch on the shoulder, or a light slap on the arm, or even a soft shove. Some days, you'd drop by the Council room and say hi to him, maybe even look over his Presidential papers. You got suspicious looks whenever you did, but the glare of the class's residential troublemaker and the Class President was enough to send people spiraling.

Day by day, Jungwon's feelings grew for you. Exponentially. It could be little things, like how you'd send him questioning looks when someone said something questionable, or the way that you'd scrunch your nose whenever he purposefully stared at you. But it was also the other moments outside of school that he valued, like when he found you feeding a few stray cats, or when he saw at the grocery store stocking up on cat food (just in case you or him turned into a cat again, your words not his).

Little did he know, you, too, blossomed a crush. You didn't talk to many people, so Jungwon was special. You liked that he was diligent and hard-working, and his snobbery wasn't really existent. He was one of, if not the only, person that you chose to tolerate. He was cute, someone that you wouldn't mind being around.

It's been long known to Jungwon that he wasn't always as smart as he thought he was. But sometimes he thought he was plain stupid.

“I like you,” Jungwon blurted one day after school, as you helped him look over his papers. The moment that those words left his mouth, Jungwon wanted to eat them.

As spring came rolling into your lives, the days were getting longer. Sunlight illuminated the empty classroom, casting a delicate shadow on your features.

Jungwon didn't know what came over him, what spirit decided to possess him in that moment.

After a few moments, you said, "Okay."

Okay?

Just.

Okay?

Jungwon squeezed his eyes shut as his heart plummeted to his stomach. Of course he had no chance with you. How could he? Was he getting ahead of himself? Had he been misinterpreting your relationship this entire time?

Just as embarrassment crashed down on Jungwon, you clicked your tongue.

"Can you stop panicking?" you asked frankly. When you noticed his very red expression, you huffed. "I didn't reject you, if that's what you're thinking—" you pinched your nose-bridge— "Just, let me think of a response."

That only made Jungwon sink deeper into his seat. Oh, he was so naive! What would happen after this? He didn't want to lose his friendship with you, not at all! Maybe he should die, maybe the earth should just open up right now and eat him alive—

“Jungwon,” you finally said. “I think you’re really cute.”

Jungwon held his breath.

“But,” you continued. “This is a little fast for me.”

As catastrophe rained down on his shoulders, you stifled a giggle.

Setting down your pen, you rested your face on your fist, gazing over at the boy.

Gently, as if he were a piece of glass, your fingers clutched his chin, moving his face to look at you. Jungwon's eyelids fell shut at your touch. Biting back a grin, you leaned in toward him. Experimentally, you came just close enough for Jungwon to feel your breath against his lips, ghosting you lips over his. You watched the way his brows knitted together, his lips wobbling.

Cute.

You pressed one kiss on his right eyelid. You felt his shoulders tense under you, but you only smiled. You pressed another kiss on his left eyelid. Before he could react, you pulled away.

“Take me out on a date first, yeah?” there was a smile in your voice.

Jungwon stood frozen in his spot, before his eyes shot open.

Date?

“And bring me flowers,” there was a teasing, but also dreamy, tone in your voice. “I like roses.”

The way Jungwon just stared at you with widened, glossy eyes, dumbfounded beyond words made you throw your head back, laughter bubbling from your chest.

You leaned in toward him again, collecting his hands in yours.

“I like sweets, but anything with too much chocolate makes me sick,” you leaned in closer. “I’m free every day, since none of the teachers are on my dick anymore.”

You put your finger to your lip in thought. “If you don’t want to go anywhere, we can come over to my house and nap. I like being hugged and I get cold easily.”

“W-Wait, what?!”

Jungwon felt so much blood rush to his face, he almost fainted.

"I like you, too," you said simply, as if it were just another fact and not one of the most ground-breaking discoveries of Jungwon's life! "I want you to take me out on a date."

Jungwon blinked.

You got up from your chair, yawning and stretching. Then, you began packing up your things.

"I have to go now," you flashed him a grin. "I'm tired."

As you made your way to the door, Jungwon finally realized where he was, and what the hell was happening: you, his crush, liked him back, and this was his chance.

"W-Wait!" Jungwon blurted, his hand jerking out to grab your wrist. Almost like you were hoping for him to do that, you turned over your shoulder, humming.

"This Saturday!" Jungwon gulped down those dumb words that threatened to spill out his mouth, the ones that would make him look even more like a fool. "Go out with me this Saturday, 5PM."

You only smiled. "Okay. Saturday, 5PM. Got it."

The two of you stood like that for what felt like hours. Jungwon darted his tongue out to swipe over his bottom lip. He wanted to say something to you, but he simply couldn't bring himself to utter words.

"You won't turn into a cat, on me, yeah?" you teased him, the corner of your lip raising up. Oh, how much he wanted to kiss them. How would your hand fit in his? What should he wear? Where would you go?

"No..." Jungwon answered, too dazed. "I won't."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

You slipped out of his grasp, making your way out of the room. Though, your footsteps as they faded away sounded more excited than usual.

Jungwon was left there in the classroom, alone. He blinked a few more times, letting a few more pulses pass, before his face broke out with a smile.

There he stood, hiding his face in his palms.

Oh, he couldn't wait until Saturday.

likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated! <3

#enhypen #enhypen x reader #enhypen fluff #enhypen imagines #enhypen fic #yang jungwon #jungwon #jungwon x reader #jungwon imagines #jungwon fluff #jungwon fic #star-sim #vanya-writes

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radishaur · 5 days

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༄ kind words ༄

Warnings: mentions of unwelcome advances in Law's part Genre: fluff Characters: Luffy, Zoro, & Law Summary: How they realize they have feelings for you (words of affirmation edition) Author's Note: It's finally here! These keep getting longer and longer as I get more familiar with each character and the dynamic, especially Law's, but I don't think that's too much of an issue. I also kind of hate Luffy's but couldn't keep redoing it, so maybe I'll edit it later. Happy reading as I begin working on the next part!

masterlist

Luffy is great at giving compliments because he just says whatever he's thinking.

He gets complimented a lot as well. He's always running around and saving people, intentionally or not, so he's probably heard his fair share of compliments. I think hearing a compliment that's more deep and genuine, that comes from someone who knows him deeply, would be more meaningful than anything and would make him recognize his feelings.

Not every day on the Sunny was a fun adventure.

Setting out to sail across the whole world and strive for their individual goals there was bound to be hardship. Sometimes it came in the form of grueling battles with their latest enemy. Other times it was internal conflicts or disputes, simple disagreements or heated arguments.

This time, it was grief.

After so many months traveling together, the crew had learned how to tell when one of them was upset about something and needed space. Today, it had been Nami. For the past few days, her mood had been off. She'd been more quick to anger and had spent more time than was strictly necessary tending to her orange trees. Then today, she'd been even worse, snapping at Sanji's normal overbearing lovey behavior and brooding to herself under the shade of her grove.

It didn't take him long to realize what was bothering her.

Nami only ever got like this when she was thinking about Bellemere, which meant today must be the anniversary of when everything happened. The crew had spent most of the day giving her her space, allowing her to process what she was very clearly feeling. After a while, he took it upon himself to cheer her up. He made silly faces and played some of her favorite games on the deck, goading her into joining them by making bets he knew he would lose. He'd even secretly asked Sanji to incorporate oranges into their dinner. By the end of the night, Nami was laughing and she seemed a lot lighter, like whatever was weighing her down had lessened some.

Now, it was late at night, and the only sounds that could be heard on the Sunny were the lapping of waves against the ship and the snores of his crew as they slept. All except for him.

Sleep was avoiding him, so he decided that he would be much better off just joining whoever was on watch and maybe having some fun. He made his way up to the crow's nest and was happy to find you sitting on the bench, looking out across the sea.

"Oh, hi Luffy," you said, your voice quiet.

"Hi!" he said, sitting excitedly next to you on the bench as you looked out across the sea once more. "I couldn't sleep so I decided to come out and have some fun!"

You smiled, always amused by his antics.

"Well, unfortunately, there's no fun here. I'm on watch, remember?"

He pouted, knowing you were right but still disappointed anyways. You laughed at him as he whined and complained, but he didn't actually intend on distracting you, so after a while, he quieted down and let you focus.

"I hope Nami is feeling better," you said, resting your head on the arm you propped up on the window. You were frowning slightly, your eyes unfocused as your worry made itself visible on your face.

"She'll be ok, she's Nami! She's strong," he replied, no doubt in his mind that tomorrow she would be the same old Nami she had always been. "She might be sad now, but it's not forever. She has us to help her."

You hummed in agreement, a small smile on your face. He smiled himself, happy to see you smiling instead of with a frown on your face. He felt so lucky to have found a group who cared so deeply about each other.

"All that stuff you did today. It was to cheer her up, wasn't it."

You said it like a statement more than a question and he found himself smiling at how observant you were. "You figured it out. You're so smart!"

You laughed at him once again, his own laughter joining you as you said, "Of course I did. I know you wouldn't have made those bets under normal circumstances."

They had been stupidly dumb bets that left no chance for him to win and he found himself giggling as he remembered how Nami had perked up upon hearing him agree to them. He loved his crew more than anything, so what was a few beri down the drain? Your laughter subsided as you got lost in thought once more. You seemed like you were debating saying something and when you seemed to have made up your mind, he found himself sitting up straighter as you turned to look at him.

"You're a lot smarter than people give you credit for," you said, a small smile on your face and a playful admiration in your eyes.

He's not quite sure what to say to that. He's always been called stupid and to everyone's credit, he is. He doesn't think very often, preferring to act on instinct and figure out the rest of the plan later. He's been known to not read the room, to zone out during important world lessons, and to shout out the first thing that comes to mind. He doesn't think anyone has ever called him smart and for the first time in maybe his whole life, he's speechless.

"I guess that's probably not what you were expecting me to say, huh?" you teased, a light smile making its way onto your face.

He collects himself and asks, slightly incredulously, the question that's first in his mind. "Why do you think that?"

"Well, you just told me you did all that stuff to cheer Nami up, right? Someone stupid wouldn't be able to put together why she was upset and what would make her feel better. You pay attention when it counts and you're a lot more emotionally intelligent than people realize," you explain, relaxing slightly as you look out at the ocean once more. "Today it was Nami, but I've watched you help lots of people like that. Vivi, Robin, Sanji, even me. Maybe you don't say it out loud, but you pick up on people's emotions and what they need the most in that moment."

He listens as you talk and slowly realizes that you're right. He's always had a way of reading people and knowing what they really want or need, but he's never really connected it to intelligence. He always thought it was just his own special kind of stupid.

"I guess that makes me a genius!" he exclaimed, laughing heartily as your eyes widened in shock before laughing along with him.

"Maybe you are stupid after all," you say, but there's no malice in the words as you keep laughing at him.

Finally, your watch shift is over and the sun peeks up over the horizon. He'd stayed with you the entire time, just talking and goofing around until he realized how much time had passed and how tired he was. His dreams that night are filled with you and when he wakes up, your words are still floating around in his mind. Knowing that you think he's smart makes him feel funny and he thinks that maybe he should finally turn his ability to recognize people's feelings inward.

Zoro doesn't throw out compliments or encouragement left and right, he only says something if he really means it.

I think he's received his fair share of compliments, although I doubt he puts much stock in them unless they come from someone he respects. If he doesn't think there's any stock in the compliment, or on that same token an insult, why bother giving it attention? For this reason, I think getting a compliment or reassurance from you would rattle him a little and cause him to have an aha moment.

The town that the Sunny docked in isn't too interesting to Zoro, aside from the bar he's nestled into for the past few hours. He has a few empty glasses in front of him and he's almost done with his current one when he sees the door open.

He's not surprised when he sees multiple of the crew walk in, quickly noticing him in the corner and making their way to him. You're among them, talking to Robin about something that elicits a small laugh out of her. Begrudgingly, he scoots over and makes room for everyone in his booth as they smoosh in.

"I knew we'd find you here!" you say, the last to slide in so you're right across from him. "Already deep into your drinks, as expected."

"Shut it, woman," he grumbles, his brows furrowing as he finishes his drink and sets the cup down on the table. You laugh, looking at Robin as Usopp reluctantly hands Nami some beri. He feels his eye twitch in irritation as he notices the exchange. "Are you betting on me?"

Usopp gulps at the glare he sends his way and Nami simply smiles, dollar signs practically lighting up in her eyes as she answers, "Yep! I bet that you were already 3 drinks deep and I was right."

"We've barely even arrived! I thought-" Usopp protests, attempting to explain himself.

"You both are insufferable!"

His exclamation elicits another laugh out of you as Robin simply lifts a hand to her mouth to hide the amusement that is no doubt there. He wants to be annoyed, and he is, but he's been traveling with the lot of you for long enough that he can't really be upset, at least that genuinely. He simply huffs, waving down a server to ask for another glass.

The rest leap over each other to order their own drinks, some alcoholic, some not, and fall into easy chatter with each other. Periodically, he catches your eyes and you send him a smile, but he doesn't insert himself in the conversations, much preferring to listen. Eventually, Nami gets tired of just sitting in the bar and decides to go shopping. Usopp and Robin decide to accompany her, but you decide to stay behind. You wave, watching them go as he takes his previous spot in the booth back.

"Not in the shopping mood?" he asks, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.

"No, I'd much rather stay here with my favorite swordsman," you tease. He bristles, knowing that you're just poking him for fun, but he can't stop himself from blushing, taking a long sip from his glass to hide the blush he can feel on his cheeks.

"You're worse than that damn cook," he mumbles, his glass now sufficiently empty.

You laugh at that.

"Now that's just a lie."

He can't deny that, the corner of his lips twisting up into a smile. He's spent enough time traveling with you to know that you don't act like that with everyone, just him. The notion that you reserve this behavior for just him is both agitating and yet satisfying. He feels something possessive lick at his heart but ignores it, waving at the server for yet another drink.

He asks you about what you've been up to on the island since they docked and you happily tell him all about it. It hasn't been long so you don't have much to say and it isn't long before the two of you fall into a comfortable silence. After a while, you finally talk again and it's not what he's expecting.

"I know you'll become the greatest swordsman, Zoro."

He sputters, the sip he was taking spilling all over himself as he coughs, trying to catch his breath. He can feel his ears heating up with embarrassment and sputters, "Where the hell did that come from?"

When you look at him, your face is set in firm determination, but your eyes are soft, filled with a fondness he wishes you would direct at him more often.

"Those pirates we fought yesterday," you explain.

He thinks for a moment before he's reminded of what you're referring to. On their way to this island, they had run into a rival ship following the same course. While they hadn't intended to battle them, the ship fired at them as soon as they were in range, so they had no other choice. He remembers the fight being fairly easy, each member of the crew handling their fair share of pirates.

He also remembers one of their crew having some rather nasty words to say to him.

"You're delusional if you think you can become the greatest swordsman," he had spat, struggling to breathe. "You'll see it eventually. Even if you won this battle, you'll never achieve your dream."

He hadn't paid much attention to the words. He was confident in his own abilities and his opponent had been defeated easily, so there wasn't any point in taking his words to heart. He hadn't thought anyone was close enough to hear it and he certainly hadn't brought it up, quickly forgetting about it.

He smirked then, letting the full force of his pride show in the grin as he said, "That loser wouldn't know what it takes to be the greatest swordsman even if it smacked him in the face."

"That doesn't make any sense," you say, your face wrinkling as you giggle at his statement.

He takes another sip as your laughter dies out.

"I'm not worried about what a crap swordsman has to say about me and my dream," he says, his voice a lot more serious now as he thinks about the promise he made all those years ago. "I will become the world's greatest swordsman or die trying."

"You'll do it. I know you will."

You don't say anything after that, seemingly having said everything you intended to, but your words linger with him. The thought that you had heard the man's words and felt it was important enough to dispute them made his heart feel weird. He had never doubted himself, even when he maybe should have. He'd always been sure that his will, determination, and hard work would take him to exactly where he was supposed to be. Still, hearing your words of encouragement, hearing your genuine belief in his ability, it affected him in a way he wasn't expecting.

"You will too," he says, his voice barely above a murmur.

A few seconds go by where you don't say anything and he wonders if you'd even heard him, but one glance at you tells him that you had. You're not looking at him, your eyes averted as if you're embarrassed and your lips are curved into a small, satisfied smile. The sight makes his heart stop and he almost goes to clutch his chest before the feeling quickly passes.

Before the moment can linger, you're shooting back into conversation with him. Despite his best efforts to pay attention, he finds that his attention is drawn back again and again to your words. He knows that the crew believes in his dreams just as much as he believes in theirs. It's part of why he's so willing to protect their dreams just as fiercely as his own, but for some reason knowing that you believe in him so much really sticks with him.

He thinks about it for the rest of the day as well as late into the night when they're all back on the Sunny and setting off for the next island. He doesn't like being distracted, so he mulls over why your compliment holds so much weight for him. He values your opinion, but you're also not a swordsman, so theoretically there shouldn't be that much weight to your words. When he finally realizes, it feels like everything clicks into place and so many things start to make sense.

He acts like nothing has changed, wanting time to sit with the feelings before he decides what to do about them, but he finds it hard now that he understands the full weight of his regard for you.

Law rarely ever gives out compliments, rather preferring to show how he feels with his actions.

I think he receives a few compliments here and there, but he's built an intimidating presence and image, so I think they're far and few between. However, I think if you took him off guard with a meaningful compliment, especially if its one that he hasn't heard before, it would make him start to think about his feelings towards you.

"Captain, we have a problem."

Law sighs, all of the worst-case scenarios running through his mind as he turns to face Sachi. They're docked at a port town so that they can restock the Polar Tang, preparing for another few weeks underwater. It's familiar and something that the crew should be familiar with by this point. They have a routine, a schedule that rarely changes, that details who goes with who to go get what. In theory, it should go perfectly smoothly.

It never does.

"What is it, Sachi?" he asks, his grip on Kikoku tightening slightly as Sachi walks up to him with the list of crewmates and jobs in hand.

"Well, you said that nobody is allowed to go alone into town right? For safety?" he asks, only resuming once Law has hummed in agreement. "Right, well uh, unfortunately, Penguin is sick today which means his partner doesn't have anyone to go with, which wouldn't be an issue since usually we have at least one group of three but, well, they're also sick so-"

Law grumbles under his breath about getting to the damn point, grabbing the sheet from Sachi's hands to just look at the issue himself. Sachi gulps, sensing his irritation, and nervously rubs the back of his neck. The problem becomes clear very easily. His beloved crew had partied a little too hard the last few nights and now two of them were sick, leaving no group of three to split up and someone unaccompanied. He looks for Penguin's name to see who's alone and feels his heart flutter slightly when he sees your name scrawled out next to it.

"Our only two options are to either make one group get two things, which would set us back at least an hour, or...," Sachi says, trailing off slightly. The unspoken second option is clear. Law always spend their restock days on the ship. The higher his bounty gets, the higher the chance that he gets recognized, so he always finds it easier and safer for him to stay behind.

"I'll go," he relents, watching as the tension in Sachi's shoulders dissipates.

"Great. Thanks, Captain!"

Sachi disappears before he can change his mind. He sighs, looking around the collection of his crew until he finally finds you in the mix. He makes his way over, watching as you converse with Bepo, catching the very end of your sentence.

"-seems like I'll be alone today. Sachi said he would look into it, but everyone already has their pairs so I don't know who could take his place."

"That would be me," he answers, watching as both Bepo and you finally notice his approach.

"Oh! Uh, are you sure? Don't you usually spend the day on the Tang doing research?" you ask.

He ignores your improper name for the Polar Tang as he explains the situation to you. You nod, smiling as you say, "I see. Well, I'm glad to have your company then, Captain!"

He's taken aback by your words but decides to just move forward instead of dwelling on them, so he turns around and shouts, "Let's go."

"Shouldn't you probably change?"

He stops, looking down at his attire as you add, "As much as it suits you, it doesn't really hide the fact that you're a pirate, let alone our Captain."

He can't really argue with that. The Heart Pirates logo is front and center on his shirt and Kikaku is certainly not doing him any favors either. He tells you to wait and then quickly shambles himself into his room to change. He has to dig really deep in his closet before he finds a shirt that doesn't have his symbol front and center, but once he does he leaves Kikaku leaning against his wall and shambles back up to you.

By the time he's changed and came back, most of his crew is gone. You're quicker to notice him this time as a result and the two of you finally head into town.

"What are we in charge of?" he asks, stuffing his hands into his pockets now that they're not holding his sword.

"We're in charge of the medicinal herbs, Captain," you answer.

"Just Law is fine," he says, his hand fidgeting slightly as he adds, "No use in me changing if you're just going to use my title."

He sees you smile softly out of the corner of his eyes. "Right. Law it is, then."

His ears burn slightly as you say his name so effortlessly, but he brushes it off quickly and continues into town. It's not hard to find the store you're looking for and he lets you take the lead as you begin listing off the various herbs you need. It's not long before the two of you are walking through town once more, heading towards the submarine.

"Oh, look! That art is gorgeous."

He stops walking as he turns to look at what you're pointing at. There's a small stall in the marketplace's square that's selling paintings of all different sizes and mediums. He sees your eyes light up as you look at them and isn't surprised when you say, "Wait here, I'm going to go buy one."

He huffs, leaning against the wall of a nearby building where he can see the stall. He'd like to pretend that today had purely been an inconvenience, but he can't find it in himself to be that upset. While it was inconvenient that he wasn't able to spend the time studying the most recent medical book he had been interested in, the day had been pleasant. You'd made pleasant conversation with him while walking in town and your bright demeanor always seems to calm him down.

He looks back over to the stall, curious about what painting had caught your eyes, but feels his heart jolt when he doesn't see any sign of you. He stands up to his full height, hoping to catch any glimpse of you, but he still doesn't see anything. He curses to himself for letting his guard down and allowing you to somehow slip away and starts searching for you with his observation haki.

He picks up your signature in an alleyway and feels his gut churning. Not wanting to draw attention to himself by using his devil fruit powers, he quickly makes his way to where you are. As he gets closer, he hears you pleading with someone.

"Look, I'm really not interested and I have someone waiting for me, so-"

"Surely I can show you a better time than them, hm?"

He doesn't recognize the second voice but he doesn't need to to know what's going on. He feels anger burn in him as he finally turns a corner and sees a guy caging your body against the wall with both of his arms.

"I already told you, I'm not looking for that. Please let me go," you say, your hands clutching the bag of herbs you'd bought earlier as well as what looks to be whatever painting you had bought at the stall. He also sees the man take a step closer and open his mouth to talk, so he takes the opportunity to interrupt.

"You heard them," he says, his voice like venom as he enunciates, "Let them go."

The man looks at him, sizing him up as he takes a step back and lets his arms drop. "What are you, a good samaritan? Buzz off," he scoffs, turning his head back to you, clearly intending to ignore him.

He doesn't know what comes over him as he finds himself stepping closer and punching the man square on the side of his face. The man, clearly caught off guard, stumbles slightly. He doesn't give him any time to recover as he steps forward, putting himself in between you and the man whose face was now swelling up.

"What the hell?" he shouts, cradling his face as he finally catches his balance.

He can see the punch coming but knows that you're standing right behind him, so he only shifts slightly so that the punch only hits him in the shoulder. A moment afterward, it dawns on him that he can just get rid of the man, so he does.

"You're lucky I don't have my sword, or you'd be getting much worse than this," he seethes, holding his hand out as he says his classic phrase and sends the man shambling into the ocean. In his place, a mossy stone drops to the ground, echoing in the now almost empty alleyway.

When he turns around, you're staring at him speechless. He frowns slightly as he gives you a once over, checking for any visible signs of harm.

"I'm ok," you finally say, your voice shaky before you cough slightly and repeat, voice calm, "I'm ok. Just unnerved."

He doesn't take his chances and calls another room, switching you both closer to the Polar Tang. His guilt at letting you out of his sight and allowing this guy to drag you off eats at him as the two of you approach the ship. Once inside, he shambles the two of you to his examination room, pointing to the table and saying, "Sit. I want to check for injuries with the proper equipment."

You don't fight him as you make your way towards the table. You're still holding the bag and the painting until he gently takes them from you, placing them next to you on the table.

"I'm really ok La- I mean Captain," you begin, correcting yourself back to his title now that it's just the two of you.

He finds himself missing his name from you but keeps the comment to himself. He's supposed to be checking you for injuries. He's supposed to be assessing your well-being, which is only in question because of his own negligence. He frowns to himself and continues to check you for injuries without answering.

You let him, still assuring him that you're fine, that he only grabbed your arm for a moment at the stall, but he doesn't stop until he's sure that there's nothing wrong.

He sighs, finally stepping back from the table. His guilt still eats at him regardless as he goes over everything he did wrong. "I'm sorry, I should have been watching more carefully. No, I should have just come with you."

You simply smile at him in response and say, "It's my fault. I was the one who stepped away."

He doesn't have anything to say to that. He knows it's true, you did step away despite it being an explicit rule not to, but he can't deny his part in it as well. He curls his fists as the silence continues.

"Why didn't you dodge his punch?" you ask, your voice quiet.

He's surprised by the question, but also by how quickly his cheeks warm up at his answer. He looks off to the side, hiding behind his hat as he says, "You were right behind me. If I moved, he would have just punched you."

You have the audacity to laugh, loud and full as if he had just told you the funniest joke you'd ever heard and he can't help but scowl.

"You know," you start, laughter still floating in your voice, "For someone with such a cold exterior, you sure are kind."

The compliment catches him off guard. His face whips towards you as his eyes open in shock, the faint blush now burning bright red across his whole face. He meets your eyes and he doesn't see any hint of a joke.

He's heard himself called a lot of things. Scary, cold, bitter, even downright malicious, but never kind. It sends shivers up his spine as the word settles somewhere under his skin. You think he's kind. Kind.

"You're my subordinate. I'm not being kind, I'm just doing my job as your Captain," he corrects, not wanting you to misunderstand his intentions.

Your laugh this time is softer, more full of fondness, but it rustles him all the same. "You really are kind though," you insist. He's not ready for you to continue, barely able to handle the few words you've said, but that's never stopped you before. "I think you care a lot more than you want us to think. You wouldn't worry so much otherwise. Besides, you're always going out of your way to protect us. I think that makes you kind."

He doesn't know what to say, so he tries to navigate back into familiar territory. He takes a deep breath and calms his nerves, grabbing the bag of medical herbs from your side and turning around to begin putting them away. "Well, since I've checked and you don't have any injuries, there's no reason for you to stay."

He hears you shuffling around as he begins unpacking the herbs from the bag and chances a glance over at you one more time. He regrets it immediately.

You're looking at him like you can see right through him. You have your painting tucked under your arm as you look over your shoulder at him in the doorway and you're still smiling at him as if he didn't just ignore your comment and dismiss you rather rudely. It makes his heart ache, wanting to prove you right. To prove that he is kind, that he's worthy of your opinion of him, that he's worthy of your praise.

"Thank you, Captain. I enjoyed your company today."

With that, you disappear down the hallway, presumably back to your shared room to hang up your new picture. He stares at the spot you left long after you've gone, your words echoing in his mind. They rattle around in his heart until they finally settle, leaving a warm comfort he didn't know he craved.

You think he's kind.

That thought plagues his mind for the rest of the day. His guilt is completely forgotten, his mind too consumed by your compliment to make any room for it. He finds himself unable to even focus on reading the medical book that night that he missed out on reading earlier. Your words and the simple fact that you truly believed them chip away at his resolve until he finally has to come to terms with why it affects him so much. He mumbles your name, his hand clutching his heart as it beats, solidifying what he'd been ignoring for a long, long time now.

ღ radishaur — i do not own any of these characters. do not plagiarize. please enjoy and remember to be respectful!

#luffy x reader #monkey d. luffy x reader #zoro x reader #roronoa zoro x reader #law x reader #trafalgar law x reader #one piece x reader #radishaur writes

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aouiaa · 4 months

Text

[✶] — YOUTUBER!ELLIE HEADCANNONS

DISCLAIMERS & WARNINGS — EIGHTEEN PLUS, Mentions of pooping + Cursing (Girl cursing like she just learned) + Mention of hand pics (I think that’s it).

AUTHORS NOTE, took fucking forever to make that image, but i love it. — inspo layout: @andersonfilms :3

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who is blatantly honest on youtube. It’s scary.

She’s playing a random indie video game she found on steam, and giving her commentary as usual. Until there’s a sudden cut and she’s now in different clothes than the previous and she goes on to explain why.

“Hey, guys. Sorry, I had to take a massive shit, but guess who survived? This guy!” she says with a comical smile while pointing at herself before unpausing the game and playing as if nothing happened.

But for some reason, Youtuber!Ellie can’t let go that she pooped.

“But yeah, guys, like, shit, that fucker was begging to come out, so I’m sorry if I was acting different. I was clenching my asshole.”

How charming….ANYWAYS.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie’s videos who have these stupid sound effects or pop-up memes for certain scenes.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie having a resting bitch face when she’s focused.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who cusses too much even in her intro, she’s literally cussing.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who got a warning from YouTube themselves for it.

Imaging Youtuber!Ellie who literally said “Fuck that, I’m not following Youtube’s rules.” and continued cussing until she realized that she was getting less ads on her videos to which she decided to do a test. To see if her subscribers would notice if she did a full video, not cursing.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who’s laughing while reading the comments on the video.

DarthVaderfan101: “Yo, y’all noticed how Ellie didn’t cuss once?”

Quacketyquack12: “Great vid btw no cussing?! THAT’S A FIRST!”

Elliesprettygirl: Sooo when’s our wedding?

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who does eventually swallows her pride and abides by Youtube’s rules.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie whose user is some cringe 2011 based name; Ellieswolfgang.

God, I can just fucking imagine Youtuber!Ellie intro and how it would correlate with the user.

“Yo! What’s up my little wolves! *Queue the wolf howling* We are back with another video and today we’re playing another puppet combo game!”

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who thinks it’s too hilarious, and doesn’t change the username. And it’s always funny to see people every now and then comment about it.

Iloveellieswolfgang: “Woah, are we apart of your pack or something?”

Ellieswolfgang: Yeah, if you’re subscribed then you’re a part of the gang.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who has the most funniest responses when replying to fans.

Wolfgangnation: “Yo, Ellieswolfgang! 👋”

Ellieswolfgang: “Yo, Wolfgangnation!”

Dyk3ang3l: AHHHH I LITERALLY JUMPED WHEN I SAW YOUR NOTIFICATION POP UP ON MY PHONE JEHDBSHAS

Ellieswolfgang: Ma’am, this is a library.

les4elliewilliams: So why is your name, Ellieswolfgang?

Ellieswolfgang: I don’t know, les4elliewilliams. Why is yours, les4elliewilliams?

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who wakes up at the asscrack of dawn—her words—to make Youtube videos, and edits them before eight am.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who is known for her out of pocket humor.

“That isn’t a guy! That’s an ass with eyes!”

“GodDAMN, that bitch can lick three assholes from that tongue.”

Imaging Youtuber!Ellie who asks her followers on twitter to send her funny videos or scary videos to react to.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who flinched so hard while watching a scary video a subscriber sent, she fell off her chair.

Gamerpro121: “Surprised she didn’t fall off her chair this time LMAOO

Ellieswolfgang: Literally the lowest point in my life… 💔

Gamerpro121: Oh shit, sorry man.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who has to explain her jokes from time to time because some boomer doesn’t get it.

Ellieswolfgang: No, not actually. 😭 nvm..

Gamerpro121: Oh…OHHHH

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who was shocked when her merch quickly sold out after minutes of it just being released.

“Holy fuck, thank you guys for selling out my merch?! Didn’t expect that shit to happen! Man, y’all attacked it like flies attacking shit!”

Charming as always…

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who sometimes blogs, showing her day to day life, going to the gym, running errands, rating foods from restaurants, etc.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who reacts to edits her fans make of her and is also shocked how many people love her hands.

“Woah, fuck youtube, Ima start selling hand pics. Missing the real bag here.”

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who collabs with her best friend Jesse, playing GTA, Minecraft, cod, and whatever games that her subscribers suggest since they love their dynamic.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie’s fans who love her dynamic with Jesse because they’re always talking shit to each other.

“You dumbass! That guy was right in front of you!” Ellie yells at Jesse who just got them killed during a 1v1 on Fortnite.

“How is this my fault? It’s not my fault, you suck!”

“Says you! A blind three year old can play better than you.”

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who makes a video reading hate comments.

Allthegirlslove: “Ellie looks like she smells like shit!”

“Well…Allthegirlslove, new flash, All the girls don’t love you because they’re too busy watching my videos.” She says with a smirk, “And new flash,” she stops and sniffles herself, “I just shower before making this video, thank you very much.”

The video cuts and starts again of her showing the cologne she uses, “This is what I use, buy one and spray it in ya ass!”

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who actually dresses to impress when she’s about to record a new video.

Imagining Youtuber!Ellie who has her serious moments on the channel and that’s when the true love and support come into light. And she is truly grateful for the fans who can put the joking aside and just be there for her.

Youtuber!Ellie who genuinely loves how far her channel has come since she first started, and genuinely appreciates everyone who helped her meet her milestones.

FIRST PART - NEXT PART

TAGLIST ; @dyk3ang3l, @elliesprettygirl, @les4elliewilliams, @ellies2fingers, @r3starttt, @slut4mascss, @marsworlddd, @bready101

ELLIES TAGLIST ; @herelieskrisy, @mikellie, @slaysksmska, @mina-281, @teawithnosugar, @kitkatkittycat111

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ithebookhoarder · 5 months

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Hiiiiiii, Could i request an Anthony Bridgerton x wife!reader fic where Anthony married reader who is from a lower class (basically like Theo) and they end up having a fight because reader did something that would be considered out of class or simply wrong while she’s trying to learn to be a viscountess. Sorry if it didn’t make any sense English isn’t my first language 😭😭😭

All's Fair in Love and Cricket (Anthony Bridgerton x Wife!Reader)

Synopsis: After getting into a fight with your new husband you decide to settle your differences in a 'sporting' fashion, whilst reminding Anthony once and for all just who he married.

A/N: Ohhhhh boy did I enjoy this one. I'm sorry if it feels a little rushed or clunky in places, I may make some more edits at some point. I struggled with the flow of writing so much action but I loved it too much not to post it. So yeah, anxiety be damned else this would join the rest of the unposted drafts I have stashed away. I hope you enjoy it. 💕

Warnings: Anthony being a stupid idiot, class references (discrimination), reference to illness

Masterlist

It was late summer and as the sun beat down on the green lawns of St James’ Palace the lords and ladies below began to wilt. Many a woman held her parasol above her head in a desperate attempt to remain cool, which was hard when you wore petticoats and had nothing to do but sit and watch the men play cricket for hours on end.

Even Her Majesty looked like she was struggling to make it through the afternoon's entertainment, her attendants desperately fanning her where she sat under her canopy. They looked close to melting in their ornate gowns, however they were clearly willing to endure if it allowed them to continue admiring the game - and more importantly, those playing it. It was like waving a bone in a dog’s face as they watched all the eligible young men of the court sprinting about the green, their physique and athletic talents on clear display.

No wonder the Queen had her opera glasses with her, despite her proximity to the field.

You almost felt bad for them, watching as the men were subjected to the same treatment as the young ladies were night after night at social functions… hence the 'almost'. After all, there was a sense of satisfaction watching them preen and dance about like show ponies on display. That, and the view wasn’t exactly a terrible one when your husband was one of those playing.

You’d have endured sitting on that blasted green a thousand times over, baking in the afternoon sun and surrounded by swooning women, just to watch Anthony Bridgerton as he captained his team.

Being one of Anthony’s oldest and dearest friends, his competitive nature was well known to you (for which you had one too many games of Pall Mall at Aubrey Hall to thank), but it seemed to be out in full force today. You’d simply lost track of how many times he had dashed back and forth, working up somewhat of a sweat as he barked orders at his teammates in a desperate bid to ensure victory. It was no surprise to you that he had subsequently been forced to remove his jacket and roll up his sleeves, exposing his rather sculpted arms to those watching.

As you said, there were worse ways to spend an afternoon - and normally, you’d have been smugly lapping it up, however, today you were unable to truly enjoy yourself. Not when all you wanted to do was march over to him, take that cricket bat and give him a good whack or two. Maybe that would knock some sense back into idiot…

That was the issue with being in love with your dearest friend: those who knew you best also knew the best ways to hurt you, and Anthony’s behaviour at dinner the following evening had proven just how true a statement that was.

It had all started after the entire family had been summoned to the townhouse for a dinner, to toast you and what had so far been a successful first Season as Viscountess Bridgerton. At first, everything had appeared normal, with the usual laughter, merriment, and ease that one would typically experience at a Bridgerton gathering. It was what had first endeared the family to you, back when you had been but a small child, living at Aubrey Hall as the only daughter of their Stable Master.

They had never been anything other than kind to you, inviting you to play with their children, and join them in their daily lessons. They had also bought you gifts on your birthdays, invited you to join them at events, and even paid for the finest doctors when your father had fallen unwell several years ago. It was as if, to the Bridgertons, your family was their family - an attitude that they extended to the all members of the staff that kept their ancestral seat running. It didn’t matter if you were Head House Keeper, or the greenest of scullery maids. Everyone was counted and cherished, and the Bridgertons had earned utmost loyalty in return.

The rigid rules and divisions of high society didn’t appear to exist within the wisteria covered walls, and it had been that way well into your young adult life. In fact, it had been you that had initially rejected Anthony when he first declared his love for you one day, after taking you along with him on one of your many afternoon rides.

You’d been the one to remind him who he was and that society expected him to marry someone they deemed worthy of him and his title - and that wasn’t you. You didn’t have a penny to your name beyond the small sum you’d saved from helping with the younger Bridgerton children as a governess. You didn’t have a title or an estate or anything to bring to a marriage.

“Except the most important thing!” Anthony had pleaded. “Love… I love you, and there is no one else for me in this life except you. Life is short, terrifyingly short. Look at my mother and father… to be without the person you love most in the world is an agony and I cannot bear it. Please. I can’t lose you. I will not spend my life without you, knowing love is within both of our reach but that we were too afraid to grasp it? If I cannot spend my life, no matter how long it may be, with you then I will have no-one. No-one. My brothers can have the title. I don’t want it. I only want you.”

He’d continued to insist that for the following 6 months, even after his family had moved to their London house for the Season. It didn’t matter how many beautiful, eligible, wealthy heiresses he was introduced to. He would entertain none of them. He would have none of them. Only you.

It’s what he’d continued to insist until you’d eventually accepted, realising that he was right; Love was the most important thing and you both deserved to have it in your lives, come what may.

So, you’d said yes.

You’d become engaged and gradually made your way out into society as the new Viscountess Bridgerton, armed with the support and guidance of the Bridgertons.

Which brought you to last night and the dinner that had been organised to mark the end of the most challenging, but rewarding, Season of your life - and the dinner had started so wonderfully. Yet, somehow it had all gone to hell in a hand basket in the mere blink of an eye thanks the well meaning, but ill timed, teasing of Colin and Benedict.

Your brothers-in-law had both decided to raise a toast to your first Season as an ‘official’ member of the family and they'd got off to a rather complimentary start, if you were being honest. However, they had somehow moved from their praise on to reminiscing about the many years and many adventures you had had since joining their family.

Whereas every anecdote had caused the rest of the family to spiral into more laughter, your husband had looked more and more infuriated. In fact, Anthony had warned them not too kindly to ‘sit down’ and ‘shut up’ about your childish behaviours, which of course had only encouraged them further.

“Oh, hush, brother,” Benedict had quipped, raising a glass to your successful debut. “She knows we mean it all in good fun. After all, she once had a phase where she refused to wear shoes and would walk barefoot around the estate, traipsing mud everywhere! I think we’re allowed to be surprised by how far our dear darling Y/N has come.”

“It’s true - It’s a miracle,” Colin added, wiping the tears of laughter from his cheeks. “The transformation is remarkable. Who knew she would go from feral ragamuffin to lofty Lady Bridgerton.”

Anthony’s only response had been to tighten his grip on his glass to the point it looked like it would shatter.

Whether it was the residual stress of your busy social calendar, or something else entirely you had no idea. All you did know was that Anthony was angry, and even your gentle touch would not soothe him.

In a desperate attempt to calm him, you’d pulled Anthony out onto the terrace shortly after dessert had been cleared and asked what was happening. Much to your surprise, he had turned on you, venting about how childish his brothers were and how embarrassing it was that they were discussing things unbefitting someone who was a Viscountess.

“They’re just joking, my love. They were doing it to get a rise out of you.”

“Well, it wasn’t funny,” he’d growled, causing you to bristle. “They’re so immature. They need to grow up and realise we’re not children any more. That… that you’re my wife and joint head of this family.”

“So? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t, Anthony,” you snapped, the warning clear in your tone. “What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing, I just - it - they’re… it’s embarrassing.”

“So, you’re embarrassed? By what? Your family? Or me? Because everything they said tonight is true. I did do those things, as did you. I may not have been born a noble lady but you knew that when you asked me to marry you. So don’t suddenly act like you're ashamed, that you are somehow better than your family - than me.”

Somehow the argument had only spiralled from there, with both of you saying things you didn’t mean, and with both of you storming off and slamming the doors behind you.

Even now, sat on the edge of the cricket pitch, the thought made your blood boil. How dare he? How dare he act ashamed of you and the wondrous memories of your youth together? It wasn’t as if you hadn’t grown and matured since then. You had done everything within your power to be worthy of him and his family, and yet all it took was one mention of the girl you had once been to make him upset?

As if sensing your silent fury, Eloise had been glued to your side since the moment you'd left the house. Her company had been a blessing, with her numerous whispered remarks and jokes, making the day almost bearable. One remark in particular from Eloise had caused you to burst out laughing in a most undignified fashion after watching Anthony trip over one of the opposite team - the Duke of Hastings of all people.

You still weren’t quite sure how they had been positioned on opposite teams, but you were sure there was some kind of wicked divine intervention responsible. Who else would think it a good idea to put two competitive men against one another? Your hosts, perhaps? After all, Lady Danbury and Her Majesty had organised the game and you had learned long ago not to underestimate the women - especially when they decided to conspire together.

“How long is this delightful game again?” Eloise’s polite remark oozed with sarcasm as she leant back against the tree behind her.

It was obvious she was bored senseless. In fact, you half suspected she would have already left had her mother not been sat on the opposite side of the green, watching her like a hawk.

“I’m not sure,” you groaned in reply. “I lost count of who was winning about an hour ago.”

“So, we’re to be trapped here for eternity?”

“Pretty much, considering this part will not end until either Simon or Anthony lose, and we both know that neither one of them will concede defeat easily.”

Eloise rolled her eyes. “And I thought they were bad at Pall Mall-”

“-LOOK OUT!”

The cry interrupted both of you as you turned in surprise. Given the so-far sedimentary tone of the day, neither of you had expected such excitement as numerous Lords and Ladies began to hurl themselves out of the way as a stray cricket ball rocketed through the air, towards the crowd.

“Good god!”

The exclamation seemed apt as both you and Eloise ducked, watching as the ball sailed past, causing several yelps and groans from the people around you. You were pretty sure you also spied a glass of lemonade flying through the air in all the chaos. However, your attention was drawn to the figure charging towards you to retrieve the offending item as it rolled to a stop.

Anthony.

“Pardon me, Y/N,” he murmured, reaching down to collect the ball that now lay a small distance from your feet. You nodded in greeting, aware of the many eyes watching but you elected not to say anything, not trusting yourself not to make some snide remark.

As it was, you both had barely said more than a handful of words to each other since your argument last night.

Clearly sensing the lingering tension between you, Anthony quickly turned to address his sister instead. “Eloise.”

“Ah, brother," Eloise cheered. "Splendid play so far. Tell me, when did the object of the game become the decapitation of the ton? I would have attended far more cricket matches had I known that was the aim of the game.”

“You can blame Simon for that one,” he replied, his taunt hidden beneath his neutral smile. “Still, good dodging back there. I thought he might have nearly caught you both.”

“Almost.”

“But alas he missed, like most of your players today,” you quipped, enjoying the way Anthony seemed to redden at the reminder of his team’s less than stellar performance. “Still, good effort. You’ve almost caught up with Her Majesty’s team. I believe that’s better than last year.”

“Well, that might have had something to do with the fact that she does have Simon,” Anthony grumbled.

It was true, no one could out-run Simon - even if Anthony always gave it a damn good try: hence why the Queen often had him captain her team when he was in London for the season. Besides, the head of the other team was usually Lord Duval, due to his position as the Queen’s chief administrator. However, it seemed his brains and financial strength were all he had, due to the fact his social skills, and athleticism were sorely lacking.

“Touché, and who is up next?” Eloise asked.

“I don't actually know. The other team seem to be taking remarkably long to sort themselves out.”

Just then, almost as if on cue, three men began to hurry towards them.

A quick glance revealed that one of the gentlemen who was approaching was Colin Bridgeton, and the other the Duke of Hastings; that much you knew. The third was rather unfamiliar to you, however, you were pretty certain he’d been playing on Simon’s team. Regardless of his identity, neither he nor any of the other gentlemen now stood in front of you looked very pleased. Rather, they looked as if they had all sucked on a lemon, their frowns were so deep.

“Sorry to interrupt ladies, but I must reclaim Lord Bridgerton here for a moment. It appears Anthony will be needed to bowl again,” Simon sighed by way of explanation.

“What on earth for?”

Colin was the first to answer. “Lord Dingby is unable to bowl on account of the heat, and the Baron will not play.” His skepticism was clear as he shot the so called Baron a disapproving look. “He ’twisted his ankle’ or so he claims, thus we are down a bowler and the other team is down a player.”

You all rolled your eyes.

“So then, who will bat?” questioned Eloise curiously. “If Anthony is bowling you still require one more man to take their place on the other team?”

Wasn’t that the question of the hour. However, no one appeared to have an answer, and by the disapproving glare steadily growing on the Queen’s face, they didn’t have long to come up with one.

“Maybe Lord Stevens?” suggested the third man hastily, staring around at the crowd.

“No. He injured himself riding the other week,” Simon replied. “And unfortunately our hosts only saw fit to invite enough male guests as were playing. We aren’t exactly spoilt for choice regarding possible options.”

It was true. There didn’t seem to be any visible answer in sight given that those most suited to the game were already positioned on the field.

“What about female guests though?”

Your question hung in the air for a moment, causing everyone around you to turn in surprise.

“Excuse me?” Anthony looked at you suspiciously as you began to rise from your seat. He was well versed enough to know when mischief was afoot. A fact that was proven right a moment later as you held your hand out towards a shocked - and excited - Colin.

He was only too happy to oblige your silent request as he placed the bat in your grip. It was rapidly becoming the most exciting event of the season and lord knows he wasn’t about to spoil the fun - especially if he got to rub salt into Anthony’s wounds at the same time.

After all, given his display the previous evening, it was time you truly gave him something to feel embarrassed about. Losing.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Perfectly,” you smiled. “You’ve seen me when we’ve played Pall Mall. I have a decent enough swing. Besides, you said yourselves you need an extra player and there isn’t exactly anyone suited left - not anyone male, anyway.”

“Anthony?”

To his credit, your husband was also smiling, even if you could see the sudden tension forming behind his perfect smile. “I see no problem with it. I’m sure our hosts would prefer the game finished rather than called off because we ran out of players.”

“Agreed. Well, it’s settled then.” Simon cheered, clapping a hand on Anthony’s shoulder as they looked back towards the field. “It seems she will be taking his go.”

Then they noticed the rain cloud of a man next to them.

"She can’t play!” protested the third man. Everyone looked at him in silent disbelief. “This is a gentleman’s game. A Lady can not play."

“Her Majesty seems to have no objections,” Eloise commented smugly, glancing across the field. Indeed, it was true Her Majesty seemed to have no objections to the turn of events, choosing instead to exchange a wad of pound notes with the man beside her. If anything she looked exhilarated by the prospect. "Besides, I doubt a feeble female such as ourselves will pose any threat to your team, your Lordship.”

“Well… I… Bridgerton, I still don’t think-”

Thankfully, Anthony was all too busy gazing at you to take any notice of the pompous oaf’s objections.

It was a look you were more than familiar with, the unspoken desire and encouragement obvious in the way his gaze softened. It was the same look he always gave you when you’d done something amazing (and most things were amazing in his eyes). It didn't matter if it was taming a particularly unruly horse, solving a maths problem that left the rest of them scratching their heads, or daring to step onto the dance floor at your first ball, knowing not another soul in that room other than him.

It was a look that made you feel invincible. That you could do anything and everything you put your mind to as long as you had Anthony cheering you on from the sidelines... you were a team. Always.

"Anthony?" you asked, the challenge obvious - but also your sincerity. If he truly did not want you to play then you'd have marched back to your chair and sat right back down.

You'd meant it before. You loved your husband and wanted nothing more than to be the best partner you could be. Your hurt from last night had stemmed from the fear that, for a moment, that wasn't enough for him anymore.

Fortunately, it appeared you were wrong. Your husband wasn't embarrassed by you. If anything, he looked ready to kiss the ground you walked on as he leaned over and whispered in your ear, "If you can get four runs, I will personally pay you 5 pounds."

"You have a deal," you laughed. "As it is, women and ladies alike play cricket up and down the country. It’s high time we had a chance to show you boys up."

The other man began to protest again. "My Lady, my La-"

He never got very far. You simply stopped, turning and handing him your parasol and shawl.

"Thank you," you cheered marching away.

He paused, taken aback. It didn’t help that Eloise was only too eager to firmly pull him back into your now vacant seat with a glare that could have melted ice.

All around applause broke out as the players resumed their positions on the field. It took a moment or two for them to prepare for play but now everyone seemed to be watching intently.

Oh well, if you were to dare to play at all then you may as well dare to achieve something from it, you mused, gripping the bat handle and aligning yourself with the wicket. Victory seemed a rather good start, especially given the fact you had no idea what Lady Whistledown would make of this turn of affairs. You’d already had a shocking enough entrance into the world of the Ton, what was one more daring display?

"Go easy, Lord Bridgerton," the referee cautioned from the side of the green.

Anthony nodded obediently at the crowd’s titters. You could see the restraint he was demonstrating, choosing not to hurl the ball at you the way he would had you both been in the privacy of your home. Instead, it took all his will power to grip the cricket ball and resume his position on the field.

Unfortunately, you never knew when best to desist from poking proverbial bears. That, and Anthony was too easy a target.

"Yes, do go easy on me," you jibed. Everyone who knew you could hear the sarcasm buried in your voice as you took the bat and fluttered your eyelashes at him. "I’m only a delicate woman, but I must endeavour to ensure her Majesty’s team at least has an opportunity to best you, Lord Bridgerton. You’re only losing by what? A few wickets?"

Oh. You were in for it now.

Anthony’s grin was devious as he stepped back a few paces, weighing the ball in his hand till finally he charged at you, swinging his arm over in the perfect bowl.

It was then you brought up your bat to send the ball back in a high arc.

There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone followed the ball with their eyes. It was as if they couldn’t believe you’d actually managed to hit it. However, the shock quickly wore off as everyone remembered the point of hitting the ball in the first place.

"GO!" came a yell from the crowd as excitement began to spread.

So, you did.

Hitching your skirts in one hand, you began to sprint towards the other set of wickets, grinning as your partner passed you along the way.

Of course, you would have liked to protest that you could have indeed run faster had you not been encumbered by your stays and petticoats. Your slippers were also rather terrible for any movement. What you wouldn’t have given for a pair of trousers right then.

"Come on!" came another yell - it seemed as if everyone was forgetting their dignity in all the excitement as you tore back and forth across the grass in a mad blur.

Had it been anyone but you, it would have been a terribly scandalous moment. Yet, your name - and the status of your betrothed - meant this was all merely seen as sport. Besides, from the way Her Majesty was whooping from her perch by the trees, it was clear where her loyalties lay.

"Come on Y/N!"

"Anthony! Run!"

"Over here!"

"Come on!"

The cries blurred into one as you finally turned at what you planned on being your final run, only to spot Anthony as he came sprinting back towards you… and the wicket.

"Oh no, you don’t," you laughed, charging onwards in a final burst of energy.

You could hardly catch your breath as the world slowed around you.

All that remained was you, Anthony, and the closing distance between you.

You could see his desperation laced with delight as he watched you stagger towards the wicket… just as the ball he’d thrown hit it.

"IN!"

The referee’s declaration initiated an eruption of noise as all around the green, men and women celebrated the spectacle they’d just witnessed, and the victory you had now ensured. Within seconds you were swarmed, mobbed by well wishers and triumphant team mates. There were so many hugs and snatched ‘well done’s that you were quite at a loss what to do other than stand there and accept it. Thankfully, Anthony seemed to have read your mind and was at your side as soon as he was able to fight through the jubilant throng.

The moment he reach you he took your hand in his. His expression was a mixture of awe and contrition, clearly unsure what to say to you.

"Good game," he praised. "Simon better watch out - I think Her Majesty will be asking you to captain her team next year."

"What a tremendous idea, Lord Bridgerton. I may just do that."

As if summoned by the very mention of her, a voice rang out clearly from behind you. Without even turning you knew exactly who was standing behind you, as the throng suddenly fell silent around you and parted like the Red Sea. In all the excitement you had failed to notice the Royal party making their way across the field to join in the celebrations.

With a gulp, you turned and dropped into the most respectful curtsey you could manage without falling flat on your face. "Y - your Majesty."

The Queen chuckled. "I must thank you, Lady Bridgerton, for providing such excitement to our proceedings today. I also must thank you for the twenty pounds I just procured off of Brimbsley - that’ll teach him to bet against me."

You merely dipped your head in gratitude, unsure whether this was actually happening or not. After all, the closest the you’d ever been to monarch was your hasty presentation several months ago and that had barely earned you more than a curious glance, like you had been some exotic animal on parade at the Zoo. And now, the Queen was addressing you? A lowly Stable Master’s daughter?

It was enough to make you feel as if this was all some kind of surreal dream.

"Anyone who bets against your Majesty deserves to be relieved of their coin."

"True, True," she preened, gesturing for you and everyone else to rise. "I gather you have played this game before?"

"Growing up around the Bridgertons ensured I had little alternative," you confirmed, relieved when the Queen proceeded to chuckle good-naturedly.

"I dare say you didn’t, my dear. Well, it certainly makes for a rather entertaining afternoon, as well as a victorious one. Perhaps we aught to have women playing more often." She turned her head and chose to direct her next words directly to your husband. "You’ve chosen quite the bride, Lord Bridgerton - you are to be congratulated on choosing such a spirited partner. I hope you realise how lucky you are."

"Indeed, your Majesty," Anthony replied, the earnestness clear in his eyes. "I’ve realised just how truly unique and remarkable she is… and how lucky I am that she chose to be on my team, even if not on the cricket pitch."

Another round of laughter echoed out at his declaration but you knew it was more than just a jest. In fact, by the all-too-clear pride radiating off of the eldest Bridgerton you knew what he truly meant with his honeyed praise.

It was all the apology you could need and had you not been in such company you’d have dragged him into the bushes and shown him just how much you forgave him. Besides, your victory on the Cricket pitch was enough pay-back for both of you.

As if sensing the amorous tension steadily rising around her, the Queen chose that moment to make a well-timed departure, in search of a refreshment. She barely gave you all a final nod before marching off to greet the rest of her guests, leaving you stood there with a rather gobsmacked expression on your face.

"Well… that really happened," you murmured, struggling to maintain your newfound confidence now that the whole saga had come to an end. "Did I actually just do that? Did the Queen actually just … talk to me?"

"She really did," Anthony confirmed, hands grazing yours nervously, as if unsure whether or not you’d accept his touch. However, your hands accepted his readily, fingers intertwining as you squeezed his palm in an obvious attempt to ground yourself. "You truly were incredible today - I know you don’t need to hear it but, for what it’s worth, I am proud of you."

"Thank you."

"And I truly am sorry for being such a world class fool, last night," he continued swiftly, clearly keen to make his apology whilst you were willing to receive it. "I didn’t mean to make you feel as if I was embarrassed by you. I never could be. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I was vexed with my brothers and because of several other trivial matters, but I allowed my temper to get the better of me and I handled it poorly. I lashed out at the wrong person - the one person who deserves nothing less than to be told how incredible she is, every single day. I am unworthy of you, Y/N. I know no one else in the entire world so awe inspiring and to let you think otherwise for even a moment was my failing entirely. You are brave and smart and funny and kind and beautiful-"

"Ok, Anthony. I get it."

"-and I am unworthy of someone with such skill on the cricket pitch-"

"Anthony," you squealed, trying to hide your laughter as he pulled you into his arms and smothered your face in kisses. "It’s fine. I forgive you. After all, I also lost my temper and said some things I didn’t mean. Can we just agree we’re both sorry and put this mess behind us?"

"Yes! God yes," he sighed, looking like a weight had visibly lifted from his shoulder. "Because I really do not like fighting with you. Instead, I think we should be enjoying your victory parade. Today is your triumph, after all - the Queen’s champion."

"Hmmm, I rather like that title," you purred, gazing up at him. "But between us? I prefer being your wife, much much more."

#ithebookhoarder #masterlist #thesilentmage #bridgerton #bridgerton x reader #anthony bridgerton #anthony bridgerton x you #anthony bridgerton x reader #anthony bridgerton fanfic #benedict bridgerton #colin bridgerton #eloise bridgerton #Bridgerton

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gummilutt · 9 months

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Autonomous crafting for all teen+ Sims

I've never before been so happy to share a creation! Get ready to get crafting, because it's about to get autonomous! Released today in collaboration with the wonderful @joplayingthesims who has built a community lot for the mod, seen in the pictures below. Exciting!

In my game, I have a community lot with crafting stations for Sims who can't afford one, or don't have space for one. But as I visited it recently with one of my college students wanting to learn flower arrangement, I got a bit depressed by all the empty stations and the other visitors just standing around chatting. I wondered if anyone had added autonomy, and I came upon iCad's autonomy enabler. While neat, it only adds autonomy for the active household which is the opposite of what I wanted. So I made my own that enables it for visiting Sims as well, only to quickly realize how annoying that got. All these Sims asking me to pick a recolor for them, blergh! So I went on tweaking, fixing the annoyances as they came up, and here we are! Finally it is possible to have a lively crafting studio where all Sims participate, without being annoying for you the player! Are you excited? Because I am excited!

What does the mod do? - Enables autonomy on "make many" and "continue" (see readme for more info on why not make one) for all five original crafting types - Robots, toy making, flower arrangement, pottery and sewing - Does NOT charge your Sims money for background Sim crafting. Money sounds and visuals show for all Sims, but only your current households crafting charges household funds. - By default only autonomous on community lots. Has optional autonomy on residential/apartment lots, you can enable autonomy on those lot types by placing the Autonomy Toggler object somewhere on the lot (custom object made using parts of the FT crafting clutter, found in hobbies/misc for 1 simoleon). I set it up this way as residential autonomy sounds irritating to me, but I'm all about flexibility for the user. Perhaps you want to run arts classes at your residential playable school, or you simply like autonomy more than I do :) Please note that autonomy advertisement is tuned with community lot use in mind, so it might be higher than you'd want for residential. If there's interest I am happy to make a second version with lower advertising for those who primarily want residential use. If you are somewhat familiar with TTAB edits yourself, you can try changing attenuation code to low or medium to limit advertisement distance which will reduce appeal to Sims. VER 2: Toggler object now also works on community lots, turning off autonomy if present on community lot. Residential/apartment behavior remains the same as before. - Fixes annoyances with background crafting, such as selecting recolors and pop ups about progress - Changes inventory mechanics to allow for owned studio-type use, in case you'd like a friendly owner Sim present to provide instruction. Crafting now only goes to business lot owner if done by an employee, otherwise crafting Sim gets the object. Includes home business, so if it bothered you that family members don't get to keep their work, this also fixes that. If that part annoys you, see readme for how to remove this feature.

Download mod on simfileshare | Download ver 2 on simfileshare (New version out, fixing a bug reported by Nemertes. More info here)

You might say "Okay well fun for you Gummi, but I don't have a community lot with crafting stations, so why would I need this?". Well fortunately Joandsarah has the solution for that problem! Check out the cute crafting studio she built to give all of you a place to start community crafting! Available on MTS

Conflicts: Only known conflict is iCad's original autonomy enabler, you have to pick if you want hers version of autonomy, or mine :) Readme contains breakdown of the functionality of all parts, to help you decide a load order should you encounter conflicts. It should be possible to resolve conflicts though if there are any others, so please report them to me :)

Credits: @joplayingthesims for collaborating with me and providing a lot that you can get started with if you don't have one, iCad at @dramallamadingdang for the original autonomy enabling mod, @cityof2morrow who helped playtest the mod

If anyone else builds a community lot intended for autonomous use, I hope you let me know somehow so I can add links to it in my post :) If any other modders see ways to improve on what I did, please feel free to do so :) I am hoping to eventually post an update that sends all crafting to inventory to fix the make one issue, and the station clogging that happens over time.

#gummiluttmods #ts2 mods #ts2 gameplay #ts2 crafting #ts2 cc

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seraphinitegames · 25 days

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The Wayhaven Chronicles— Update 30/August/2024

So, I totally forgot it was a bank holiday on Monday here in the UK, lol!

But it did actually get me thinking about public holidays in Wayhaven. One of the main ones being ‘Rooting Day’—which is the day that the group of people who saw the potential of Wayhaven decided to turn it into the community it is today.

You’d think it being called ‘Rooting Day’ would mean they planted a tree or something to honour it, but no, they laid the first stone at the Cornerstones! I kind of liked the irony in that, hehe. Thankfully, they only developed on the buildings already there and didn’t cut into the nature surrounding the town.

Anyway, apart from me reminiscing about lore for Wayhaven I came it with sooo many years ago, I also got a ton of editing and rewrites done! Though I did at one point rewrite a whole scene for Adam/Ava’s romance…only to realise it was supposed to be for Nate/Nat’s, lol! That was painful to get rid of! But I love what came out of the bones of that scene and sprung to life on rewriting!

I want to do a couple more playthroughs, just to check the new stuff doesn’t bring up any weird bugs or complications, then I’ll be sending it over the editor, which means I’ll be starting the next chapter tomorrow!

One of my amazing patrons did suggest an elegant solution for my conundrum over the randomisation of the unit for the Chapter 3 scene—having the first playthrough be randomised and then having it as a choice for subsequent playthroughs. Really clever and perfect solution!

So, I worked really hard on finding out how this could be achieved! I know in Ren’Py you can use like a ‘global’ or ‘persistent’ variable, I think, to make that work, but I just can’t find anything for Choicescript that would achieve it except changing the ending stuff and setting variables there, which I don’t think would work when it comes to publishing. Which is a real shame, as I think that would have worked! If I can’t find anything after another search, then I’ll be seeing what readers favour, either choice or random for that still.

If anyone has anyone thoughts on coding for this though, I’d be very grateful to learn!

Next week will be social media days before diving into the next chapter!! Social media days will take a while as it’s the Character Q&A on Patreon throughout this whole month, which starts on Sunday. Got some interesting questions I’m excited to answer for that, hehe! ;D

Hope you all have the most amazing weekend! We’ll be offline as usual, so I’ll update you all again next week <3

#the wayhaven chronicles #interactive fiction #unit bravo #twc detective #romance #vampires #update #choice of games #hosted games #interactive novel #choicescript #twc book 4 #the wayhaven chronicles book 4 #lore #the world of wayhaven

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sirfrogsworth · 8 months

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Photo Restoration Project - Part 1

A long time ago, Katrina sent me some old photos of her family I could restore. Her parents have been helping me from afar for years and I really wanted to do something nice for them. Unfortunately my dad got much worse and I pretty much forgot about this project for quite some time.

But then I decided to visit Katrina in Orlando and we discussed having dinner with her parents and I remembered these photos. So I thought I would fix them up so I could present them as a gift in person.

The first and most important photo was from her parents wedding.

Old photo prints can fade over time due to UV light exposure. From what I understand, different colors fade at different rates and red/orange tones tend to be the least susceptible to this fading. Thankfully all of the color information is still there, it's just that the darks are not as dark and the lights are not as light. The dynamic range got squeezed like an accordion. However, if you do a levels adjustment on the red, blue, and green channels individually, you can unsqueeze the accordion and balance everything back to the way it was.

But you can't always save everything and there may be other damage that needs fixing. If something becomes pure white, there is no way to restore that detail. Thankfully I was able to use the new generative fill feature to bring back detail in the dress, the flowers, and the tuxedo shirt.

And because I hate front facing flash and how it makes colors look ugly and sterile, I may have also added a marble floor and pillars.

Next up was a photo of Anastasia, Katrina's mom, protesting Henry Kissinger on behalf of her home country of Greece. This suffered from the same color fading issues.

What made this one a little more tricky was an uneven fading. The left side had to be adjusted independently and the top was even more faded. I had to isolate the trees to bring back their color. And the protest signs were difficult to read, so I enhanced those as well.

Next we have this lovely photo of Anastasia tending to some house plants.

This photo was actually in decent shape. It lost a little contrast, had a little bit of fading, and her top retained almost no detail I could recover. Recovering accurate skin tones is probably one of the most important skills I learned when restoring these photos. I wanted to keep that filmic look of the era while avoiding making people look jaundiced or pale. Lightroom's new masking feature that let's you isolate every aspect of the people it detects in a photo. This made fixing skin tones much easier. I could isolate just her face or her lips or her hair or her eyes and make precise individual adjustments. This process could have taken a great deal longer without this feature. But, I brought back proper contrast and color, added a little bit of detail to her top with gen fill, and hopefully got fairly accurate skin tones as well.

Next up, forward facing flash strikes again in a photo of Mike and Anastasia during Christmas.

Film did not do well in low light. If it was indoors and nighttime, you pretty much had no choice but to use flash. But a flash is a very small, bright light source and this causes a very unflattering result on humans. Today we have much more powerful flashes with rotating heads. We can bounce the light into the ceiling or off a wall and increase the size of the light source to get a more flattering result.

In this photo I wasn't able to do much, so I just balanced the skin tones and brought out some hidden detail and called it a day. It's still a lovely memory and thankfully film has such character that it negates a lot of the unflattering aspects of direct flash.

Next up is some cuteness...

A big priority when editing photos is to make sure the subjects are the star of the photo. And in this one their faces were a bit obscured in shadow. There was also a lot of haze in the background hiding the beautiful vista. Not to mention when I cleared that haze, there was this super faint hint of something in the sky. I can't tell if it was a rainbow, but I decided to believe it was a rainbow. The only thing that I am still struggling with, and this seems to be common with a lot of old photos, is green. Getting a good, saturated, natural green to look right has been very difficult. Everything I try ends up looking toxic or fake. The only thing that ends up looking right with the rest of the photo is more of a yellow-y brown. It's something I'll have to work on as I learn, but as long as the overall photo looks balanced and natural, I'm okay with not perfectly nailing the greens.

Up next we have a lovely scene on a Greek dock...

As far as editing goes, this was pretty basic. I just undid the fading, adjusted the skin tones, replaced the blown-out sky, and made the colors pop. But I think this is actually one of my favorite before and after shots. I just love how such a simple fix brought this scene to life.

A new car is a big deal and Anastasia looks so proud here...

This image has another common issue in addition to the typical fading of colors. It has a yellowish orange color cast. This could have been an issue with the film used or the development process or a chemical reaction on the print. A color cast is a lot like looking through colored glasses. It's like a translucent color material was put on top of the image. This can be a little trickier to deal with, but if you know your color theory, you might already know the solution. Blue is the opposite of yellow/orange on the color wheel, so if you introduce blue to the image it should balance out. Also, add a sky if it was missing.

Next up we have a landscaping project...

This one wasn't too tricky, but there was one interesting issue I had to address. All light has a color temperature. Daylight has a temperature of around 5500K. But the inside of the garage was being lit by reflected light and so that light took on the color temperature of the things it was bouncing off of. So I had to mask out the people and the car and address the color temperature inside the garage to make everything look balanced. Also, the green fought me hard on this one. And with the theme of this picture being plants, I felt I really needed to find a tone that worked. I think I finally got there, but I spent way too much time in the color picker doing trial and error of green tones. Also, new sky.

With this next one I actually did a pretty thorough explanation of how I edited it. But this was probably my favorite puzzle to solve from this collection of photos.

I'll do the abridged explanation...

The physical photograph was printed on a paper with a very heavy texture. And when it was scanned, the light from the scanner bounced off that texture and created a pattern of unwanted highlights.

I was worried this was impossible to fix and I almost gave up on this photo. But after one final Google search I discovered something called "Fast Fourier Transform." It's a mathematical formula that can be used to detect patterns. And the image editing software Affinity Photo, just so happens to have a filter called FFT denoise that helps you remove unwanted patterns from scanned photos.

And thanks to that filter, I was able to remove a substantial amount of that pattern...

Then I did my standard clean up techniques...

Oh, and I decided to try learning how to colorize.

Photoshop has a new set of experimental filters and a colorization tool is one of them. It is not great yet, but it is a great starting place. Instead of having to hand paint every single thing in the photo, Photoshop gave me a base to work with and I could take it from there with traditional techniques.

That's all I have the energy for today, but there are a bunch of cool restorations to talk about. Hopefully you all find this interesting. It was such a great gift to give to Katrina's parents. And spending that time with them and making them happy felt like I was with my own parents again. So we all got a gift in that wonderful evening.

Part 2 coming as soon as I have the energy!

#photography #photo restoration

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botwstoriesandsuch · 4 months

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HEYA WHO WANTS TO LEARN ABOUT GRASS AND VOLCANOES

Yes I'm alive and yes I'm making posts and music again. Ok so moving on HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GRASS???

This patch of grass is from a Youtube video by Quincyvhs ranking grass in Tears of the Kingdom. He's a cool guy and has a similar video on Breath of the Wild and I highly recommend you watch it cause his editing is very cool.

HOWEVER. He made an egregious error today by ranking this patch of grass, this lovely, magnificent, extraordinary patch of grass upon Death Mountain as a mere B Tier. It clearly is an S Tier.

How do I know this? Well this patch of grass indicates miracles. It indicates determination. It indicates the spirit of adventure, of change, of liberty and mayhaps even the purest form of happiness the world round...

...and as later corroborated by the actual geologist that I am dating, it is an indication of the massive shift in Hyrule's ecosystem and climate.

Let's Begin.

Using my ace detective skills I have located the site in question in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (Botw and Totk). The general consensus is that there is a 5~ year time gap between the two games.

Given that the grass does not exist here in Botw, this means that this patch of grass took at maximum 5 years to grow. However, I'm going to prove that it probably took even less time than even that.

Below is the site on Botw's Map:

We are unable to get an accurate temperature reading of the area because the Sheikah Slate decided to give up. So we're going to use science to determine this soon to be important number

Given that wood near instantly ignites at this location in Botw, we can conclude that the temperature in the air is around 370 degrees Celcius or 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now typically, rock and soil serve as good insulators of heat, so the air temperature around a volcano itself isnot usually that much higher than the ambient temperature (unless you are actively within a Pyroclastic flow, which would be a more pressing problem than analyzing grass to say the least)

However, when near the presence of lava, that temperature of the air can actually reach up to 1000 degrees Celcius (1800F) so this reading is actually even more reasonable when you note that we are in good distance of the Medingo Lava Pool.

Conversely, we can actually grab an active temperature reading of the area during the time of Totk thanks to the Purah Pad.

It's 102 degrees Fahrenheit.

Easy. Simple. Fantastic. I love when my job doesn't require four hours of research for every single question!

Anyhow, here are some figures from the Oregon State Volcanology Laboratory on the rate of lava cooling

Yes this post is still about grass, stay with me.

To truly appreciate the glory of science and the glory of this patch of grass, we are going to calculate the exact amount of time needed for the temperatures to lower on Death Mountain to one sustanable for growth (That being around 100 degrees Farenheit).

SPOILER ALERT: It takes less than 5 years. This is insanely impressive considering grass of this type* typically takes DECADES.

Anyhow, The Figure 2 and 3 have to do with the depth of the lava, and Figure 4 deals with the thickness. (Many thanks again to my partner for providing their geological expertise and resources)

The thickness of the Medingo Lava is very easy to calculate given that Link can literally jump in with a splash and drown in it like the world's worst hot tub--the bitch ain't thick at all. So we use the lowest listed reading for that.

The depth of the lava is more tricky, but comparing the lava pool in Botw and Totk, and using Link as a marker of around 5 feet, we can say that the pool is around 10 feet deep.

Therefore, the Medingo Lava Pool took around 2-3 years to cool after Death Mountain stopped erupting.

Now when exactly did Death Mountain stop erupting?

According to the catalog of Volcanoes of the World by the Smithsonian Institution, 93% of volcanos stop erupting within 3 years.

Now I know that Death Mountain only started erupting because of the return of the Divine Beast Vah Rudania, and Link only "stops" the eruption of Death Mountain by defeating it. So one could argue that Death Mountain's "eruption" had to be less than a year or something.

My rebuttal to that would be 1) Within the game's canon, I don't see how we could justify Link taking one day, or even one month to wake up from the Great Plateau, travel immeidately all the way to Death Mountain. and then tame the Divine Beast in less than a month, and 2) Link didn't really stop shit because we can clearly still see active lava flow after taming Rudania. He only stopped the rock falls caused by the Divine Beast, the actual activity of Death Mountain still continues.

Given its insane size, I am going to say it took the full 3 years for its active lava flow to stop on Death Mountain. Volconologists in the notes, feel free to correct me.

SO! The Timeline is:

3 years for Death Mountain to stop actively flowing

2 years minimum for Medingo Lava Pool to cool

= >1 year for temperatures to be right for grass to grow!

This is an insanely quick time period for grass to thrive! The literal instant that the conditions were correct, we are able to see not just grass, but stoloniferous grass as well other types of shrubbery thrive! We would usually need several years for the volcanic rock to erode to rich soil (such as the soil in the Akkala region)

Allow me to elaborate:

This is Fountain Grass. Fountain grass is usually the fist type of grass that you would see in a volcanic region. They grow from a rhizome root system, which is a very vertical downward root system as you can see. This is good for young volcanic regions where only specific dotted areas are good enough for plants to grip onto and grow.

They grow something like this:

This patch of grass below I would call some sort of rhizome. (Botanists feel free to correct me in the notes)

THIS. however. (amazingly) is an example of stoloniferous grass!

This is thick bladed grass (as opposed to the more thin, fine-bladed grass with rhizomes) that grow in a stolon spreading pattern that is much more horizontal. It's a lot like the grass that might grow in your front lawn, if you're rich enough to have one of those in this economy--

They grow a bit more like this:

This type of grass need soil! Especially if we want to classify that other red flower behind the rock there as some sort of volcanic flower

We're basically talking about mass, rapid volcanic erosion in less than a year for this to happen. For context, the soil necessary for the region of Akkala to grow could have taken anywhere between a decade to thousands of years. The weather and erosion necessary for this patch of grass to grow took, at most, 3 years.

And all this in the period of time following an actual apocalypse. How quickly the tides have turned for Hyrule's ecosystem!!!!

IT'S A VERY IMPRESSIVE AND COOL PATCH OF GRASS AND THUS IS DESERVING OF THE S TIER RANKING

Also here's some behind the scenes of what my much smarter than me partner had to say about it ["Last pictures referencing the rhizome grass which, indeed, would be the oldest grass among the patch given it needs the least specific conditions to thrive/less soil to get started]

Growth is cool.

#tears of the kingdom #breath of the wild #botw #totk #OK MY PARTNER ACTUALLY DOING SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS AND THEY CANT CONFIRM THE ACTUAL TIMELINE WITHOUT #HAVING ACCESS TO THE INTERNET BUT i think my research is sound enough for tumblr

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husbandhoshi · 8 months

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TO GROW LOVE (AND EAT IT TO THE CORE)

pairing: mingyu x gn!reader wc: 8.1k summary: your whole life, you've only wanted one thing. then you meet mingyu. suddenly you want too much, and you wish the summer never ended. notes: farmer!au, established relationship, angst/hurt/a little comfort

this is a birthday fic for my one and only cat @wuahae ! yes this is about half a year late but what can i say. all good things come with time. thank you for being so kind, funny, and thoughtful (and patient)! not a day goes by where i’m not thankful for our friendship :)

and a million thanks to hana @wqnwoos and jackie @97-liners for helping me with edits. literally you guys are insane writers and i will never stop looking up to you.

i. strawberries (the summer we were young)

When a strawberry is ripe, the seeds push out from the heart of the fruit, as if it's bursting from the inside out.

This is one of the few and only things you've learned by living in Seogwipo, where strawberry season comes like a supernova. The May sun, full and heavy, peels into summer, and the roadside farms open their doors, trying to catch stray vacationers from Jeju City on the other side of the island.

That being said, there are approximately two things to do here. One of them is farm. The other is pretend like you have a life, which is your childhood friend Yizhuo's favorite thing to do when she's back from university on summer break.

Today, this involved convincing her ritzy, too-good Seoul friends that they're missing out on this side of Jeju. (Missing out on what? You're not sure. Perhaps the chipped paint of the mural walls, or the endless flat-topped stretches of seagrass. Yizhuo isn't fooling anyone, but you've always liked stretching your legs out in the bed of her pick-up, even on the long drive to nowhere.)

Unsurprisingly, her friends quickly came to the same conclusion. Just one look at your local strawberry patch, with none of the glamour of the bloated tourist traps in the city, and they decided they'd rather spend the afternoon at the beach.

It was then, between the fragaria blooms, when you met Mingyu. He asked for your name, and the rest was history. Yizhuo and co. scattered like the grasping hands of an overripe dandelion and you learned that he was, one, the newly-graduated son of a pair of local farmers, and two, very, very attractive. Almost too much so, especially for a place like this.

Now he holds up a berry, a bright red murder between his fingers, and tells you to try it.

"You must be delusional if you think i'm taking food from a stranger," you laugh, perched on the fence bordering the field. It sprawls before you, melon stripes on the sunbaked ground.

"No, my name is Mingyu," he replies. "No idea who delusional is." His smile, all bright lip and snaggletooth, tears into the scarlet belly of a newly picked strawberry.

"We all know what happened to Persephone."

"Well, if the underworld was a strawberry patch, I wouldn't mind being stuck there for all of eternity."

"What're you picking all these for, anyway?" you ask, watching Mingyu struggle with his too-big straw hat between the vines. His woven basket bleeds over with little berries.

"Jam. I make it on the very first day of every summer."

"Why?"

"You ask a lot of questions for someone who trespassed on my farm. You're cute, but I won't let you off easy."

He laughs at how you balk, clearly red-handed. You're not sure how to tell him you don't think you were supposed to be here either. You don't do things like sit in the back of trucks, trespass, or talk to pretty farmer boys who take a fancy to you, but it's the summer before you graduate and you're not even sure how long you'll have to continue making bad decisions.

"Are you gonna take my first-born now?" you joke instead. The daylight runs down the rim of Mingyu's hat, trickles down his brow, and you wish you could pour the image of him into a jar and keep it forever.

"No, but I will invite you in for some fresh jam on toast. I baked a loaf this morning." and when you say nothing, he continues. "The strawberries are only good once a year. It's the best you'll ever have. Promise."

It's a whine and a half, and somehow you convince yourself this will be the last bad decision you'll make. You've been here long enough to know that good things don't come twice in Seogwipo, and he is unlikely to be an exception.

Yizhuo blows up your phone, you tie the gingham apron around Mingyu's tiny waist, and the basket turns to blood in the saucepan.

Mingyu is right. Love comes to you in that kitchen, high and red like the sun, and the jam never tastes as good as it does that summer.

ii. watermelon (hollowed out, like a magic trick)

"A good watermelon sounds like a heartbeat."

You watch Mingyu heave the fruit, small and striped, out of his grocery bag. It joins the array of egg sandwiches and banana milks you picked up from the store together earlier. (There should have been chocolate Pepero too, but you split the box on the walk).

You're on a picnic, sprawled out on the outcropping overlooking the water. The path up is basically right behind your house, but you had never cared to visit. It had always been the local makeout spot, a schlocky teen crawl for those with nothing better to do, and yet, with Mingyu stretched out beside you, it seems newer. More exciting.

You're still just friends, or at least that's what you told Yizhuo. But ever since you sat on Mingyu's kitchen counter and ate from his jam-covered spatula, you don't think you've gone a week without seeing him. It's been almost two months, which seems so long and yet not long enough—he makes it easy to be greedy.

"See?" He thumps the watermelon with the heel of his palm. "Try it."

You already went through this entire charade at the grocery store, right in front of all the local aunties, but you indulge him. There's little point to triple checking if it's still ripe, but you think he just likes hitting it.

"It sounds good," you say. "But how are we even gonna eat it? We don't have a knife."

"Watch this." Mingyu procures a coin from his pocket. "You didn't learn this in elementary school? I feel like everyone was doing it."

"Here?" you ask, incredulous.

"Yeah, here. I grew up here too, you know."

He holds the edge of the coin to the skin and slams his palm into it once more, so that it lodges itself into the rind, and begins dragging it around the fruit. You start to wonder if he bought the watermelon just to show you a party trick—not that you mind, though. The strain of his biceps peeks through his rolled up white tee, and you remember why he was able to stop you with just one look back when you first met.

"No way." The watermelon is so ripe, it bleeds around the incision. "I feel like I know everyone here. And I definitely would have remembered you."

"I was probably, like, two grades above you," he replies. "And my parents shipped me off to live with my cousins after elementary school. They said I should get out of Seogwipo and experience the real world."

"Good call. There's nothing here." You watch Mingyu spin the melon over to cut through the other side. The coin catches the sunlight, and it looks like gold. "I wish I left for university. The one here is so small."

"Really?" He pauses to show you his handiwork. The two melon halves roll over on their backs, their cut edge cruel and jagged. "Cool, huh?"

"Impressive," you say. "Honestly. I really didn't think that would work."

"I didn't either when I first saw someone do it. But I’ll try anything once," he replies, ripping open the packaging of the plastic spoon from the bag. "I can't believe you don't like it here."

"You do?"

"Yeah. A lot." He shoves the spoon in his mouth, and you watch the watermelon juice pool around his lips. "I missed home. The trees and the tall grass and the ocean. All the fruits. Everything. I learned to ride a bike, right down there by the water."

"Hm." He passes you the spoon. You don't want to hog it, so you carve out a piece bigger than you need. "Are you gonna work at the farm?"

"Maybe. Haven't decided yet," he says. "I think I want to be here, though. Maybe do something with food, but I want to be home."

"That's funny, because I think I’ve always wanted to live a different life. Or at least one somewhere else."

"You want to go to law school, right?"

"Yeah." Mingyu is right. The watermelon is all sugar, and you would almost feel guilty for eating it if it wasn't technically good for you. "I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer. It's something about the people watching, I think."

"That’s really cool," Mingyu says, mouth full but no less sincere. It's then that you notice your shoulders are almost touching, and your heart crawls back up to your mouth. "You know what you want. I admire that."

He makes it sound like a compliment, but you're sure it's a curse.

You think of your parents. There's a permanent wrinkle ironed into their foreheads, the paper crease of expectations and high standards. It's not that they didn't care, but their kind of care was a humbled sort, made heavy by a hard life. It didn't help that your big sister Seohyun went straight from Yonsei to work a big tech job in San Francisco and never once looked back.

But you can't blame any of them—wanting has always been a hereditary failing. Sometimes Yizhuo will catch you frowning at nothing, and then you remember that life isn't a performance and every day ends at the same time no matter how hard you work. But you don't know how to tell her that the only thing you can do sometimes is want, because otherwise you wouldn't really have much at all.

It seems like the exact opposite of how Mingyu lives—everything about him seems to pass like the seasons. Maybe that's why you can't seem to get enough of each other.

"Thank you. Really." You dig the spoon into your half of the melon. There isn't much left. "You're way too nice to me."

"It’s not hard to be," he laughs. "Maybe you're just too hard on yourself."

You're losing track of the distance between the two of you. You can almost feel the heat playing off his skin.

"Maybe."

It's then, under the veil of summer, where you meet Mingyu's gaze and, finally, things seem close to simple.

All you know are his eyes, heavy with sun, and then the slow, slow move of his lips against yours. He tastes like August, long and sweet, and for once you know what it's like to not only want, but to have, and to have again.

The ocean sings on the horizon, and the watermelon bellies weep.

iii. adzuki beans (or, the blood of a headless taiyaki)

Mingyu eats taiyaki headfirst because he says it hurts less.

"That makes no sense," you tell him, your pinkies linked. You never really liked holding hands, but yours fits so perfectly in Mingyu's and there's some girlish, childlike shine to it when you watch his finger search for yours after just a moment separated.

"What do you mean."

He breaks your gaze to eye a red bean taiyaki, like an unwilling predator sizing up their prey. It's the lamest, most embarrassing iteration of National Geographic you've ever seen, and yet you cannot find any fiber within yourself not deeply in love with the lion.

Fall is a forgiving place for your relationship to settle. You're now a senior at university and he's started his gap year. Gap implies he's in the middle of something, but in true Mingyu fashion, he leaves it up to fate, or chance, or something not nearly as kind (whim).

"Taiyaki isn't alive. And why would you want to pretend it is? Eating gummy bears would become an extinction event."

"It kind of is." He holds out the tail end of the taiyaki, the pastry almost explicitly flayed open, in front of you to eat. "Why does the Haribo bear have a face? Why do the gummy bears live in a gummy forest?"

"Great, so now I can’t even enjoy gummy bears without feeling like a serial killer?"

You dig your pointer into his shoulders, broad from all the time he spends on the farm. To think that his hands, big and weathered, were made to pick berries (and now wrap around your pinky finger) is bruising, if not ridiculously funny.

"It's a crime of passion. Gummy passion. Prosecute that."

He kisses your cheek and your heart almost squeezes into two.

The terrible thing about being with Mingyu is how seemingly endless his affection is. Now he's feeding you in public and buying the two of you matching socks (cat and dog, to be exact), although you'll admit it's a little charming, even if the neighbors do gossip.

He's sweet, too sweet, and his kisses stick to the back of your throat.

But you can't be fooled. There's an unsaid violence to the way Mingyu loves. (The meticulous spiral of the peel he carves when you ask for him to cut you an apple. The grind, decisive and cruel, of a knife against a cutting board. A pair of canines against your neck, your jaw.)

Even now, he bites the head off another unwitting taiyaki before stuffing it back in the bag.

"We're still splitsing, right?" he says, with perhaps 1% of his mouth available for speaking and the other 99% murder machine.

Splits, he always says before you share food. You never had the heart to tell him that it's in the same family as mines or sharesies or takebacks—silly childhood relics, ones that no one uses anymore because they don't mean anything.

This time, you don't hear him because you're thinking about the law school fair you went to before Mingyu picked you up. The future is so close, it scares you. A year from now, what ground would you be standing on? Would it smell like this—the peat, the thread-spool fields, the balm of the ocean? Would you still have Mingyu's finger wrapped round yours?

"Have you decided if you're staying at the farm?" you ask.

"Not really." He uses the back of his hand to wipe off his chin. "If my sister decides to take over, I’m actually kinda thinking of going to pastry school instead of getting a masters."

Mingyu had been toying with the idea for some time after you had talked about it on the outlook. It started off as a joke (September; a galette), then a what if (October; green tea mochi), and now it sits at a kinda.

"Kinda?"

The word gathers speed in the pachinko machine of your mind. You never liked being a kinda person. For Mingyu, it seems like a luxury of a word, but for you, it's really just another thing to hide behind. Kinda talented, kinda ambitious, kinda just there. You're always one foot in, one foot out of something better.

"Yeah, kinda. Why?"

"I dunno. What if we both end up leaving?"

"Maybe. You still want to, right?"

You would be lying if you said you didn't—it's what you always wanted. Seogwipo has been a sun-rot, too-small crutch for you, but you would also be lying if you said you weren't terrified that you'd eventually come back, limping like some doomed Icarus, unable to truly make it in the real world.

Then you think of the pockmarked farmland beside your home, lacy with the fall harvest. Even now, you can trace the endless blue of the coastline all the way there, cut through all the maybes and just let the sound of the ocean fold you into sleep like you were a child again. You wonder if Seohyun, all the way on the other side of the world, ever misses it.

"I’m not sure," you say, because, as much as you don't like it, it's the only answer you have.

"It's ok. You'll figure it out. You always do." He squeezes your cheeks together between his thumb and index, laughing at how they pillow out underneath his fingers. "Screw pastry school. I could come with you. Who else would keep you fed?"

Mingyu's complete and unfounded belief in you makes you feel something close to betrayal. How could he say any of that? With what proof? Only someone like Mingyu would be able to hold the wrinkled fruit of your unremarkable life between his palms and see something better than that. Maybe it's because he grew up on a farm. Either that, or he already cares for you too much, too painfully.

Secrets are easy to keep when they look like yours. At least here, in the pit of your stomach, you can keep count, take attendance of them, all your tittering, small anxieties. Some days it feels like your ribs are pressing out, but it's better than cutting everything loose to spill out over what little you do have control over.

You can handle a little pressure. You have to.

What concerns you is the hand Mingyu's got across your chest. With one look, he just might gut you. A twist of the heart-knife, and all those carefully wound insides carved out in an instant—maybe he'd pity you, but worse than that, he'd likely be disappointed.

For you, expectation has always stood taller than shame, and the idea that he sees something past you makes you want to run away.

"I could be a house husband," he says as easily as ever. "You'll be off saving the world, arguing with whoever, and I'll be there to run you a bath afterwards."

"Let's not get too ahead of ourselves," you reply, binding up the strange, hollow feeling in your stomach with a laugh.

There's a scared little girl hiding inside you, and whether Mingyu sees her or not hurts the same. A spade is a spade. You can only pretend so long.

You look at the taiyaki floating in their wax paper bag, blinded and wrought open by the same grin that now peels you down, and you're not hungry anymore.

iv. winter pears (rotten, outside your parents' house)

Mingyu's family loves Christmas.

You think it's because of the pear trees they have in the front yard. They stand bravely before the house, all emerald ash and wisdom in the December freeze. Run your palms over the knobs and it's like you can see into a sleepy visage of simpler days past. (Below its heart, carved: 1982, the year the farm was bought. Along the tangle of the roots: gyu waz here, in an unsure, childish scrawl.)

Winter comes to the countryside crawling on its hands and knees. On days it doesn't snow, there's a mist, boggy and clingy. You've come to realize the cold is more of a threat than a promise, and so the pear trees still bear fruit; the silvery branches hang heavy, faithful.

The first day of December, Mingyu's parents had tasked the two of you with decorating the farmhouse, a duty you took very seriously. You wrapped Mingyu up in string lights and watched him blink in and out like your own personal firefly.

It wasn't until you watched the rafters, the barn doors, the joyous vault of the ceiling all glow, like a spectacular firework, that you finally started to understand why Mingyu was so into the holidays.

It was in the yellow blush of the string lights that you had your first pear from the tree, which Mingyu insisted was a holiday tradition. We make poached pears, he said, mid-bite. You simmer the pear in syrup until it gets so soft, you can cut into it with a fork. Just like butter.

That same night, he kissed you, mouth hot and trembling and tasting of honey, and pressed you against the bark so hard, you could feel the grit of its veins against your skin.

You think December became your favorite month, and pears your favorite fruit.

So much so, that for the entire month, you try to put away your worries about law school applications to celebrate with Mingyu and his family.

You learn his mom makes the best hot chocolate (a cinnamon stick and a dogged devotion to the whisk), and that Mingyu has no clue on God's green earth how to ice skate. (He careens right into your chest the first time. You spend the next hour with him attached to you like a backpack—he manages to find the most impractical ways to do anything, which you somehow admire the most). On Sundays, Yizhuo ditches her Seoul friends and instead accompanies you to the mall two towns over, where she watches you compare different ties and watches and collagen creams as you decide on gifts for his family. (Lilac is so last year, she'd say, stirring the straw of a watered-down milk tea.)

It's not until the weekend before Christmas when you realize just how serious things have gotten. Your feet understand the meander of the dirt path to the farmhouse, your bones the scent of the yellow-skinned apple, the faded wildflowers. Your palms crave the plush of the rug they have in front of the fireplace. Hell, you can't even eat soondubu without thinking of the kind Mingyu's dad makes, with extra anchovies and green onion.

You don't think about what this means. There are ten days left in December and love poured from a full cup never seems to run out.

"Please let me carry some of those," Mingyu wheedles. "Oh my god. I'm like the worst boyfriend in the world."

"No, you are not." you make your way up to his doorstep, taking care to one-two step over the stray roots of one of the pear trees. It's second nature to you by now. "The moment I hand you a box, you are gonna start trying to figure out what it is."

He harumphs and plucks the big one off the top anyway, the one he knows you can't reach. "I didn't even know you were getting us gifts. You didn't have to."

"It's the least I could do. Who shows up to a holiday dinner emptyhanded?" You stop at the front door. "And stop shaking it," you laugh, using the tip of your boot to nudge his shin.

"Okay. Okay," he says, saccharine, adoring, before grabbing the doorknob. "Ready? Are you nervous? You shouldn't be nervous, right? It's not fancy or anything, if you were worried about that."

And that's the thing that wedges itself between your ribs. Mingyu and his whole family are like this. They love and worry and love again; it presses deep into you, fills you, and overflows.

So here you are, standing in your nicest dress and balancing a stack of gifts you hope will amount to something, never enough but something, to repay the people who you feel have loved you more than you deserve. It's all you really have. You do your best, and yet you know when that door opens, it'll all be washed away in a high-tide flurry of hugs and laughter and the familiar press of Bobpul's wet nose against your leg. They're just those kinds of people—they would be just as happy if you didn't bring anything at all, and somehow that makes you feel even more guilty.

"No, no," you wave him off. "I’m fine. Excited."

When Mingyu opens the door, everything goes just as you expected. His sister takes your coat, your gifts are whisked away to the tree (Aji has already figured out which one is his), and his parents descend upon you in a choking swell of warmth and charity.

We baked some fresh bread for your parents (—Thank you so much, but you really shouldn't have.). You look so beautiful in that color (—No, no, you flatter me too much.). Mingyu better be taking good care of you (—He is. He really, really is.).

The kitchen is gauzy with cinnamon, anise. They must be making their famous poached pears, which Mingyu remarks on, just like clockwork.

Dinner passes the same way. It bubbles over with affection, and you feel swallowed by an impossible yearning. This—a full table and a hand to hold underneath it—did you deserve this? And could you keep it?

For an instant, you picture yourself, years later, at this same seat. Mingyu would be fussing over the rice cakes, his apron still gingham because it reminds him of the day you two met. His parents, grayer but no less happy, bickering over the shade of tinsel on the tree. And the dogs, coiled at your feet like they are now. The vision laps at your bones like you're a raft in a storm.

You're pulled back into the moment when Mingyu squeezes your hand, grounding and insistent. "Mom asked how school was going. I told her I think you're basically the smartest person I know, and I’m pretty sure you're getting into whatever law school you want."

Mingyu's parents laugh, and they cut through their pears.

"Oh, sorry," you say. "Um."

Clink. Knife meets flesh, meets porcelain. Your cheeks are hot. You wanted to talk about anything other than yourself tonight. Clink.

"The top programs are a reach, but it'd be nice." clink. "I just want to get in somewhere."

"They’re all so far away," Mingyu's mom remarks. "So grown up. Any school will be lucky to have you. You'll get into all of them."

Clink.

"Or maybe you can stay here." You watch the prongs of Mingyu's father's fork disappear into the pear. "Keep us old folk company."

"No, no, I think Mingyu should take notes and get off his lazy ass," his sister says, teasing. "Going back to the city will be good for him."

"So you can, what, burn down the kitchen again?" Mingyu grumbles, and the whole table seems to boil over with laughter.

"We’re kidding," his mom tells you. "No matter where you go, I’m sure you'll do great. We can even throw you a party at the end of the year. For graduating."

Clink. Clink.

There's a horrible uneasiness writhing around in your stomach. It's pear and syrup and clove and a blackness, an anxious, selfish one that sucks up all the generosity of the evening and turns it into shame.

Mingyu's mom is talking about throwing you a graduation party, something you didn't even think to do for yourself, and here you are, thinking about the shaking moment you open your rejection letters and the lonely path you'll draw on your way back home.

It's ok. They missed out, Mingyu would say, pouring you a consolation drink, and then it would be over. You'd go home and sit on your bed and the trifold piece of paper would go round and round your head like it was in a washing machine.

Your heart, an inventory of tasks and goals and tally marks. Things you've taken and things you've owed. It's a soft, boneless excuse. Be grateful. Give them that, at least.

Clink.

Dessert ends before you can tell his family not to get their hopes up. Mingyu's mom sends you off with your loaf of bread and a kiss on the cheek, and the moment is gone.

"Gyu," you call out on the steps in front of the house.

There are words at the seam of your lips. You want to tell him you're sorry for worrying so much. For making the whole dinner about you and then very possibly having nothing to show for it when it matters. For the heaviness in your chest. Your cowardice. But none of it comes out.

Instead you watch Mingyu pull at the leaves of a pear tree, watching the frost-filigree they get at the end of the season. He looks over his shoulder and smiles at you, as if he's on the hazy cover of a magazine. His eyes bend so wonderfully at the corners when he looks at you, and it breaks your heart.

"You had fun, right?" he asks. "My parents like you a lot, you know. I think they really do."

But that's the problem, you want to say. You all do, and I have no idea why.

Some of the pears are beginning to rot now. You watch one drop off the vine, and it caves to the pavement like it was made of nothing at all.

v. wild barley (grows like weeds)

In March, you play house.

Your parents leave on a two week trip to see relatives, and Mingyu takes it upon himself to make sure you survive.

It's a kind, blinding charade.

(7 am, breakfast. You usually don't even eat breakfast, but you wake up to doenjang and a smile, one that presses itself to yours until you're wearing it on the long walk to school.)

(4 pm, the stretch between lunch and dinner. You're muddling through another useless club meeting when Mingyu sends you a picture of him in your mom's apron, making kimchi. Kiss the chef, he texts you. You promise to, over and over and over.)

It's good until it isn't.

That isn't to say that it's Mingyu's fault. In fact, it's never really Mingyu's fault, and that's the worst thing about your relationship. Sometimes you wish he was worse just so there was someone else to blame.

(1 am, a fridge-cold glass of water and a hand on the column of your spine. Can't sleep? He asks. Just had a weird dream, you say.

It's a lie. You're a liar.

You miss your parents and the first wave of acceptance letters comes out in two days. You're not like him. Sleep has never been a cure for the exhaustion you're feeling, and you have no way of telling him that however warm the bed is won't fix that.)

It's on a Thursday afternoon when you open your mailbox and see the tiny, thin envelope that you've been expecting for the past week. You don't need to open it to know what it says, and yet you do it anyway.

The sun is white, a ghost in the spring sky. The ocean bleeds into the overcast, the curly barley stands tall around your feet, and you let the worst letter you've gotten in your life fall upon your shoulders, word by terrible word.

Then you close it, pinching the seam shut, and draw up your brave face. Nothing left to do but be brave. You're convinced you've used up all the sadness in your relationship—spend in pennies and the well still runs dry. Mingyu will cup your cheek and call you darling, pouring into your emptying basin, holey and broken.

You see him now through the kitchen window, Venus in his clamshell of a kitchen. Galbijjim day, he had said this morning. Now, he waves at you, glittery with recognition.

Your throat feels like crumpled paper.

Mingyu smiles at you, hazy through the glass. Your cheeks hurt and your mouth is paper mache, but you smile back anyway.

///

The letters come one after another.

You know what the envelopes hold and yet you keep opening them. The little folder you keep stashed in your bottom drawer gets fatter every passing day because you can't help but revisit your misery, almost as if you need to remind yourself it exists.

Mingyu is none the wiser. Today he decides he'll put off pastry school for one more year. "It doesn't feel like the right time," he says, rolling a log of burdock kimbap up. "You know what I mean?"

No, you don't. You never really do.

You do know, however, that it would feel really fucking bad that, come the end of the year, to have nothing. All your friends would be going somewhere—even Yizhuo opened her acceptance to an MFA program in Shanghai yesterday—and you would be here, still, feet firmly planted in the muddy Jeju dirt like they always had been.

"Hey, don't look so disappointed." he jokes. "Don't tell me you're already trying to get rid of me."

You're not, you really aren't. But part of you wonders if it's just a race to the bottom. If you got rid of him before he decided he wanted to get rid of you, maybe it would hurt a lot less. One less letter for the folder.

"Never. But imagine if you picked up a French accent at pastry school. Then I’d consider it. Maybe."

You watch his knife rock back and forth on the cutting board as he cuts the kimbap.

"Some for you. And more for me," he says, in what you can only describe as someone attempting to speak French when they've never heard it before. "Unless you want more, mon cherie."

He brings the plates to the table, his grin nothing short of dizzying.

"I’m irresistible, huh? Still wanna leave me now?"

"You're gonna have to try a little harder than that, I think."

The words roll off your tongue, easily, traitorously.

You watch the kimbap disappear off of Mingyu's plate.

Going, going, gone.

///

Seogwipo is always dark at night, only kept alive by the glow of the moonlit sea.

You can't sleep. Again. And so you sit out on the steps in front of your house, letting the twilight wrap around you like a blanket.

You got your last letter back earlier today. You held your breath and tore it open like you would a birthday card with money in it.

Waitlisted.

It was surely better than a rejection, but some naive, child-eyed part of you thought that if you had just closed your eyes and hoped hard enough, things would work out the way you had planned. Tragically, it wasn't enough this time. You wanted and wanted and you thought maybe that would mean you'd come close to deserving it.

Your parents called today. After managing to sideline the issue of basically the rest of your entire life, they had finally cut through your sad little charade. No good news yet, huh?

No, but—

It was always like that with you. No, but it's not as bad as you think. No, but give me a chance. No, but I’m trying. I've been trying.

You wish things didn't come out of you so complicated. That you could be like Seohyun, who could go through school with her eyes closed and still graduate at the top of her class. Instead, you parade around your little failures, trying to convince people it all could mean something only if they squinted. See? It isn't so bad.

You think you're past the point of crying about it. Your stomach hurts, you're cold, and most of all, you just want to go back to bed. Plus, although Mingyu sleeps like a log, you think he's developed a sixth sense for whenever you get up too early.

Time to be brave, you've been telling yourself, although you don't know who you're pretending for anymore.

So you nudge the front door open—it's so old, it wails if you come at it with any more force—and, to your surprise, see the light above the kitchen sink turned on.

It's not very bright, but it's enough to make out Mingyu's broad silhouette, back turned to you as he makes a cup of tea. He's humming one of his made-up songs.

"Mingyu?"

"There you are," he says, turning around. "Just came out to check on you. And make you some tea."

The kettle whizzes. Your gut twists.

You still haven't said anything to Mingyu. To manage your own disappointment was one thing—you don't think you could handle another person's. And yet when he stands there, Pororo mug between his huge hands, you feel as if you are holding a knife, big and guilty and bloody.

"I-I'm fine, Gyu. Honest." you watch his expression flicker, unreadable in the persimmon lamplight. "Sorry you had to come out. It's chilly out here."

"You know, you can tell me what's going on. I won't judge."

No, no, no. This is the last conversation you wanted to have, with the last person you wanted to have it with.

You feel feverish. You think your hands are shaking.

"Mingyu, I swear—"

"Whatever it is, we can fix it. I know we can."

That almost makes you want to laugh if you didn't want to cry so bad. Of fucking course he would say that. Mingyu, who treats life like it's the watermelon trick he showed you on the outlook, wants to put a bandaid on this whole thing, as if that could come close to fixing it.

He'd tell you to curl up on the couch with a bad movie while he orders takeout. Kiss you on the top of the head. It's ok, baby. Just another bad day for the person who has the worst luck in the world. Another lump of problems for him to try and make better. If he isn't sick of you now, he sure would be soon enough.

"It’s okay," you say, steeling your voice. "It really isn't a big deal. Let's just go back to sleep."

You try to walk away, but the hardness in Mingyu's eyes roots you down to the tile.

"Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Pushing me away," he swallows. "Like you always do. I know something's going on."

"I’m not, i just—"

"You just what? You can't help it?"

"No, I—"

"Because you like to know that you can? That you can say whatever and then watch me come back?" A fragmented, heavy silence thrums between you. He's looking at you like he's daring you to say something, anything. His gaze is black. "What am I good for if you can't tell me anything?"

There's that familiar, stinging pressure behind your eyes. You think you're crying, but you're not sure. Maybe you've been crying this whole time.

"Fine," you bite. Your blood feels like hot metal. "You really wanna know? I didn't get into law school. There. Happy now?"

Mingyu looks stung.

"W-why didn't you tell me?"

Because I thought you would stop loving me. I thought you would have finally had enough.

"Because it's not all about you, Mingyu."

The words, selfish and damning, burn your tongue. Mingyu is right. This is what you always do. You fuck up and then make everyone else hurt for it.

"I'm sorry," Mingyu says. His voice doesn't sound like his. Instead, the words seem to hang in the air, trembling and holding their breath, waiting for an apology you can't give yet. "I shouldn't have—"

"It's ok." You swallow hard, and it hurts. "Let's just go back to bed."

It's getting colder and colder. You think there's a little hole in your sock, right above the cat's whiskers.

Mingyu doesn't reach for you as he passes to get to the hallway. Maybe he doesn't know how to anymore.

The Pororo cup is left abandoned on the counter. You walk over and read the label on the tea bag—barley, because you have class tomorrow morning.

You pick it up, let the ceramic buzz between your hands with whatever warmth it has left, and hold it to your lips.

It's cold now, but all you can think to do is drink it. Erase all the evidence that tonight ever happened, and maybe it'll be nothing more than a bad dream in the morning.

There's honey at the bottom of the cup. It sears the back of your throat, but you drink until there's nothing left.

vi. the peach blossoms (without fail, bloom every August. I miss you.)

You broke up the next day.

Even now, you remember what happened. You had woken up early that morning to make your own breakfast because you couldn't allow Mingyu to give you any more of himself. Your hands could only hold, shatter, so much.

"Mingyu, I think we should...." You looked at the zigzags of jam on your toast, angry and uneven. "I think we should stop seeing each other. For now," you had added, as if that made anything better at all.

Somehow that seemed more merciful at the time. Really, you think it just showed your cowardice. If you were going to break his heart, you might as well have gone all the way the first time.

Maybe it was a good thing that Mingyu saw right through you. He always did.

"So that's it, huh? You're just gonna give up on us?"

"No, I just...need some time."

"How long?" he asked. "Be honest with me. Because you know I’ll wait."

"I don't know." You couldn't meet his gaze. His eyes reached and reached over that kitchen table and you denied him even that.

"Don't you always know?" he asked, pitifully, desperately. "Don't you want this to work?"

And you did. In fact, you don't think you had ever wanted anything more, and it was that that scared you. You had already lost law school—you couldn't let the only other thing in your life let you go. So you pulled the trigger first.

"We should just end things. I'm sorry. I can't give you what you need."

He packed his bag within the hour, and you think everything, from then on, froze inside you. You didn't move from your seat until your parents came home from the airport later that day and asked why there were two plates of toast still on the table.

You think you knew, someplace, inevitably, this would happen. You, who only knew hunger, had reached deep inside Mingyu and rooted out a love you didn't think you were worthy of having. And yet you still ate from the vine, bite after guilty bite, until you couldn't take any more. The only time he asked you for anything at all, you couldn't give it to him—such was the irony of your relationship.

Maybe you were doomed the moment the first strawberry hit your tongue, just like you had said, all that time ago.

About a month later, you got another letter in the mail. Chungnam National University Law School, it read. This one was fat, in one of those brown envelopes lined with bubble wrap. Somehow, miraculously, that position on the waitlist had turned into an acceptance. You held the package to your chest and cried, loud and with abandon, as if taking a deep breath after almost drowning.

Ironically, the first person you wanted to tell was Mingyu. But the good news you needed to save your relationship came too little, too late. Perhaps that meant it had no legs to stand on in the first place, but that didn't stop you from missing it. Instead, you told Yizhuo, and she drove you to Jeju City and treated you to dinner. "You should just call him," she had said. "Hey, don't look at me like that. He'd probably pick up on the first ring."

The city is swathed in August's crimson summer—peach season. The narrow streets are lined with peach trees, the fruits glowing like fat drops of sunlight. All you do these days is plan for your eventual move to Daejeon and the start of a life that seems newer and shinier than your own. But surrounded by the cicada song, the velvet treeline, the rain-soaked asphalt, somehow you think you're going to miss Seogwipo more than you think.

(Fickle, fickle heart. You always needed things to be taken away to really be able to appreciate them. Somehow, all that wanting had boiled down to something more satisfying, more filling.)

You wonder how Mingyu is. Now that you think about it, he seems just as much a part of Seogwipo as the farm he lives on. It was only last summer when you had first met him in the field, set on fire by the strawberry harvest. You think about him now, peddling around that ridiculous wicker basket to make jam. Maybe talking to another pretty girl, someone as naive, cruel as you had been.

Not long ago, you considered calling him to apologize, but that'd just be another thing to be selfish about. A little time and some warm weather, and I’m calling to finally wash my hands of you. That's what it would sound like, no matter what you said. Still, it didn't stop you from thinking of him, every flower, every season.

"You know, I always wanted to grow peach trees. But I think we've always been a pear kind of family."

Mingyu. If a voice could cut through air, it'd be his.

You whip around, half-believing you're hearing things. Certainly that would be easier, but you're learning that there are some things you can't run from.

And like a picture, Mingyu stands tall, golden, framed by the peach blossoms. Not a thing about him has changed. Not even the way he looks at you.

"Mingyu," you breathe. Unfortunately, none of the times you replayed your last conversation with him help you come up with something to say, because in none of them did you anticipate him coming back. "W-what are you doing here?"

"I live here, silly."

"No way," you reply, scrambling. "Crazy, because I live here too."

You both laugh nervously, a silly, bubbly thing, but you feel like you're going to throw up. It's only now that you realize you're kind of on the walk to his place. Seogwipo has never had places to hide.

"I...um." You try and disentangle the guilt from the nostalgia from the scent of the peaches and the warmth on his face. They all look the same. You missed him. "I got into law school. In Daejeon."

"I heard," he says. "Not surprised at all. I always knew you would."

"Thank you. I mean it." The cicadas buzz around you, as if they know they have an important silence to fill. "You're staying in town, right?"

"Actually, I decided to apply to culinary school. It finally felt right, you know? I'm leaving at the end of the summer, but it's just in Jeju City. I couldn't leave the island."

"Thank goodness. I don't know if you could tell, but I kind of always hoped you would. I don't think I’ve ever eaten better food." Your voice wobbles, but it gets there. "You'll do amazing."

Then time stretches and forces you to recognize, reckon with, the moment you're in. You wonder if he feels the same way you do—bruised, overripe. If there's still a space in his heart for you.

Deep breath. Life only gives you so many chances.

"Mingyu, I’m sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't make us work. You deserved better." Saying it feels like peeling the skin of your heart back. There's still a palpable distance between the two of you—you think that had always been there—but it feels more comfortable in a way it never did before.

"Don’t apologize," he says, easily, as he always does. Everything seems to flow off him like water, and you think that's the part of him you loved the most because it was the one thing you couldn't touch. "We loved each other. I think that much was true."

A jasmine breeze curls through the trees, sending the blossoms fluttering around you like ink in water. The very first time you met Mingyu, you thought the image of him, haloed with the sunset, was the one you wanted to keep forever. And yet, somehow, you don't think you'll ever forget the way he looks right now.

"Will you ever come back to Seogwipo?" you ask.

"I was gonna ask you the same thing—you were always the one who wanted to get out of here." He grins, ear to ear. "Of course I'm coming back. There's nowhere I'd rather be."

"Yeah. I think I know what you mean."

The sea, the clay dirt, Mingyu. Even yourself, clumsy and care-worn. You think, somewhere along the line, you forgot how to love. But you're learning—one step at a time.

"Friends," you say. "Let's be friends. If you'll let me."

"Thought you would never ask. Gladly. Always." The space between you seizes, like it's holding in a breath. Maybe one day, you'll think of closing it once more, but you like where you stand now. You can admire him better from a distance, without your fingerprints all over him. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, something he does before he gets ready to leave. But before he does—"I'll see you soon, okay? You better come back. Promise me."

For the first time, you see the honesty in his eyes and you really, truly believe him.

"Promise."

The Seogwipo sun is high and red in the sky when you wave Mingyu goodbye. It feels like you're coming to an end of a long summer, but you're not afraid. You watch the wind dance through the peach blossoms, their branches never searching, never wanting, and you finally feel as if you've arrived home.

#literally on my hands and knees begging for the tags to work #mine #mingyu #mingyu x reader #mingyu x you #mingyu angst #seventeen angst #mingyu imagines

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ugh-yoongi · 7 months

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the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance—whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. <3

#jimin x reader #jimin smut #bts x reader #bts smut #jimin imagine #jimin scenarios #jimin fanfic #jimin x you #jimin x y/n #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts x you #bts x y/n

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georgiapeach30513 · 7 months

Text

Your Mark On Me, Part 13

Summary: Steve softens and submits

Pairings: Steve Rogers X Reader

Rating: explicit

Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content, bit of a chase kink, teasing, unprotected sex, PIV sex, creampie, bathtime fun, D/s dynamics, breeding kink, bit of voyeurism, mean!Steve, 18+ ONLY

Word Count: 5.9K

Series Masterlist

*dividers created by @firefly-graphics

*edit by @nixakimbo

You give a final smile to Bucky and Shy, and hug to your former guard. Making sure to kneel down to rub on Shy’s belly, leaning to give the bump a kiss, “You take care of your mama, little Ember. I can’t wait to hold you. Thank you for a lovely day,” you stand back up, giving Shy another hug. “Your home is lovely.”

And with that Steve nods a head to both Bucky and Shy, leading you out to the car where he opens the door up for you. He can be sweet when he wants to. When he isn’t so brooding and all business. Trying to be create a persona that is quite different to the man you were starting to learn. Days like this made you realize that there is a lot more to Steve than meets the eye. He could be soft. Just with the right people.

You suppose that is probably the safest thing to do, be cautious. For him. You just loved people, and wanted them to know. Everyone needed words of confirmation from time to time. “She looks adorable pregnant.”

“So will you,” he answers, giving you a soft smile. He could be a bit confusing with his personality. Today you are getting the sweet Steve. It had to have been seeing Bucky again. Bucky leaving Steve’s business for good seems to have affected him. He realizes how things have shifted.

“Are you sad?” He keeps his eyes on the road, and his Adam’s apple bobs while he searches for the right words.

“That you have an IUD? Of course. But I’ll let you decide when I get to fill you full of me,” you roll your eyes as your hand naturally falls into his. He is so silly. Always going back to that, and not at all what you are thinking about.

”I meant about Bucky choosing Shy over…the business,” you hesitate to say over Steve. he didn’t necessarily choose Shy over him. But in a way he did. Bucky found something more important to him than what he had been doing for years. More important than being in the business with his best friend. The business risk didn’t outweigh his love for his fiance and future family.

Steve goes silent. His sharp eyes look out in front of the car, but never respond. It hurts him too much to think that Bucky would never be a part of this world for him. “I mean, having a child is a huge responsibility. It seems like Shy makes enough money to keep them afloat. And he seems to really be right at home with her. And their kitty. We should probably get a pet. I bet it was nice for her to have a pet when Bucky was out at odd hours of the night. Especially when he was with me. Heaven knows that man has seen so much of my body, and just what you do to me. Do you think she was ever jealous of that? Have you met Shy before today? Wait, no you said that was your first time meeting her. Bucky must really love her to want to protect her from your life.”

”Dovey,” his thumb draws shapes on your hand, and you turn to look at him. He is haunted about something. About his thoughts that never left him. There is no telling the things that he has seen in this life. “Baby, you need to breathe.”

“Where are you taking me?” This isn’t the way home. “Are we going out?” he shakes his head no, and you look at him with a pout. The facial expression does get a huff of a laugh. “Steve!”

“Does this road not look familiar?” No. It didn’t. But clearly it is supposed to. You sigh, waiting on him to hopefully answer. Your body leans more into him. Letting his warmth encapsulate your nerves. Trying to think of when you had been here, and then there is something that looks familiar.

“But…where is everything else?” It is the playground. Before there were swings, slides, monkey bars, but now the only thing left standing is the bars that Steve had set you on. “Steve?”

“I held onto this place for a long time,” he places the car into park, and while you give him your full attention, he just gazes out at the almost empty park. “I met her here for the first time,” he is taking way too long to tell a story, but for the sake of him not getting pissy at you, you wait on him. Even if you feel a pang of jealousy with the simple word of her.

“She was beautiful. I hadn’t fully grown into my body yet, but she still saw me. I told you I was bullied here, but I was slowly turning it into a drop off. It was overgrown, and kids didn’t come here anymore. But Peggy did. She stayed a bit too far away. Watching. Always watching me. I got a bit cocky, and came by more often. Bought the land, so it was my private property. Employed Bucky and Sam. And I kept getting bigger, and finally she came and talked to me.”

You don’t even know Peggy, but you hate her. It isn’t even jealousy, okay maybe a little bit. But it is mostly due to the fact there’s something so off in her behavior. She just watched him for months?

“She was a simple girl, just wanted some weed. And came by regularly to get it. And then I got the courage to ask her out. We were inseparable. I fell so hard, and so fast. I was telling that woman I loved her everyday. Bucky and Sam kept telling me there was something off with her. She didn't want to move in, but she stayed at my house a lot. Didn’t seem to have a job, but I kept her up anyways. And then — fuck,” he slams his hand onto the steering wheel, leaving you without his warmth.

“A squad came barging into my house throwing shit all around, and what do you know, Peggy was the one leading them. She’d lied the whole time. Undercover for what she felt was the next up and coming drug ring. Sam and Bucky were right, and smarter than that bitch. They cleaned out my house the night before. She was the one that shoved me to the floor, got me in a submissive position on my knees and demanded for me to tell her where the drugs were. I just smiled up at her. I spent a few weeks in jail. And come to find out later she actually is dating Rumlow. Maybe she’s going to bust him, too. Maybe she actually loves him, I don’t know. But I’ve never trusted another woman. Nor been put in that position again.”

It's your turn to go silent. You hated that bitch. How dare she even touch Steve. She got all that with him. All the love and words, and before you. It shouldn’t matter, but she broke him. And the realization of him holding her actions over you. She made him not trust women so much that he couldn’t even be honest with you.

”Until you,” your head slowly turns to look at him, and he’s never seemed so torn. His eyes are glossy, and face solemn, and all you want to do is hold him. “I got on my knees for you. I have left you in my home alone. I have entertained you for months, and I’ve done everything I said that I would never do again, and it’s all been for you. I can’t — Dovey, I’m sorry, I can't say those words you deserve to hear.”

You let out an air of breath that you aren’t aware you were holding, as you search his face. He is being as candid as he can, and his hurt from being used, and lied to still lingers. But he said you deserve to hear the words.

“Steve, I told you it was enough. I will hear those words from you, but what’s more important I feel those words from you. I see them. I didn’t know about what she did to you, but I know that every time you drop to your knees to put my shoes on, it is something that isn’t easy for you, and you’ve given that to me more than once.”

“All that I told her should have been for you.”

“It will be,” your hand cups his cheek, and you place a kiss on his face. Kissing away the single tear that rolls past his lash line. She might have gotten the words, but you get the actions. “Why did you have everything from the playground removed?”

“I didn’t,” his lips turn up into a smile, but he doesn't dare to look out at the former park. His dark lashes splay across his cheeks, keeping his eyes closed, choosing to feel this moment instead of just seeing it. “That piece of equipment doesn’t look familiar? That is the first place that I stared at the face of God. It holds a special meaning to me,” you roll your eyes, attempting to turn away from his silly self when he grabs at your face. Hand on your jaw, making you look at him. His fingers are steady but not too harsh.

His eyes open slowly, and you stare at his perfectly imperfect blue eyes with their bit of green lacing through the crystal blue, “Don’t look away from me when I’m talking to you, and being sweet.”

“You’re talking about my pussy.”

Steve gives you a boop to your nose and a too innocent smile for him, “I think you mean my pussy. At least that’s what you tell me every time I fuck into you. Are you saying I don’t own this pussy anymore,” the hand holding onto your jaw falls in between your thighs, and cups your covered mound. “I do love that you wear skirts. Do you realize how easy it would be to move these panties over and…hey!”

He yells after you as you jump out of the car. Looking back at him with a playful grin. “If it’s your pussy, come and claim it!” Squealing you run away from the giant tattooed man that stomps after you. He doesn’t even have to run with his long strides. But you don’t stop.

Bobbing and weaving on the mostly empty lot. Looking back at him laughing carelessly, and you see the first genuine smile spread across his angelic face. If it wasn’t for his chiseled body covered in ink, he’d look almost boy-like. You’re glad he didn’t tattoo his face. But right now in this moment, you see him for the man he was before his harsh world crashed over him.

Crinkles at the edge of his eyes that you love to kiss. You wished you could see those lines more often. They did seem to be making an appearance more often now. His lines on his face told a story, much like the tattoos and scars that stained his skin.

He reaches out a hand to grab you, but you dodge his advance. Doing a quick twirl before you sprint away, and turn to look at him, “Is that the best you got, Rogers?”

“Now, you’ve gone too far. Take that back!” You’re almost tempted to call him that again.

“Never, daddy!” He growls, wrapping his hand around your wrist, but you slip away. “Stevie, you really are losing your touch. AHH!” You screech when both his arms wrap around you. He pulls you so tight against his body it takes your breath away. You struggle to get away, not wanting this playful Steve to disappear just yet.

Struggling so hard that the two of you slam onto the ground in a fit of giggles, “What was it that you called me, Dovey?”

“Captain,” laughing when he rolls his eyes, and shakes his head no.

“You’re such a liar,” he crows, his teeth nibbling on your neck. Playfully biting you, while demanding you admit the names you called him. “Tell me, baby,” his voice turns labored. The playful chase already over as you wiggle around in his embrace.

His thumb hooks under the elastic of your panties. And he starts to jerk down the cotton. Lifting you up a bit to fully remove them. Legs being pushed apart by his wide body, and you pull at his button, trying to release the monster cock that is straining in these jeans. “Tell me first, and I’ll give you everything you want.”

Pushing aside your hand, he pulls himself out. You yip at the sight of his pretty little piercing coated in beads of precum. Gripping the base of his cock he pumps himself a few times before rubbing his tip through your drenched center. His squishy head barely pushing through your entrance, “I called you Rogers,” his hips thrust forward, leaving you blinded by the intense and immediate stretch.

Vision is blurry. Like a filter had been laid over the world around you, and all you see is him. All you feel is his weight lowering over top of you, and his arms caging you. The cold grass tickling your backside. Senses on overdrive because he gave so much of himself to you today.

“I called you — daddy,” you scream out as he fucks into you so hard and deep his tip kisses the edge of your cervix. The one name he told you not to call him, and you would pay for your indiscretions in pleasure. You are now aware of how you haven’t fully taken all of Steve from the way he is filling you up. A perfect fit indeed as you revel in having him so purely. His hips piston him deeper into your warmth than he’s ever been. Branding you in a different way than before. This is just for you and him.

”Fuck,” Steve grouses, a hand slides up to your neck. Keeping his eyes on yours as he adds a bit of pressure. He is fighting off saying what he really wants to say. Using your body to work through his emotions. Never looking to where the two of you connect, keeping both eyes trained on you.

The softest whimper explodes out of his chest as he holds your gaze, “You’re my best friend.”

His words contradict his sharp thrusts inside of you. “You are. I trust so few, but I trust you…the most,” you preen at his words. Mewling out his name, and circling your legs around him. Allowing your body to take every part of him. Soft words with harsh movements have your body floating and unable to focus.

“I love…love spending every day with you. I don’t want to miss a day,” he is getting there. Slowly. But he is. And judging by the sparks going through your body, you’re also almost there.

“You’re my best friend, too, Captain. Now finish me,” he rams into you. Hitting you in all the right spots until your eyes go crossed, and you roll them into the back of your head. “Steve!” you scream out as your body begins to tremble. There is nothing but the two of you out here in the middle of nowhere where Steve changed your life. And now you are also changing his life.

“My pussy sure does feel good,” he smirks at you. His body slams into you, and your back skids across the ground in the most delightful pleasured pain. You owned him. He is yours. And you will do everything to protect him. This stunted man is now yours to protect. He could hide and deny it, but he is yours.

“Your pussy is only for you.”

“Good,” he growls as you arch your back into him. Bringing yourself close to him. Your body stiffens up. Everything builds to the climax. Looking deep into his beautiful eyes, he nods, “Let go, Dovey,” and everything crashes down around Steve. Your velvety walls cling tight to his thick girth, and his sticky heat fills you up.

He lets your body sink to the ground slowly, and he smirks down at you. “You’re so pretty like this. Fucked hard and dumb, and filled to the brim of…”

“Steve Rogers,” you coo. You’d let this man do whatever he wanted to you. He is powerful, scary, intimidating, but to you he’s just your Captain.

“Let’s go home, sweetie. You need a bath. You have leaves in your hair,” he picks out a leaf, holding it up to prove the mess he made. “Plus you smell like dirt. Come on,” he slowly pulls himself out of you, flicking his eyes down to look at your spread legs. “When can we take that thing out of you?”

“Steve! I have only been having sex for a couple of months. Give me at least a year.”

”I love it when you whine, but a full year?” You nod, going to stand up. Wincing as you reach for your panties he really was deep. Body wobbling, and Steve holds you upright, but still keeps your panties out of your reach, and you stomp your foot. “If I have to wait a year, you have to ride back home with no panties.”

”Steve, your cum…”

“Yes, the thought of my cum leaking out of your cunt is part of the appeal of this arrangement,” exhaling quickly, you start walking away from him. “Oh, cutie, you acting like a brat and seeing that run down your leg is turning me on again.”

“Wash me clean, and you can have your pussy again.”

”I wasn’t going to ask,” he gulps, continuing to watch you walk away. You have been the best thing that’s happened to him. The best part of him. “But I’ll always ask for permission, Dovey,” he whispers, knowing you won’t hear him. “Because I love…hearing you beg.”

Steve’s hands squeeze on your foot, and he sighs when you can’t control the sounds that hum out of your mouth. “You’re the one causing those sounds,” your brow cocks up as you stare at him over the bubbles. “Can you be here with me all the time?”

“If you’ll let me suck on your clit underwater.”

You stare at him both confused and shocked. No way was he going under the water for such a thing, nor did you want his face between your legs right now. He starts to move his body from across the tub, closer to you, and you shake your head no.

“Do you doubt my abilities?”

“Not at all. I know you’d die in between my thighs and think it was the best death in the world. But I’d rather you not die,” or have him be where he was wanting his face be.

He blinks once slowly before getting even closer. Looking more like a predator than your boyfriend, “Steve, no!”

“Then sit on the ledge of the bathtub.”

“I’ll get cold.”

“Then dry off and I’ll feast on my pussy in the bed.”

“Can you give me a few more moments in here? Alone?” " He shakes his head no. “Why not?”

“Why the fuck do you want to stay in the tub?” Because you needed to. Did he not get you needed private time sometimes?

“I have something I need to do, and I don’t want you in here,” pursing his lips, he narrows his eyes while watching you. Making you uncomfortable with how hard he’s staring at you. “Stop! Get out, and give me just a moment.”

“What do you need to do that I can’t see?”

“Seriously?” He scoots a bit closer to you, and you push your foot up against his chest, holding him in place. All the while knowing that this would not keep him away from you, “What are you doing?”

“Going to suck on your clit,” like it is the most obvious answer in the world. Shaking your head no, Steve sighs. “You know I could lift you up and make you do whatever I want you to, so why don’t you explain to me what the problem is, and why you don’t want me to touch you right now?”

You take a long look at Steve, sighing before looking down at the bubbles. Steve had done so much to break down your walls. He had made you a completely different person, a stronger person. He had turned your world upside down. Had just been inside of you, but you don’t want his face down there.

“Dovey?”

“I need to shave,” Steve scoffs, trying to push his body towards you. “Steve, stop. I don’t want your face there.”

“Does it look like I care about a little bit of hair. Let me suck your clit.”

“No.”

“Even though you’re pissing me off, I do think I have found the perfect woman. Because you, my darling, don’t put up with my bullshit. How does it feel to be the only woman that has ever tamed Steve Rogers? Don’t,” the timbre of his voice lowers when you cross your arms across your chest.

He stares deep into your eyes as he gets a bit closer to you. Gaze never leaves yours, but he uses a hand to cup your mound. His fingers roll over your entrance as he tilts his head watching you, “It’s not that bad.”

“It is to me, and I haven’t even found the energy to get away from you to shave.”

“Since I’m such a menace to you, let me shave you,” it is a simple statement and said so easily, but the audacity of this man.

“No.”

“You’re being a brat.”

“It’s one of your favorite things about me.”

“I’m a bigger fan of my pussy. Let me shave you. I’ll get it how you like it because frankly, I don’t get a damn. But I also get to see the face of god,” he’s relentless. Ridiculous even. A menace for you. And the way his eyes flick all over your face, and he never once pushes past your entrance, just lazily taps his fingers on it. “It will be so fucking sexy.”

You’re doubtful of that. You also don’t trust that Steve won’t try to devour you, regardless of what you want. “I want to do it, Dove. I will bow down before you and shave every inch of you if that is what you want. I want to be in every part of your life. Even the parts that you find embarrassing. Because all I know is I get to spend even more time with my favorite girl. Please, Dovey. I’m begging you, please, let me shave your pussy.”

“I’ve never done this before,” you sigh, biting at your lip.

“Neither have I. You get another one of my firsts. Just…just sit on the edge of the tub. I’ll be careful,” he wouldn’t stop until you give him what he wants. And there’s something adorably sexy about him wanting to take care of you in the most intimate and simple way. You want him to.

Taking a deep breath you lift yourself onto the side of the tub. Spreading your legs slowly as Steve’s face beams up at you as his eyes drift all over your body. Watching as the suds coast down your soft curves. Consuming you with his eyes alone.

“This is not that bad. But let me take care of you,” he reaches for the razor and runs a smooth hand over your mound. His thumb teases along your clit, and you can’t help but whimper out his name. “Shh, don’t make that sound just yet, Dovey,” sudding up some soap, he spreads it over your skin. Making sure to coat every bit of your exposed skin with the foam, and his hands expertly move the razor over your supple body. Making sure to clean it after every pass.

Even though you know it is killing him, he never makes a lewd joke. He doesn’t slip a finger in, it’s like this is his job. It’s fascinating to watch him. He keeps looking up at you through those inky black lashes making sure you're grading his work. And when he’s not looking at you, his tongue pushes out the front of his mouth in concentration, and you commit this moment to your memory. He looks adorable.

He always does wheng a he’s not trying to be this hard drug lord. There’s a sweetness, and a loyalty to him. This need to control, but also a need to protect and take care of you. You position yourself to lean back more, and he growls, rolling his eyes to look up at you. “This isn’t funny. You’re already torturing me.”

“I enjoy the view,” this big bad drug lord was down on his knees, and just for you. Towering above you, or bowing before you. Submissive only for you, or your fearless dominating Captain. He was all yours.

“You’re a fucking tease, too,” Steve’s hand drops into the water, giving you a clear view of his hard and angry cock under the water. “You’re killing me.”

“I enjoy you from this angle.”

“You enjoy me worshiping you right at the face of god. You’re a sweet little tease. Has her pussy spread out deliciously before me, and making me shave you. Dove, the water isn’t fooling anyone,” you hum as he lets water drip over your body, washing away the remaining bubbles before he spreads your puffy lips out. Keeping you wide open before looking up at you.

“You’re dripping. Coated in that sweet honey because all you can think about is me fucking into you so hard and deep that my sweet little Dovey falls asleep, huh? Do you like me on my knees in front of you, and taking care of you in this way?” You answer by nodding your head. He knew you too well. You’d let him command you because you knew he had these sweet moments ready to remind you it isn’t just your cunt that keeps him obsessed.

“Dove, you’re no longer in the water, and I can’t attempt to deep sea suck on your clit.”

“You are ruining a sweet moment, Steven,” Steve adjusts to his knees, letting his heavy cock rub against your leg, and your legs spread even more, “Steve,” a whispered whine escapes your mouth, and you start going into that space where he controls your every thought and movement. Making everything about pleasing him because you get the utmost pleasure.

“I will try that one day. But you need to be fucked like my sweet little slut don’t you,” your head nods. A mess of words tumbles out of your mouth, and he stands up. Cock and piercing right at your face, and you whimper. Leaning forward you kiss the tip, sticking your tongue out to lick the vein on his cock. Looking up at him through your lashes when you tongue his slit.

“You sure do love Clarence, huh?”

“He loves me, too. Doesn’t he?”

“Clarence loves and adores you,” stepping out of the tub, he turns to you, lifting you up in his arms. He carries you into the bedroom, ripping open the curtains so you can see the woods and the moonlight creating silvery light into your room. Turning to the bed, he sets you on your knees.

“Put your head on the bed, and keep your eyes on me. You’ve teased me for too long,” you do as you're told, receiving a smile, and a soft slap to your pussy, “Such a good girl for me. As much as I love your fight, when you get in this space and will do anything just for this,” he spears into you with such a hard and deep thrust, your body scoots onto the bed.

Fingers cling to the sheets as Steve pulls himself out of you, “And what my Dovey wants,” another sharp thrust has you seeing stars. Stretched out, and that cool metal grazes over your cervix, “She gets,” gripping onto your hips he pounds into your depths.

Such frenzied movements. You aren’t sure if you have ever taken him so fully like this. So deep. So full. So aggressive in his movements. “And I…soon — soon you’ll have that thing removed and I will pump you so full of me that I start growing in your belly. You’ll be so filled with all of me. Something I have never done. You’ll get it all.”

His voice is gravely despite the words coming out of them. He means every bit of it. Making you understand and know that you are his world. Giving you all that he can, and more than he has to anyone else.

“I will do whatever it takes for you, Dovey. Anything to keep you safe. But you will always be mine. There will never be another. No one can ever treat you the way that I do. I own every part of you, all the way down to your soul. We’re bonded together. In this life and the next. I’m yours, but you’re mine. All of you. Every bit of your every being. It’s all mine. All. Mine.”

”It’s all yours,” you let out a scream of pleasure. Trying to get a grip on anything because the build up for the orgasm has you on edge. Your body tenses as euphoria builds up in your body. All the way deep into your soul. The most lewd, but also innocent form of being together. Searing himself throughout your body. And you didn’t even realize just how much you are burning yourself into his world. When he said anything, he meant it. You will always be his first thought.

No one has every had this much of Steve. And he would do whatever it took to keep you safe. The first and last thoughts on his mind are always you. Everything was just you. With your body almost flat on the bed now, he stabs into you, spurting his seed into your warmth and letting you milk him clean.

Losing a bit of himself in the moment, “God, I love…this,” he pants out. Watching your eyes close, and a derpy smile on your face. “I love it.”

You sleep so soundly. Can’t even feel Steve ghosting his lips over your worn body. You never complained about how much that he needs and uses you. You always just let him have whatever he wants. Even if you’re asleep he’s going to make sure that he spoils you with his touch. The only way he can show you how much he loves you, even if he can’t say it.

Not the way he sinks into you, but these moments. The ones where you’re softly snoring, and he’s staring over your body and painting your skin with his kisses like you are the most beautiful work of art. He wants to cover you in his — touch. He is working on it. He wants to give you what you need from him. He wants it more than he wants sleep. And one day he’ll find the way to give you all you deserve.

He didn’t bother closing the curtains and blinds. You love watching the woods outside to fall asleep. Saying that it makes you feel closer to him because it was just the two of you and the creatures.

He blinks, looking out into the distance when a flash of light catches his eye. Staring down onto the forest floor when he slings the blanket off him. Taking a moment to make sure you’re still asleep before he walks out the cabin. Teeth already clenched together as he marches down into the darkness.

Stopping when he squares up against a woman that once upon a time could have looked just like you. Her eyes lifeless as her sight moves from the bedroom window to Steve, “Didn’t bother to put a shirt on did you?”

He glares at her, snapping his fingers in her face when she looks back up at your sleeping form, “I need some money.”

“I told you I wasn’t giving you money,” his voice is quick and final, and she pouts up at him.

“She gets money.”

“Are you fucking serious right now?”

“Oh right, she lets you use her,” every conversation starts the same with her. Always money. Always he uses you. “Does she know?”

“That I paid for a fucking apartment and you trashed it, and got kicked out? No. I told her I would keep you safe. I don’t know what the fuck all that does because you can’t keep you goddamn nose clean. Let me see in between your fingers.”

“Fuck you!” Steve didn’t have to see. He could tell by the state of her, she’s no longer clean. A junkie that had nothing to lose and knew where he lived was dangerous.

“Why are you here, Lark? How did you know about our home?” She cocks up her eyebrow, looking Steve up and done before staring at his brand. “Yes, ours. How did you find this place?”

“I know people. Pussy gets you a lot of things. Ask my sister,” if she wasn’t a woman Steve would have backhand her.

“My patience is growing thin. What the fuck did you want,” she looks back up at your sleeping body, conflicted with emotions at how comfortable and unknowing you are. Did you even realize the shit Steve was into? Or did you just not care? The people that Steve employed? What they could do to you. “Lark!”

“Since you won’t give me money, we’re done here. I’m surprised you left her unattended. Did you remember to lock the door?” A more sinister person would smile, but Lark seems sad. Waiting for Steve to gasp before he bolts back towards the house. The door now wide open, and he sneaks around the room. Checking every dark corner before slinging the bedroom door open. You’re still asleep and none the wiser, but he can’t relax.

Needing to check the bathroom and closets, and keep turning back to you. Still relaxed and dreaming. Unaware of the turmoil that is going through his head at someone having the ability to hurt you. Didn’t even feel he had the right to crawl back in the bed beside you, or even hold you.

“Steve?” You whisper, turning in the bed to look at him. Blinking away the sleep in your eyes, “Baby, get back in bed. Can you close the curtains?”

“Yeah,” he says, telling himself the curtains will never be open again. Looking out into the woods, he wonders how Lark got here. Where she was at and where she was going. She was up to something. She wasn’t alone. He made promises to you to never hurt her, but if it comes between you and her, she will be eliminated.

“Take the sweatpants off, too,” you hated when he wears clothes to bed when you’re naked. As he tosses his pants to the side, they hit the dresser, knocking something into the floor. “The hamper, Steve.”

“Yes, ma’am,” his voice is quiet and solemn, and he doesn’t pay attention to the envelope that floats to the floor. “Let me set the alarm though.”

You’ll never be left unattended. He’d have you with him every second. You were all that mattered to him. “Mmm,” you moan, unaware of what transpired tonight. And even he wasn’t sure, but he would be soon.

Masterlist

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#your mark on me #steve rogers #soft!dark!steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x fem!reader #steve rogers x female reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers y/n #steve rogers smut #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fanfics #steve rogers fic #steve rogers fics #chris evans #chris evans character

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writtenbymisunderstoodnerds · 6 months

Text

You hate each other, right? (Tierna Davidson x Reader)

This wasn't requested or something I actually planned to write, but writers block is a bitch. Titles are hard, this isn't edited and I don't think this is very good, but here it is. Hope you enjoy :)

I'm going to try work on my actual wips so we'll see how that goes.

Warnings: None that I can think of, but let me know if I need to add anything.

Words: 4k

Tierna and I had always had a strained relationship. By that I meant we absolutely hated each other for years. Honestly, seeing as many many years had passed, we could barely remember what had caused the problem in the first place. Something to do with an injury or something.

Everything between us had changed one day when our argument ended in making out instead of shouting like normal. It seemed that over the years the hatred had turned to romantic feelings on both sides. After the kiss, there was lots of awkwardness and avoiding each other until I finally just asked her out one day when we were alone in the elevator. We had decided to keep everything on the downlow as first so we could learn how to have a relationship that didn't involve fighting or hatred. It wasn't actually that difficult because I quickly became addicted to everything Tierna. If her clinginess was anything to go off, then it was safe to say that Tierna felt the same.

To keep everyone from getting suspicious, the last couple of months we had kept our outside relationship the same. There were glares, not talking to each other, and scoffs when the other spoke. The mean comments we used to make had pretty much stopped now. I couldn't bring myself to say anything bad about her, not when I was falling for her faster than I could keep up. If anyone ever asked, I just couldn't be bothered with it anymore.

We had just gotten back from training. Tierna and I were glaring at each other as always while Emily stood between us as a kind of buffer. Tierna and I were sharing a room like we had been for the most part of the year. It was the teams way of trying to get us to get along. Little did they know how well that actually worked.

The glares lasted until the door closed behind us, finally away from the prying eyes of our team mates. Tierna turned, soft smile replacing the scowl as she fell into my arms. My hand slipped under her shirt, nails scratching along her back as she sighed, kissing my neck softly.

"You okay love?"

"Just tired and I missed you today."

"I was with you the whole day."

"Well yeah, but I couldn't touch you let alone look at you nicely. I was craving cuddles all day."

"I'm sorry, we have the rest of the evening to cuddle."

"We have team bonding tonight though." Tierna pouted, moving to find comfy clothes. I groaned at the lack of contact, moving to wrap my arms around her waist. She gently shrugged me off, moving away from me. It was a clear sign she was upset about something. I lay on the bed, allowing her space to change and decide if she wanted to come to me or not.

Tierna sat on the other bed for a few minutes scrolling through her phone before she sighed, throwing it back on the bed and walking over to me. I opened my arms, letting her lay on top of me, head resting against my neck. "I don't want to pretend to hate you anymore. It's exhausting, I hate that I can't even smile at you when we're around them, I can't run to you during games or hold your hand or be close to you like I need when I'm tired, nervous or down."

"Okay. Well, we can start being friends in front of them."

Tierna looked up at me, "Yeah?"

"If that's what you want. I'm sorry that we haven't been able to do any of that stuff. It's not that I don't want to, trust me I hate it as much as you do if not more. All I ever want to do is be with you, my favourite thing in this world is your cuddles. I would prefer to keep our relationship to ourselves for a bit longer though."

I had always preferred to keep my relationships more private, but it was also in part because we constantly got roomed together in attempt to make us get along. I wasn't ready to have that change yet. Not just because I liked sleeping in the same bed with my girlfriend, but also because I hated change. It wouldn't be a big deal if my roommate changed pretty much every camp, that didn't happen so I had gotten used to Tierna and our routine. I dreaded that changing.

"Thank you. I'll just be happy with a smile or maybe a hug every now and then. There's no pressure to tell them about us, whenever you're ready I'm ready. I know you're scared about your routine changing and we'll protect that for as long as we can. And if or when it does, I've got you. Always."

I brushed a piece of hair out of her face, soft smile making it's way onto my face. We hadn't said the three big words yet, but I had known for a while that I was in love with her. Everything with her was warm, comforting, safe. "I love you T."

A grin made it's way onto her face before she kissed me deeply, "I love you Y/n."

---

It had been two weeks since we had agreed to be more friendly. We had decided to slowly start being more friendly so it wouldn't be suspicious. At first it was just stopping the glares and actually saying a few words that weren't mean or snarky. Now we had decided smiles and maybe some proper conversations were the next step.

We were at breakfast, Tierna sat at the table across the room while I sat with Emily and Rose. I hated that she was sat away from me, but unfortunately it had always been that way. Tierna sent a small smile my way. I sent a small smile back managing to stop the grin trying to escape. Emily and Rose followed my eyeline, confusion covering their faces when they noticed it was Tierna I was smiling at. I just shrugged going back to eating my breakfast.

My peace only last a few minutes until Emily spoke up, "So have you and T have worked things out? There seems to be less glares, more smiles."

"I guess so. We actually talked a couple of weeks ago and could barely remember why we didn't like each other. We're trying to be friends."

"Finally. Maybe we'll all be able to be in the same room peacefully."

Over the rest of camp, the smiles and conversation became more frequent. The confusion or shock that covered the teams face for the first week was hilarious. Thankfully, after the initial shock, they seemed to back off their nosiness a bit. They seemed to realise we were more friendly without their prying eyes. It was nice though, being able to actually look at Tierna or be around her even if I couldn't touch her much.

---

Camps had always been one of my favourite things. I loved being around the girls, just getting to train and mess around. This time though, I almost wanted to just leave. Since Tierna and I were becoming 'friends', we had finally been roomed with different people. We had only been at camp for two days and my nerves were through the roof. They had been since I arrived. It wasn't what I was used to and I wasn't entirely sure how to cope with it. My whole routine had been disrupted without warning. The team knew I didn't like change, but I guess no one really thought this was something that would affect me too bad.

Training had finished an hour ago, dinner and team bonding weren't for a few hours and I was stuck on my bed fidgeting with my fingers. Alyssa sat down next to me, nudging my shoulder gently, "Are you okay Y/n?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm okay."

"I call bullshit."

A sigh slipped out as my head rest against her shoulder. I didn't have the energy to pretend to be okay, "I love you Lys, really I do, but I hate this."

"Hate what?"

"Not rooming with Tierna. I know I used to not like it and we only just recently became friends, but that's what I was used to. For months, we had our routine, it didn't change much if at all. Just a bit of extra talking. Even then I knew what to expect. Now, it's all changed without warning and I don't think I'm coping very well with it."

"So, it's not just because you don't get to share with your girlfriend anymore?"

My head flew up, every muscle in my body tensing, "What?"

"Relax, I'm the only one that knows. I saw you guys making out in a hidden corner of the stadium when I took a wrong turn. You two are obviously pretending you're not great friends and hiding it for a reason. I haven't and won't tell anyone."

"Thank you Lys. I wish this was just because of that, but it's not. I don't deal with change very well at all. I like my routine and now it's completely different. If we hadn't been forced to room together for months, no routine would be formed and it wouldn't be this bad."

"I'm sorry that you were forced into a routine then forced out of it. We can see how you go for a couple of days and if it's not getting better then we can talk to coach and see if we can switch."

I smiled, accepting the hug she offered. It wasn't Tierna, but it was a close second. "I'm not mad at the forced rooming. I mean, T and I wouldn't be together without it. This is one of the reasons we haven't told anyone, to try hold onto my routine."

Much to my confusion, there was a light knock at the door. As far as I knew, everyone was hanging out in their rooms before dinner. My head buried in my hands, really not up for visitors as Alyssa went to open the door. Arms wrapped around me, my head resting against a stomach before the unmistakable smell of Tierna filled my senses. "Before you ask, Alyssa messaged saying you could use me so here I am."

"Thank you Lys."

"Always. I'm going to go for a walk, see you at dinner."

Tierna guided me to lie on the bed, cuddled up against her. It was probably the first time since camp started that I fully relaxed. "Love you T."

"I love you. I know this is difficult, but at least with Alyssa knowing we have more of a chance to see each other."

---

"Are you okay Y/n?" Christen asked as her and Alex sat on either side of me. I knew the team were getting concerned at how withdrawn I was and I appreciated they cared. However, getting asked multiple times a day if I was okay, was getting on my nerves.

"I'm fine." I snapped, retying my boots for the fourth time.

I knew I was being grumpy, but I couldn't help it. This whole routine change had messed with everything, especially my sleep. I was tired and stressed, trying to adjust and create a new routine. It wasn't working very well, but I was trying not to show it much. I didn't want to seem childish or be judged for my lack of adaptability. Tierna was trying her best to help, there wasn't much she could do beside comfort me. Alyssa had also been understanding, not taking my discomfort personally. There wasn't much she could do either though.

Alex and Christen gave me a look before pulling me away from everyone else, "Talk to us."

I sighed, burying my face in my hands, everything that had been happening spilling out. They let me talk, not saying anything until they were sure I was done. Christen rest her hand on my shoulder, squeezing slightly. "We get you're trying to tough it out, to adapt, but you could have told us before it got this bad. It's well known you don't do well with change and I guess we didn't think much of this since you had different room mates in the past. We'll talk to coach and see if you can change rooms assuming it's okay with Tierna and Rose."

"I'll be fine, I'll get over it."

"No, we need you to be at your best. So we'll talk to coach after practice."

"Thank you. Before you say it, I know I will need to get over it at some point. I won't always be able to have Tierna as a roommate. I'm working on it, my therapist is helping. I just think the lack of warning and no time to mentally prepare didn't help."

"We'll never tell you to get over it Y/n/n, but we are glad you're trying. We hate seeing you like this, we just want you to be okay."

Later that night when I finally made it back to my room after being dragged to hangout with Emily, I found Tierna lying on my bed, book in hand. I straddled her waist, kissing her forehead then nose and lips. "Well hello."

"Hi."

"Alyssa is rooming with Rose. I think you need an early night, you look exhausted."

"I think you're right. Sleep hasn't been easy the last few days."

---

Tierna: I'm thinking it's time for a date day. Sneak out with me?

Y/n: Don't have to ask me twice. I'm going to head back to the room to change, meet me there?

Tierna: Perfect, can't wait x

After making the excuse of planning to spend the day relaxing in the room, I slipped out of the meal room to get changed and meet Tierna. It wasn't unusual for me to spend a day or two at camp alone to recharge so I knew it wouldn't cause any concern aside from a text or two.

Soft lips landed against mine as soon as Tierna entered the room. "Hello to you too."

Tierna pecked my lips, "There was not enough of that this morning."

"Well if you had woken up when I tried then there would have been more kissing time."

"It's an off day, what's the point in waking up early?"

"Make out time."

"Whatever. I was thinking, we shower and make out more, then check out that book shop you were talking about. I didn't think about what else, but we can get lunch and there is a beach not far from here."

My arms wrapped around her waist, kissing her forehead. There hadn't been a lot of time to ourselves so I was very excited to spend the day with her. "Sounds incredible. I'm sure we can find some lowkey stuff to do. Could you imagine the shit we would get if the team found out about this from social media?"

"Shit, I didn't even think about that. Sneaky date day it is!"

As per Tiernas plan she dragged me into the shower, spending more time with her lips attached to me than actual shower activities. Not that I was complaining in the slightest. Tierna and I spent a lot more time in the room than originally planned, it being almost lunch time when I finally dragged Tierna out of the hotel.

We spent a while exploring the little book shop, taking our time looking at the different books and stealing kisses behind the book shelves. It was risky, we both knew it, but at the same time I was having too much fun with her to care. Though we weren't doing anything overly exciting, just getting to spend some alone time with the girl I loved was enough for it to be the most fun I had in a while. Spending time with the team was always fun, but it didn't compare to spending time with Tierna.

After finally dragging ourselves away from the book shop, we got sushi deciding to eat in the park. Thankfully, there weren't that many people and we managed to find a relatively secluded area.

At the start of the day, we had very much intended on actually doing things. However, we ended up spending quite a while lying on the grass at the park just talking. Since the start of our relationship, most of our time would be spent talking. At first it was getting to know each other properly, then it was just something we enjoyed. Tierna was one of the only people besides Emily that I could spend hours talking and not get bored. I never was much of a talker, but I actually looked forward to our talking time. Between games, training, meetings, and spending time with the team, we hadn't had a lot of time to just talk. Despite rooming together, by time we fell into bed, we were just ready to sleep.

Eventually we dragged ourselves up, making our way slowly to the beach, stopping at a few shops along the way. We walked along the beach, finding a hidden away part near the end. Tierna settled between my legs, back against my front as I nuzzled my face into her neck, "You're beautiful T. I've never been more grateful for our meddling teammates. I love you."

"I love you. This is something I never saw happening, but I would never want anything else. And I would never admit to them how thankful I am for their part in this."

"Oh never in a million years will I admit that to them. Thank you for today T, it's probably one of the best days I've had in a while."

"Really? We pretty much talked all day which is not what I planned."

"My love, any day I spend with you is amazing. Maybe it wasn't what you planned, but I don't care T. I love just talking to you and with how little time we've had together lately today was amazing. I love you, I loved today so please stop feeling bad like I know you are."

Tierna turned to look at me, not saying anything for a second while her eyes roamed my face. Probably making sure I was telling the truth. She pecked my cheek before whispering, "How did I get so lucky with you?"

"You didn't hit me when I kissed you that night."

"Didn't even cross my mind. I think by that point I was starting to realise that maybe I didn't hate you like I thought."

"Looking back you were blushing a lot around me then. No different to now I guess. You're just better at hiding it around the team."

My forehead was pushed back, Tierna pouting while I tried to stifle my laugh. She was adorable when she pouted. "Shut up asshole. Speaking of the team, we should probably head back soon."

Unfortunately for us, a few of the girls were lingering in the lobby and not at dinner like we had anticipated. The thought to hide was quickly pushed away when they all turned to look at us. "Where have you two been? We came to get you for dinner, but obviously you weren't there."

I had checked social media a few times just to make sure there wasn't any thing about us since a few people had stopped us for pictures. Thankfully, nothing had been posted yet and if it was the pictures were all innocent so I knew it was safe to make up a little lie. "We just went for a walk."

Emily pulled me into a headlock, normally I could get out of her hold pretty easily, but I was tired and not really in the mood. "Where was my invite? You know you're bestfriend incase you've forgotten."

My eyes rolled automatically, finally managing to push her away, "Em, stop being dramatic. It was a very last minute thing, not some conspiracy to leave you out. You are and will always be my bestfriend."

"Yeah whatever. I don't think you two willingly spending time together without killing each other will ever get old."

"Maybe not, but your comments already are. Now isn't there dinner then team bonding?"

---

The game was almost over when Tierna ended up on the ground due to a miss timed tackle. She didn't get up straight away and I saw red. Before I even fully realised what was happening, my hands were on the chest of the player who took Tierna down, pushing her back multiple times.

"Are you fucking stupid? You could hav-"

Arms gripped mine, pulling me back and finally snapped me out it. "Y/n, Y/n stop."

My arms went up in surrender, walking back to Tierna before I could do something stupid again. I knew I had gotten a yellow card, but the only thing that mattered was Tierna. I wanted so badly to hold her hand to comfort her properly, but I knew I couldn't. Instead I squeezed her shoulder gently, relief washing through me when she finally got up.

Everyone stared at us as Tierna and I walked into the locker room. I knew it was coming, I had just hoped it would be a few of the older ones and not everyone. Christen gave me a pointed look, Alyssa and Alex joining in. "What the hell was that Y/n?"

I shrugged, avoiding eye contact. I wouldn't say I regretted it because I wasn't sure I did. Though, I had likely disappointed them, something I hated doing. "I lost my temper."

"You never lose your temper Y/n. You don't even lose your temper when I go down and I'm your best friend. Yet you lose your temper when someone you're barely friends with gets tackled." Emily stated, arms crossed. There was no way they would let this go, it was definitely out of character for me. I had always been a calm person, never violent or short tempered. The look Tierna gave me told me she was thinking the same. This was it.

My arm wrapped around Tierna's shoulder, pressing a light kiss to her temple, "Well, become my girlfriend and apparently I will."

"You're what!?! You're fucking with us."

Questions and statements were fired our way, everyone shocked and confused how we were dating given the way we acted. "Shut up." Once everyone was quiet, I spoke again, "Yes we are together. We have been for about 9 months. We kept our same dislike or barely friend act so we could keep it between us for a while. We needed to work out how we worked together after actually not liking each other for a long time. It was nice in our little bubble. And before you ask, no I wasn't not coping with the different room assignments because of it, my routine changed suddenly and my brain didn't like that. That should answer your questions, can I shower now?"

They looked at us in disbelief before I just walked away knowing we would be hit with more questions later. Tierna pecked my lips before going to her own shower, "That was hot. Don't make a habit of it though, you don't need to be getting in trouble. Also thank you for answering all those questions. I do not have the energy right now."

Before Tierna could actually get into the shower, I grabbed her arm, pulling her back into me. Now that she had taken her shirt off, I finally had the chance to make sure she was truly okay. My hands ran along her sides and up her back before hugging her tightly, "I've never done anything like that before. I just, I saw you go down and I snapped. Seeing you hurt, well it worried me in a way I've never felt before. You sure you're okay?"

"This side of you is adorable. I've never seen you so worried before. I'm okay, I promise. There might be a bruise or two, but I'm okay."

"What can I say? I've never been in love like this before. I always worry about you T, but seeing you down is a whole different type of worry. I love you."

"And I love you."

#uswnt x reader #uswnt imagine #woso x reader #woso imagines #tierna davidson imagine #tierna davidson x reader

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